It seems little is going to prove a distraction to Max Verstappen on what appears to be an increasingly inexorable march to his third Formula One championship. Certainly the inconvenience of heavy rain at the Monaco Grand Prix only brought out the best in the world champion as he dominated once more on the streets of Monte Carlo to win a race saved from the usual tiresome procession by welcome late drama when the heavens opened.
After what had been a gripping qualifying on Saturday, a fearsome, thrilling, sudden-death shootout that was impossible to ignore, the race for a large part of the afternoon had every indication of delivering the usual line-astern anticlimax on the streets of the principality. F1’s long‑acclaimed jewel in the crown once more revealed to be a dusty, flawed, shabby piece of paste, changing hands in the back room of a pub. When the rain came, however, the jeopardy, the drama was once more all too real and the fearsome challenge riveting.
