MONACO \u2014 With 10 laps to go in Sunday\u2019s Monaco Grand Prix, red flags waved across the circuit, bringing the race to a temporary halt.<\/p>\n
Charles Leclerc crashed into the barriers at the final corner moments earlier, causing a safety car to start taking the drivers around the track at a lower speed. The safety car had already been brought out once after Lance Stroll hit the wall at Turn 19 on Lap 60, with Leclerc crashing at the subsequent restart.<\/p>\n
The Ferrari driver was frustrated, blaming his brakes. But as the marshals cleared the track after Leclerc\u2019s collision, they reported an issue with the track surface. Photos later showed clear damage, and it was something the drivers were aware of before the race began.<\/p>\n
Nico H\u00fclkenberg called it \u201cvery sketchy\u201d and that they \u201ccould see it already before the race, on the driver\u2019s parade.\u201d According to the Audi driver, there were pieces missing before the Formula 1 cars even hit the track, the asphalt clearly breaking apart.<\/p>\n
Williams\u2019 Carlos Sainz told written media after the race that he saw it on Lap 1, while Haas\u2019 Esteban Ocon, who pitted on Lap 9, said, \u201cI was like, I can\u2019t say anything, because now if we stop the race \u2026 we will lose out completely.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Oscar Piastri explained that the track \u201cbroke up pretty quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAt first, it kind of looked like marbles, but then you could see some of the holes in the ground,\u201d the McLaren driver said. \u201cClearly by the end, it was not in a great state, so obviously that kind of stuff shouldn\u2019t be happening.\u201d<\/p>\n
The damage was on the racing line, Piastri confirmed, adding that the drivers began taking the corner tighter to avoid it because \u201cit was like ice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ocon said that he took the final corner roughly two or three-tenths of a second slower due to the track damage.<\/p>\n
During the red flag, race director Rui Marques went down to inspect the track surface, and the parts that had broken off were swept away. Ultimately, it was decided that the race could resume, starting with two laps being done behind the safety car. An FIA spokesperson told The Athletic that teams were asked to request feedback from their drivers about the corner during those laps, before the cars lined up for a standing start.<\/p>\n
H\u00fclkenberg told the written media after the race that there were still holes remaining in the asphalt, pieces clearly missing, as they prepared to restart, but added that \u201cthere was no safety concern for the last couple of laps.\u201d<\/p>\n
Piastri was asked whether the track felt OK when the race restarted, to which he replied with a short \u201cno.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MONACO \u2014 With 10 laps to go in Sunday\u2019s Monaco Grand Prix, red flags waved across the circuit,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":721687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-721686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=721686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/721687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=721686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=721686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=721686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}