Oscar Piastri just missed out on his third podium of the Formula One season following a wild Monaco Grand Prix that featured seven DNFs and was stopped for 40 minutes when a section of the Monte Carlo street-circuit started breaking up and two drivers crashed.<\/p>\n
Unfazed by the late chaos unfolding behind him, Italian teenage sensation Kimi Antonelli led the race from start to finish in his Mercedes to claim his fifth successive win of the season and tighten his grip on the drivers\u2019 world championship.<\/p>\n
Lewis Hamilton finished second for Ferrari while Isack Hadjar finished third for Red Bull, surviving a post race investigation from the stewards over an alleged red flag infringement.<\/p>\n
Having overcome a five-second penalty, Hamilton blew partner Kim Kardashian kisses from the podium and playfully sprayed her with champagne.<\/p>\n
Hadjar escaped without any penalty, allowing him to retain the podium ahead of Piastri, who finished fourth after he started from seventh on the grid.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you make up three spots in Monaco, that\u2019s always a good day,\u201d Piastri said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhilst I didn\u2019t do the overtaking myself, we did a good job of taking advantage of things playing out ahead of us and being smart with the strategy. Getting those 12 points was important.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, our pace wasn\u2019t very strong today and we need to work out why we have struggled so much this weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cLooking ahead to Barcelona and further on into the season, we have a lot of work to do to close the gap to the front runners. Thanks to the team for their work, let\u2019s see what we can do next weekend.\u201c<\/p>\n
Piastri leapfrogged his McLaren team mate Lando Norris to fifth place in the championship after six of 22 rounds. But the Australian is 96 points behind Antonelli, who is 66 in front of his nearest rival and seemingly on his way to becoming the youngest F1 champion of all time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been an incredible weekend, an incredible race,\u201d Antonelli said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was one of those days where we had incredible pace and it was just coming all so naturally.<\/p>\n
The car was feeling incredible and it was just giving me the confidence to push, so it was a very enjoyable day.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe job isn\u2019t finished. It\u2019s still a long season. We are going to keep pushing and keep raising the bar. The goal is to keep performing like this.\u201d<\/p>\n
By finishing second, Hamilton equalled Ayrton Senna\u2019s record of eight podiums at the most famous circuit in motor racing, but admitted he could not keep up with Antonelli, who got his start in F1 last year when the Englishman left Mercedes to join Ferrari.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to start by congratulating Kimi and the Mercedes team, my old family,\u201d Hamilton said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve done it again, they\u2019ve created an amazing car and Kimi\u2019s doing an incredible job, just delivering weekend in, weekend out.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut to get another second place is such a great feeling, especially in Monaco, under the trickiest conditions. It was the hardest conditions out there, and we\u2019ve had such a great turnout today as well, so I\u2019ll definitely take it.\u201d<\/p>\n
On a track that is notoriously difficult to overtake, the 78-lap race was shaping up as another boring procession before the drama suddenly began.<\/p>\n
Max Verstappen, who had qualified second, blew his chances of challenging Antonelli when he stalled on the grid at the start then had to retire early. Norris also made an early exit when he had problems with his engine.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday was, unfortunately, another race of two halves for the team,\u201d McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrustratingly, Lando\u2019s race ended in retirement on Lap 45. We identified an anomaly with the power unit that had not presented itself prior to the race. We attempted to manage it through mitigation steps and setting adjustments, which allowed us to keep the car out for a few more laps, but it ultimately proved to be a terminal issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the other side of the garage, Oscar drove an exceptionally precise and controlled race. He kept it clean, made almost no mistakes, and executed our plan perfectly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Piastri might have finished higher but was one of five drivers who were given penalties for exceeding the pit-lane speed limits, all by less than 0.1 kilometres per hour, on what was a busy day for the stewards.<\/p>\n
Pierre Gasly finished third for Alpine, but was immediately relegated to seventh because he received two penalties, amounting to 10 seconds.<\/p>\n
Antonelli\u2019s team mate George Russell had been in third but dropped to the back of the field and out of the points after he was given a drive-through penalty when the field was compressed after the race was restarted.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m flat. I\u2019m beyond frustrated. I\u2019m in a state of struggling to comprehend what is going on,\u201d Russell said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe team told me there\u2019s nothing I did wrong in the pit lane… I pressed the limiter before the entry, I released it after the exit, but there was a software issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cA five-second penalty, not ideal, not the end of the world, but then with the pit stop, didn\u2019t serve it, drive-through penalty… the punishment doesn\u2019t fit the crime, and I went from P3 to zero points.\u201d<\/p>\n
The race was stopped for almost three quarters of an hour because of problems with the track.<\/p>\n
Stewards had to deploy the safety car after Lance Stroll crashed his Aston Martin at the final corner.<\/p>\n
But just as the cars were getting ready to resume at full speed, Charles Leclerc crashed his Ferrari at the same spot, triggering a second safety car then a red flag as officials ordered repairs to the crumbling surface.<\/p>\n
Leclerc blamed his prang on his car\u2019s faulty brakes.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday I look like an idiot,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would hate to look at myself in the mirror and see myself finding excuses when I make a mistake, so that\u2019s why I\u2019m always bluntly honest when I\u2019m in front of cameras. But I\u2019m not going to take any of it today.\u201c<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri just missed out on his third podium of the Formula One season following a wild Monaco…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":721943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-721942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=721942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/721943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=721942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=721942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=721942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}