The paddock will long remember Monaco 2022. With a start in the rain, upset strategies, and interruptions, the Grand Prix was lively for the whole grid. The former boss of the Renault team, Cyril Abiteboul, returns for franceinfo: sport on the course of the event, the consequences of the rain, and the unexpected victory of Sergio Pérez.
Franceinfo: sport: did the arrival of the rain change everything before the start?
Cyril Abiteboul: Indeed, the rain was announced and was there. In Monaco, it’s very hilly, you never know if it’s going to come down from the mountains, and especially at what speed. I think there were good decisions taken by the race management, to stop immediately, not to insist, and then to take advantage of the thinning. Except for Latifi [sorti de piste derrière la voiture de sécurité]the rain itself didn’t change much in the starting order, it was a bit later that things picked up speed.
How exactly did the rain shift the pit re-entry and tire change strategies? How did it influence the rest of the race?
What I remember above all is that for the first time we had a Monaco Grand Prix with a certain form of elasticity. Teams could afford not to be on the right tire at the right time because the cars were having such a hard time overtaking that the positions were fixed. We saw him again at the end of the race, in the lead, between Red Bull who chose the medium tires and Ferrari who chose the hard tyres, but without affecting the positions at the finish.
The turning point of the race…#MonacoGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/ZJQv8SzWlg
— Formula 1 (@F1) May 29, 2022
How do you judge this Grand Prix, the first in Monaco since the new regulations, at the heart of the debates on the spectacle offered by the track?
We see the limit of this new regulation, where the cars have been designed to encourage overtaking in high-speed corners, and to tighten the gaps. In a way it works, the first four finished in a pocket handkerchief, even if I note a gap with the pursuers [George Russell est arrivé à 11 secondes du leader]. On the other hand, they did not succeed in surpassing themselves. There was no change in the hierarchy. This shows that Monaco, perhaps even more than before, offers both an always unexpected spectacle, with crashes, errors, but also a race that looks like a procession. Everything was played in a very intellectual way, at the time of the strategies, with the management of the stops and the traffic.
This rather crazy Grand Prix gave a fine third victory for Pérez, who was not necessarily the most anticipated at the start…
That’s it, and that’s why Monaco always represents two sides of the same coin. We say to ourselves that nothing is happening, that there are no overruns. There, I don’t think there were a lot of overtaking on the track. But in the end, it always gives surprises, and sometimes an unexpected winner. I’m very happy for Pérez, he’s an extraordinary driver, who has the ability not to make mistakes, to defend very cleanly. This is what he did in the last laps when his tires were more damaged than those of his pursuers. This gives a nice result at the end.
And what do you remember from Charles Leclerc’s race, still unhappy at home?
Monaco also has the particularity of making certain drivers wait before crowning them winners. This is still the case with Leclerc, who started on pole, with the best car, the local stage, and three or four last bad Grands Prix to forget. We really expected it to be his year, and yet it didn’t. It doesn’t take much, probably an under-optimized strategic decision by Ferrari, but passed for others who made the same choice.