Max Verstappen took his second victory at the Monaco Grand Prix with a dominating performance despite a chaotic final 30 laps with the arrival of heavy rain.
Pole-getter Verstappen had beaten second-starting Fernando Alonso off the line easily and was on badly worn medium tires when the showers arrived on lap 50, but he had Fernando Alonso around 10 seconds behind him, depriving him the freedom of immediately responding to weather.
It was a dream scenario for the pursuing Alonso, who had started the race on the hard tire in the hope of running longer than the Dutchman and capitalizing on a late race disruption or the need to switch to intermediates.
But he and his Aston Martin team inexplicably switched to a set of medium slick tires rather than intermediates on lap 54 — despite most of the field coming in on the same lap for wet-weather rubber as the weather rolled in over the Alps.
It was almost immediately obviously the wrong decision, and the need for a second stop to adopt the inters on the following lap gifted Verstappen a chance to bolt on his own intermediate rubber without losing the lead.
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With the exception of a pair of sketchy laps on which he glanced the walls at Portier and in the final sector, the Dutchman enjoyed a relatively smooth sail to the flag with a comfortable 28-second buffer to Alonso behind.
“It was incredibly slippery,” he said. “When you are that far in the lead you don’t want to push too hard but you don’t want to lose too much time, so it’s quite difficult in that scenario.
“It was super difficult out there, but that’s Monaco.”
Alonso had driven an impressive and disciplined first stint to put himself in a potentially winning position when the rain arrived, but the Spaniard said Verstappen’s pace was too great for him to have a genuine shot at victory.
“We thought to play a long game with the strategy, but Max drove super-well on the medium tires and extended the first stint,” he said. “We didn’t have any chance.
“At the end the rain made things a little bit complicated out there and it wasn’t easy to drive around.”
Esteban Ocon completed the podium after a late-race defense of the position ahead of Lewis Hamilton, whose Mercedes looked like the more effective machine in the treacherous conditions.
“It was a super weekend from everyone in the team,” he said. “We didn’t put a foot wrong at any time — even when we put on the inter tires it was the perfect lap to do so. I’m just enjoying the moment now.”
Hamilton finished fourth after inheriting the position from Carlos Sainz, who suffered from what appeared to be another Ferrari tactical blunder early in the race.
The Spaniard had started fourth on the hard tire and anticipated overcutting Ocon for third, but Ferrari brought him in early to defend against Hamilton’s undercut, leaving him stuck in fourth despite his superior race pace.
Frustration appeared to set in for Sainz as he attempted a series of unsuccessful moves on the leading Alpine, and he then spun off the road as the rain fell at Mirabeau, which ultimately dropped him to eighth at the flag after losing momentum.
George Russell finished fifth despite serving a penalty for unsafely rejoining the track. The Briton had dived into the run-off zone at Mirabeau, but as he three-point-turned his way back on track he blocked the path of Sergio Perez, who T-boned him.
Charles Leclerc finished sixth after a clean race, keeping Pierre Gasly at bay in seventh by half a second ahead of the troubled Sainz.
McLaren’s Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri scored doubled points in ninth and 10th after both passed the stubbornly defensive Yuki Tsunoda with DRS around the outside of Sainte Devote. Tsunoda had been complaining about brake problems shortly before being passed, and he subsequently locked up at Mirabeau, which ultimately cost him another four places by the finish.
Valtteri Bottas was a disappointed 11th despite being among the first two drivers, along with Lance Stroll, to correctly pick the intermediate crossover window.
Nyck de Vries finished 12th for the best result of his season, beating Zhou Guanyu and Alex Albon.
Tsunoda was 15th ahead of the hapless Perez after the Mexican gambled on a set of full-wet tires in the hope the rain would intensify. He was forced into a fifth pit stop just to make the flag, compounding a tough day on which he started last on the grid after crashing out of Q1. Perez’s title deficit to Verstappen now stands at a demoralizing 39 points after six rounds.
Nico Hulkenberg finished 17th after being penalized for a clumsy first-lap melee in which he barged past Stroll and Mirabeau and then rear-ended Albon at the hairpin trying to make up ground early.
Logan Sargeant was 18th after struggling with high tire wear during the dry portion of the race, while Kevin Magnussen was last among the finishers in 19th after several visits to the run-off zones in the wet.
Lance Stroll was the race’s only retirement after a crash through the Mirabeau-Portier section of the track.
