Sainz thought he was going to make Perez spin twice

Running with roughly half a second between each of the top four cars in the final ten laps of the Monaco Grand Prix, Carlos Sainz says there were two occasions where he thought he was about to pitch race leader Sergio Perez into a spin.

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As the pit stops played out in Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix, the event a timed race after two red flags, Perez was leading ahead of Sainz and Max Verstappen with Charles Leclerc on the Red Bull’s rear wing.

Such was the ferocity of the battle into the final 15 minutes that the four were separated by just over two seconds with Perez, on his graining tyres, doing his best to keep them behind him.

He managed to do so, the Mexican driver taking his first win in Monaco ahead of Sainz and Verstappen.

But it could have been a very different result, more like their end to qualifying where Perez crashed with Sainz then hitting his car and Verstappen stopping metres behind them.

how am i gonna tell my kids that this was 2022 monaco podium pic.twitter.com/U7r5p0R5af

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