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Max Verstappen will have to wait another week to clinch the 2022 Formula 1 title.
Sergio Perez took home Sunday's shortened Singapore Grand Prix and remained the winner after an investigation to determine whether he will retain the victory. F1 officials looked into whether he committed a safety violation by getting too close to the safety car, which could have seen him demoted to second place behind Charles Leclerc.
However, Perez was only given a five-second penalty, keeping him ahead Leclerc.
“It was certainly my best performance, I controlled the race. The last few laps were so intense. I gave it everything for the win today. ... I have no idea what’s going on I was just told to increase the gap. All in all, a fantastic day," Perez said after the race.
Verstappen struggled throughout the day on his way to a seventh-place finish.
A downpour in Singapore led to the race being delayed by more than an hour, leading to the race being run under a time limit.
Verstappen, who expressed frustration after a poor qualifying effort, never quite found a rhythm as he was searching for a sixth straight win. He never came close to sniffing the podium and had to pit after locking up during lap 41.
The defending F1 champ came into the weekend with a chance at clinching a repeat but needed significant help. He needed to not only win the race but also have Leclerc and teammate Perez have less-than-stellar performances.
Neither was ready to give up on their championship chances. Perez and Leclerc paced the field for nearly the entire race, making it impossible for Verstappen to clinch even if he would have wound up taking the victory.
Still, barring a cataclysmic collapse, Verstappen is on his way to a breezy championship in one of the greatest seasons open-wheel racing has ever seen. He is three wins away from surpassing the record for most wins in an F1 season (13 by Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel).
Verstappen will need a 108-point advantage over Leclerc and Perez to clinch the title next week in Japan. That gives him several more potential clinching scenarios than he came into this Sunday having, though his best avenue remains to achieve his 12th win of the campaign.
Lewis Hamilton, who raced Verstappen down to the wire a year ago for the championship, continued his disappointing 2022 campaign with a ninth-place finish. After a run of five straight podiums from the Canadian to Hungarian Grand Prix, Hamilton has finished no better than fourth in his last four races. He's currently in sixth place in the points standings and has long been eliminated from contention.
After getting his first win of the season at the Monaco Grand Prix, Sergio Perez has signed an extension with Red Bull Racing through 2024, per Sky Sports.
Perez is coming off an impressive showing in Sunday's race, starting in third place but taking over the lead early and holding on for his third career win.
The Mexican driver has been in Formula One since 2011, signing with Red Bull ahead of the 2021 season.
Perez had his best career season after signing with Red Bull, earning 190 points that included one win with five total podiums on his way to a fourth-place finish. The 32-year-old also finished fourth in 2020 with the Racing Point team.
Checo is off to an even better start in 2022, currently sitting in third place through seven races in the driver standings. He is only 15 points behind leader and teammate Max Verstappen.
In addition to his recent win, Perez has three runner-up finishes and hasn't been worse than fourth in any of the last six starts.
The consistency is enough for Red Bull to stick with the driver for at least two more years as the team tries to bring home its first title since 2013, when Sebastian Vettel won the last of his four consecutive drivers' championships.
Red Bull currently leads the constructor standings by 36 points over Ferrari.
Sergio Perez earned his first win of the 2022 Formula One season in a weather-shortened Monaco Grand Prix.
Sunday's race was delayed by rain, allowing the drivers to finish just 64 of the 77 scheduled laps before the two-hour time limit expired. Perez took advantage of mistakes by the Ferrari team during its pit stops and stayed in front, securing a win for Red Bull Racing.
Ferrari's Carlos Sainz finished just behind the leader for second place, while teammate and pole winner Charles Leclerc ended up fourth. Max Verstappen finished in third place to break his streak of three straight wins.
Final Leaderboard
1. Sergio Perez
2. Carlos Sainz
3. Max Verstappen
4. Charles Leclerc
5. George Russell
Full results via Formula1.com.
Ferrari was in excellent position heading into the race with Leclerc and Sainz starting on the front row after qualifying.
After looking good on the wet track early, some miscommunication led to drama on the 22nd lap:
Leclerc dropped from first position to fourth, allowing Perez to move into the lead.
There were a few stoppages along the way after that, including a crash by Mick Schumacher.
Schumacher and Haas teammate Kevin Magnussen both failed to finish in Monaco.
All eyes were still on the top four with Perez, Sainz, Verstappen and Leclerc running in close proximity to one another as the clock ticked down.
Despite some late challenges, especially from Sainz, no one was able to pass the leader and Perez closed out the victory.
Verstappen remained in first place in the driver standings after his podium finish, but Perez helped trim the margin to Leclerc while sitting in third. Lando Norris also added an extra point after finishing with the fastest lap of the race.
The F1 season will continue with the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on June 12.
Charles Leclerc continued his impressive start to the 2022 Formula One season with a victory at Sunday's Australian Grand Prix.
The Ferrari driver posted a time of 1:27:46.548 over the 58 laps, more than 20 seconds ahead of Sergio Perez in second place. George Russell finished in third while Lewis Hamilton could only manage fourth.
Leclerc won the pole and led every lap, also producing the fastest lap on the way to his second win of the year. He now has a commanding lead on top of the driver standings through three events.
Leclerc was dominant throughout the race at Albert Park Circuit in Melbourne. His biggest challenge came from Max Verstappen, who was on his tail for much of the day.
Verstappen saw his chances come to an end on the 39th lap when car troubles forced him to the side:
It led to a DNF for Verstappen, his second in three races to start the season. The Dutch driver still sits sixth in the standings, but he has a lot of ground to make up.
Leclerc faced no other challengers from there, pulling away from the field for an easy win. He posted his fastest lap on the final lap of the day.
Perez, who started in third, cruised into second place once Red Bull teammate Verstappen was eliminated.
Hamilton won eight races in 2021 but is still seeking his first win of the year after finishing no better than third in his three starts.
The drivers will now head to Italy for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix on April 24.
Kimi Raikkonen posted Thursday's quickest time during the afternoon session on Day 2 of Formula One testing at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in Spain.
The Alfa Romeo driver was responsible for the first red flag of this testing session but still posted a lap time of one minute, 17.091 seconds. In the process, Raikkonen topped the mark established earlier by Racing Point's Sergio Perez, who led the morning session when he completed a lap in 1:17.347.
Both Raikkonen and Perez were among the eight drivers to surpass 100 laps on a busy day of testing. They were joined by Lewis Hamilton, who topped the pile in Wednesday's run but settled for ninth at the end of the action.
The official Formula One Twitter account posted the times:
Morning Session Recap
Renault's Daniel Ricciardo may have been pleased to pip Red Bull's Alexander Albon to second, though the Australian was still four-tenths of a second slower than the leader.
Perez held the edge in the first two sectors, but Renault's star driver proved his mettle in the finishing third:
Ricciardo's performance was especially impressive considering his R.S.20 racked up the fewest laps of any car that took to the track on Thursday morning, per Autosport Live:
Hamilton's high lap count is understandable after Formula One took the decision to reduce the number of testing days from eight down to six in 2020.
His total still didn't come close to the 168 laps managed by Red Bull's Max Verstappen on Day 1, though his new W11 will have nonetheless contributed useful data after running largely on hard tyres.
Spectators were also intrigued by a new innovation on the W11, which saw Hamilton moving his steering wheel backwards and forwards on certain straights and turns.
Sky Sports F1 reporter Ted Kravitz said a source at Mercedes confirmed the change to their car, which appears to allow the driver to adjust the ride height and influence its aerodynamics:
That newly spotted addition is an example of the innovation that has tended to put Mercedes ahead of their peers in recent years, with Hamilton chasing his seventh world championship in 2020.
British compatriot Lando Norris ended bottom of the times in Thursday's morning session with a fastest lap of 1:18.537 in the McLaren MCL35, which managed 48 laps.
That was one fewer than Charles Leclerc in the Ferrari SF1000, who was fast enough to finish sixth after 49 laps. Team-mate Sebastian Vettel will be eager to beat his time of 1:18.335 in his outing later on Thursday.
Afternoon Session Recap
A lot of attention still focused on the changes to steering in Mercedes' cars.
Team technical director James Allison didn't give too much away when describing the merits of the new system, per James Galloway and Matt Morlidge of Sky Sports F1: "It just introduces an extra dimension in the steering for the driver which we hope will be useful during the season. But precisely how we use it, why we use it...that's something we'll keep to ourselves."
Other teams didn't seem flustered by the adjustment, with Red Bull Racing's Christian Horner telling Sky Sports News (h/t Galloway and Morlidge): "Whether that's just a test item and they're testing different tracking, or whether it's a raceable solution, I don't really know. But there are always ingenious solutions like that that are tested. That's what Formula One is all about."
Away from the Silver Arrows, Sebastian Vettel drew the interest of onlookers when he took to the track for the first time. Vettel withdrew with illness on Wednesday, but the 32-year-old managed to get a solid 72 laps under his belt on Thursday, with his time of 1:18.154 good enough for sixth-fastest.
While Vettel eased his way into testing, things were more eventful for other familiar names. Among them, Hamilton's team-mate Valtteri Bottas took a spin.
Turn 9 proved to be a problem area on the track, with Daniel Ricciardo clipping the kerb. It was also the spot where Raikkonen incurred the day's red flag:
Raikkonen wasn't disrupted for long, and his pace has shaken up the natural order somewhat ahead of the final day of test one. It's the ideal moment for Ferrari and others to prove Mercedes' tweaked vehicles won't have an unassailable edge once the season begins.
