Carlos Sainz began the race from third place again at the second start of the Monaco Grand Prix despite stopping at the Casino corner due to a puncture after the first start. Here’s why the Ferrari driver was able to regain his position.
After the violent crash at the start of the Monaco Grand Prix, race director Niels Wittich waited a long time before communicating the drivers’ positions on the service monitors for the race restart.
Initially, it was thought the grid would be arranged according to the order in which the cars passed the end of the first sector, the last checkpoint before the red flag was shown. This would have forced Carlos Sainz to restart from the last position, having parked his car outside the Casino.
After puncturing his right front tire, Carlos Sainz had stopped his car outside the escape road, then slowly returned to the pits after the race was halted. The Spaniard initially seemed resigned to restarting the race from the back, but then the restart order appeared on the monitors with car number 55 in third position. The reason became clear after the race.
When the violent crash occurred on the climb to Massenet, the cars of Sergio Perez, Kevin Magnussen, and Nico Hulkenberg blocked the entire track. Behind them was only Zhou Guanyu, who immediately braked and stopped his car upon seeing the chaos.
The Chinese driver was the only one among those still racing who did not cross the first sector line, located on the descent to Mirabeau, as he was blocked behind the damaged cars when the red flag appeared.
In this case, the regulations are clear. Since not all drivers had crossed the line marking the end of the first sector, race control did not have a verified ranking before the red flag. Thus, they reverted to the starting order, which for Carlos Sainz meant he was repositioned in third place.
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After managing to slowly reach the pits and change his damaged set of tires, the Ferrari driver was able to restart the race from the position he had earned in the qualifying session on the streets of Monte Carlo, ultimately finishing in third place and making it a great double-podium finish for the Maranello team in Monaco.
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