For the Williams F1 team a series of penalties would see Pastor Maldonado start the race from last on the grid for the seventy eight lap 2012 Monaco Grand Prix. For team-mate Bruno Senna, even though he qualified fourteenth, the shift of his team-mate to the rear would see him start from thirteenth. It would come down to strategy if the team had any prospect of achieving a god result. Mark Gilliam would say before the race "From our side it is quite clear, we need to make things happen now. From that position for both drivers, and obviously Bruno is in a much better position than Pastor, we need to make things happen." It was later announced that Perez would also have a gearbox change seeing him start from last and Pastor twenty third. It was dry at the start but there were reports that there may be rain near the end of the race.

At the front Webber was on pole from Rosberg, Hamilton, Grosjean, Alonso, Schumacher, Massa, Raikkonen, Vettel, and Hulkenberg in tenth. The drivers have the soft and super soft tyre to use during the race with the nine of the top ten on the super soft tyre, the exception been Vettel. Both Williams drivers were on the super soft tyre. The other drivers on soft's were Button, Di Resta, Petrov, and De la Rosa. The field would get away for the parade lap and would return to the grid where Webber would stop and wait for the grid to form. The lights would go out and it would be Webber away first but we would have Grosjean coming into St Devote backwards with cars going everywhere. Webber was leading from Rosberg and Hamilton. One driver to get damage to his car in the first corner accident was Pastor having hit the rear of De la Rosa's car. Pastor would stop down at the hairpin as we saw De la Rosa and Kobayashi pit.