Good morning! Bonjour! Welcome all new and old Formula one fans worldwide to the Circuit de Monaco. This weekend will be round 7 of the 22-racing track/street circuits for 2022.
After last weekend’s race in Spain, we now have Red Bull Racing Driver Max Verstappen leading the championship leader board by 7 pts with a total of 110 pts. Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc follows with 104 pts and in third is Red Bull Racing driver Sergio Perez with 85 pts.
On the Constructors “team” leader board, in first place is Red Bulling Racing with 195 pts, followed by Ferrari in 2nd with 169 pts and Mercedes in 3rd with 120 pts.
Quick Facts about the Track or in this case the Streets. We’ll call them “Street facts”
- It’s titled The Circuit de Monaco.
- The Circuit length is 3.337 KM.
- The number of laps in the upcoming race on Sunday is 78.
- The first Grand Prix race took place here in the streets of Monaco in 1950.
- The race distance for Sunday is 260.286 KM.
- The lap record is 1.12.909, held by Lewis Hamilton
- 19 turns, 11 to the right and 8 to the left.
This weekend will be divided into 3 days of racing.
Today, which is day 1 there was Practice 1 for 60 mins followed by Practice 2 for another 60 mins.
Then tomorrow, which is Saturday May 28th, will be day 2 and we will see Practice 3 for 60 mins and then Qualifications, “Q1, Q2 & Q3″ which i’ll have my reporting on tomorrow.
The final day which is Sunday May 29th will be race day.
Practice 1
From the streets of Monaco, on this nasty tight street track, it will be a brawl come Sunday. Hometown Monegasques and hero, Charles Leclerc is looking to tame the streets where he grew up and looking to have strong results for Ferrari come race day.
Play by Play
And away we go, Practice 1 is underway with only 12 laps to practice and study this street circuit. We have Mick Schumacher already out for most of the practice 1 session with some malfunction on his Hass F1 Team racing car. Valtteri Bottas has mechanical issues on his Alfa Romeo racing car with only 2 laps tagged. It looks and sounds like a gearbox problem.
The chequered flag comes out with Charles LECLERC atop the timesheet in FP1 with a time of 1:14.531. Red Bull Racing driver Sergio PEREZ finished in 2nd and Carlos SAINZ, Ferrari in 3rd,
Notes:
Mercedes has some issues with their racing cars bouncing known as “porpoising.” It looks like medium and hard tyres will be used by many of the teams racing cars this session.
The medium tyres are showing signs of degradation already after 12 – 14 laps on the McLaren racing car.
Team Alpine and Williams are just not having a good practice 1 session. The conditions are ridiculously hot on the streets and we had a few close calls near the rails. As is expected on this tight and whining street track.
Quote of the Day!
“It is going okay, they are feeling their way in… they are a bit out of sync. But so far, reasonably good. The ride is definitely a challenge, perhaps we don’t seem as baldly affected… the drivers are not commenting about it at the moment.” Christian Horner, Red Bull Team Principal
Practice 1 Timesheet Results
| POS | DRIVER | TIME | LAPS |
| P1 | LEC | 1:14.531 | 29 |
| P2 | PER | 1:14.570 | 30 |
| P3 | SAI | 1:14.601 | 28 |
| P4 | VER | 1:14.712 | 26 |
| P5 | NOR | 1:14.056 | 31 |
| P6 | GAS | 1:15.083 | 33 |
| P7 | RIC | 1:15.157 | 33 |
| P8 | RUS | 1:15.211 | 34 |
| P9 | VET | 1:15;387 | 33 |
| P10 | HAM | 1:15,499 | 29 |
| P11 | TSU | 1:15.536 | 36 |
| P12 | STR | 1:15.539 | 26 |
| P13 | ALO | 1:15.749 | 28 |
| P14 | MAG | 1:15.806 | 30 |
| P15 | ALB | 1:16.110 | 39 |
| P16 | OCO | 1:16.315 | 24 |
| P17 | ZHO | 1:16.417 | 27 |
| P18 | LAT | 1:17.714 | 30 |
| P19 | MSC | 1:18.636 | 12 |
| P20 | BOT | — | 2 |
Practice 2
We are underway with the second practice of the Circuit de Monaco. The two Red Bulls are off and running in this session, followed by the red prancing Ferraris.
Still mostly medium compound tyres being used for this session.
Note
The apex of these curbs around the track could be deadly on race day. In this second practice, the drivers are starting to push and with that comes crashes into the barriers.
As we write, Bang! Less than 15 mins into the second session, our first red flag on this street circuit.
We are seeing a few locks up on the turns and burnt tyres of the soft compounds.
As we come to the end of the second practice session, again hometown hero Charles LECLERC of Ferrari finish with the fastest lap with a time of 1:12.656.
Followed by his teammate Carlos SAINZ in 2nd and Sergio PEREZ of Red Bull Racing in 3rd.
Practice 2 Timesheet Results
| POS | DRIVER | TIME | LAPS |
| P1 | LEC | 1:12.656 | 30 |
| P2 | SAI | 1:12.700 | 32 |
| P3 | PER | 1:13.035 | 31 |
| P4 | VER | 1:13.103 | 33 |
| P5 | NOR | 1:13.294 | 24 |
| P6 | RUS | 1:13.406 | 31 |
| P7 | GAS | 1:13.636 | 32 |
| P8 | ALO | 1:13.912 | 31 |
| P9 | VET | 1:14.059 | 32 |
| P10 | TSU | 1:14,134 | 27 |
| P11 | MAG | 1:14.239 | 32 |
| P12 | HAM | 1:14.267 | 29 |
| P13 | BOT | 1:14.468 | 28 |
| P14 | ALB | 1:14.486 | 33 |
| P15 | ZHO | 1:14.525 | 23 |
| P16 | STR | 1:14.623 | 29 |
| P17 | MSC | 1:14.894 | 33 |
| P18 | OCO | 1:15.216 | 34 |
| P19 | LAT | 1:16.276 | 33 |
| P20 | RIC | — | 2 |
En Sorgini is a Formula 1 Racing Analyst and Reporter with GTA Weekly News
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