The Monaco Grand Prix was made even more tricky by the heavy-rain, which has caused the race to start behind the Safety Car.

Wet weather proved particularly challenging for the Canadian Williams’ driver Nicholas Latifi who found himself on the back-foot since the very beginning.

His FW44 hit the barriers at the hairpin while running behind the Safety Car, requiring a front wing replacement.

“Yeah I mean that was something strange, I still have to understand what happened,” commented Latifi after the race.

“I’m sure I did nothing wrong, I was breaking and then all of a sudden the car started accelerating again as I was turning so it felt almost like the throttle pedal got stuck and started pushing into the barrier so that was very very strange.

“I don’t know what would have happened without that incident. I mean, we had some good pace so we could have achieved something more,” he added.

“I know it wasn’t the throttle pedal itself,” he continued. “But there was something that gave drive to the engine so whatever that was, I started to get some pushing from the engine.

“I wasn’t worried the pedal was going to do that again because it wasn’t the pedal in the first place. But it was very strange and surprising at the same time and I was kind of already going so slow there, I was just a passenger at that point – the car is driving forward and I am not on the gas so I don’t know what is happening here.”

Shortly after the race got started, the team decided to call him again to the pits and switch to intermediates on Lap 3 – to be one of the fastest drivers on track as he closed in on those ahead.

The race was then stopped due to a second red flag after Schumacher’s crash at T15 caused enough damage to the barriers that the race director stopped proceedings to allow repairs.

Latifi described the Grand Prix as very challenging, both because of the nature of the historical street circuit, whose results is very qualifying-dependent; but also because of the weather.

“Wet conditions are always tricky and even more so on a street track like Monaco! It was a very challenging race and after pitting early on, we were detached from the back of the pack but we did have good pace on the intermediate tyre to catch the field back up.

“The last stint on the medium tyre proved quite tricky as I didn’t feel completely comfortable with the balance. It was just a survival to the end.

“However, we managed to bring it home, which isn’t easy in these conditions, and also picked up two places from the guys we were racing around which is a positive.”