Well played Monaco, well played indeed - there was a slight delay on that taking it's time to really kick off, but when it did it was a little mad there was some deja vu and some impromptu fortification of the racetrack to sum it up. We've gone all season without a safety car or any form of significant delay, but as soon as the grid roll up here with all those walls and barriers initially at the side of track (and occasionally in the middle of if) we've had three of them interrupting the event, and a red flag too - because some drivers wanted to build a wall around themselves in the middle of Tabac corner. In a demonstration of some of the quickest fort construction in history. Elsewhere Caterham are clearly missing Kovalainen, having to rely on the fire marshals to put things out instead of their resident Finnish fireman who took care of a similar situation in Singapore a while back. When we saw the grid, there was the potential for things to turn into a large queue of angry frustrated drivers, and for the second half of the race was exactly that. It was a the ultimate melting pot for some impressive overtaking on a track where it is traditionally impossible - and some less than impressive...
There is one other element that has to be mentioned in the opening to this event is the looming cloud of a protest against Mercedes for a tyre test after Barcelona - something that fell under the radar because they were so slow in Spain that the extra three days were just assumed to being them just trying to finish the race. The problem being that testing is not allowed, but Pirelli have a clause allowing them to do some testing with a team, imposed by the continuous whines and complaints about them delaminating and suffering with the high degradation issues. But that issue is bound to run and run, as at this point Mercedes and Pirelli have to see the FIA stewards, so until that is taken care off - time to cover the race itself.
The Race
Before things got underway, there was some re-arranging at the back of the grid, Chilton in the Marussia had been moved to the back of the grid for a gearbox change - so there was Massa having not set a time in qualifying and gained a penalty for changing his gearbox and therefore should have been starting the race from France, and Chilton still found a way of being last...
At the actual start, everyone was rather well behaved, saving the violence for later on in the race, Rosberg was a little slow off the line but because of the lack of space between the armco prevented him losing a place. Positions were maintained throughout the field and with the exception of Van Der Garde who went across the apex of the corner at turn one, and rejoined in the side of Maldonado's car. Both cars survived, and Pastor only lost a little bit of the front wing. By the time everyone reached the Loews Hairpin Van Der Garde decided he wasn't finished with assaulting the Williams and drove over the back of Maldonado in the braking zone. Once again both cars survived, although the Caterham lost the entire front nose, and both cars had to pit for new wings at the end of the lap.
The nature of the Monaco street circuit meant that for a while everyone was locked into the positions they started in, because everyone was conserving tyres in this opening phase. Both Mercedes cars were being continuous radio calls adjusting their target lap time - four tenths here or five tenths there, dependant on the gap to the Red Bulls behind. Teams exerting control over their drivers and race position - except no-one informed McLaren of this process, because Button and Perez were at it once more, Jenson would try and make the pass and Sergio scampered across the chicanes and retained position. But the stewards phoned Perez, to reverse the position he maintained through cutting the corner. It seemed in the earliest leg that passing was impossible - however Di Resta doesn't play by those roles and discovered there some overtaking space on the outside of turn one. Firstly passing Felipe Massa and then the Sauber of Esteban Gutierrez.
Felipe and Esteban had another point of commonality, when they both had to dodge a rapidly slowing Caterham of Charles Pic. A gearbox seizure had started a fire in the back of the car, forcing it to come to a stop in the pit entry road out of Rascasse, in these situations the team would normally look to Heikki who has a pattern of putting out fires on that car, but this time Pic had to allow the fire marshals to take over. There was a threat of the first safety car of the season with the smoke and extinguishant and a compromised pit entry, but a flotilla of marshals swooped in to move the car in time - only Di Resta pitted anticipating an early safety car and an alternate strategy.
....One another note the Indy 500 has now started - more potential bonus points for Sato.... and is under the first caution for Hilderbrand crashing out
Back at Monaco, things were a lot less energetic, sitting in position waiting for the first bout of stops, and interestingly both those on the soft and super soft compounds were pitting at around the same time, the likes of Massa, Hulkenberg and Ricciardo were pitting on similar laps to the Raikkonen, Webber and Alonso. The latter two failing to gain any advantage on the cars they were chasing through the pit stops, it didn't bode well for the rest of the race, if the single stop strategies refused to have any impact on track position. Something needed to happen to shake things up a little - if only someone had some practice of crashing into things this weekend to mix things up. While all heads turned to Grosjean who had bounced off most things already, the flags came out for a car off in turn one, and it was Massa. Once again the Brazillian forgot that there is a barrier before turn one... again, you'd have figured after smashing the car in the same wall on Saturday he'd rather not do it again. Turns out that was an incorrect assumption, as Felipe Massa nailed the exact same same part of the track and ended in the same place in the T1 barrier. The crash brought out the first safety car of the season, it had to happen at some point.
The interval caused problems for Hamilton as he was jumped by the two Red Bull cars as he pitted the Mercedes - just after the restart Lewis attempted to re-take the place in Rascasse from Webber but the Australian resisted the attack. It was at this stage in the race when a massive train of cars was beginning to form behind the Lewis/Webber battle - starting with Raikkonen and Alonso going back down to Bottas and the Marussias at the back of the pack; yet Rosberg and Vettel did not drive away - as that would destroy tyres. Hamilton was even told off on the radio for trying to pass Webber on the account that weaving and diving was bad for wear. So they all stayed in the queue - a little too close in the line as Button clips the back of Alonso's Ferrari in the Loews hairpin. While Jenson was discussing the potential damage to the front wing Perez in the other McLaren made a masterful dive down the inside of the nouvelle chicane to take the place. It turns out Sergio liked this idea, enough to make it is new favourite place, as he followed up that move with a dive at Alonso's Ferrari. Fernando had to cut the track to avoid contact, and maintained the place in the process - where he would be forced to concede the place, eventually but there was a slight interruption to proceedings
At the beginning of the race Pastor Maldonado had been assaulted by Van Der Garde and was out of position - he'd caught up to a battle between Chilton and Gutierrez, the Marussia cut across the track and Pastor cut to the outside thinking it was safe there. Well it wasn't Max moved over and hit the Williams which as a result got airborne into the Tabac barrier. Maldonado had enough of being attacked so built a fort out of the rubber fence wrapping the car in a personal wall blocking the entire track with wall. To negotiate Pastor's release from his fort a red flag was flown and the race was put on pause. It took just short of half an hour before Maldonado surrendered his citadel, but considering he was out of the race, he was safe from further attacks, and Chilton was handed a drive through penalty for his actions leading to Pastor going into hiding.
Time for restart number two, with positions redressed between Alonso and Perez - it was Raikkonen that had the mad Mexican to contend while there was another car that had desires on moving forward through the train and that was Adrian Sutil backed up behind Button in the train. Rosberg was able to make some ground at the start again, breaking away from Vettel while Webber and Hamilton resumed battle behind. Raikkonen had gone onto the softer tyres expecting to be faster towards the end of the race, but was slower at the start of this phase of the race giving Perez the incentive. At this point Massa should have watched the TV in the hospital waiting room, as Bianchi had the same problem he did, yet the Frenchman was able to steer the Marussia away from the barrier - hitting the tyres in the St Devote run-off instead. An incident covered with yellows rather than another safety car intervention.
Because Jenson had been passed into Nouvelle chicane Sutil needed to try something a little different, and it turns out, nobody had made a proper go things at the Loews Hairpin - so Button was not alert to the Force India sliding up the inside. Then it would seem a little odd for Fernando to be caught by exactly the same move in the same corner - Sutil was now up to 6th place behind the Perez/Raikkonen battle - a duel that was temporarily put on hold when Grosjean decided to have his fourth accident of the weekend. For once the crane operator at St Devote was not lifting a damaged lotus up and over the wall - instead Romain drove into the back of Danial Ricciardo's Torro Rosso before Nouvelle Chicane. Mounting the Australian's car in the braking zone and then launching it across the run-off area, leaving a lot of debris all over the place, and introducing safety car number three...
Another restart and another break away from Rosberg, despite all the mayhem he was making this look a little easy - Vettel and Webber were following in the remaining podium places ahead of Hamilton, this part of the race was secure, as for things further back... Raikkonen's car was leaking water due to overheating and this gave Perez an extra invitation to strike - virtually throwing the car Raikkonen under breaking in the Nouvelle chicane. Contact was avoided but both cars missed the corner, you'd have thought that a mad lunge might have made the Mexican recalculate the method of attack on the Lotus ahead... well in a word No... Sergio just threw the car harder into a smaller space, and got pinned between Raikkonen and the barrier. Kimi suffered a slow puncture and Perez took brake damage. The queue was closer than ever in because of the contact, so when Raikkonen slowed to pit, Jenson was able to sneak past Alonso in the extra bunching.
Kimi dropped down to 14th behind both Saubers, Bottas and Chilton - while Perez had to survive continuous attack from Sutil - the McLaren was warned of Adrian's penchant for passing at the hairpin and to pay attention to that corner. But that battle didn't last too long, as the brake problems developed into a complete failure forcing retirement by the final corner of the lap - there happened to be a long train of cars preventing him returning to pit-lane.
At this point things broke down a little, because the TV crews following the race seemed to give up and only follow the front line of cars, where the key battles had been neutralised with Perez out and Sutil pulling away from the train. Yet there was a major comeback charge taking place for Raikkonen with the cars ahead, Kimi had fresh tyres after changing due to the puncture and was several seconds a lap faster than those around him. Post race on board replays showed the Lotus passing Gutierrez in turn one, Bottas outside at the hairpin and then Hulkenberg round the outside of turn one, massively impressive sequence of moves at the end of the race. Rosberg completed an unchallenged resilient drive to take a win for the Mercedes team, Vettel and Webber completed the podium for Red Bull. The first safety car doomed Hamilton to 4th but still a lot better than his day in Spain. Adrian Sutil proved passing is possible to finish 5th, ahead of Button and Alonso. In 8th place was the remining Torro Rosso of Jean Eric Vergne who weathered a late attack from Paul Di Resta in the second Force India in the points. While that late final charge brought Raikkonen back into the points, continuing that long run of continuous points finishes approaching Schumacher's record.
The Bonus Points Championship Points Winners
Where do I even begin with that race, some random driving, circuit architecture and innovative and precise overtaking manoeuvres - so here are the points winners from that amazing race.
- 25pts - Adrian Sutil - For passing people properly and without contact, also best of the rest at the end of the race behind Red Bull and Mercedes.
- 18pts - Nico Rosberg - That was an imperious drive sustaining a lot of stops and strong restarts
- 15pts - Paul Di Resta - For opening the passing by going round the outside of St Devote
- 12pts - Sergio Perez - Two great passes on Button and Alonso, but was a little out of line when attacking Raikkonen
- 10pts - Kimi Raikkonen - For a monumental comeback passing four cars in five laps at the end
- 8pts - Max Chilton - May have caused a large shunt - but actually won the bottom division today
- 6pts - Pastor Maldonado - For fort design
- 4pts - Felipe Massa - For giving us our first safety car and making the race so much better
- 2pts - Jenson Button - Passed Sutil on the outside of turn three and passed Alonso late in the race
- 1pt - Tony Kanaan - For winning the Indy 500, even though it finished under yellow
The Penalties Series
When there is contact and questionable overtaking, there is plenty of room for penalties to be assigned, as follows:
- Max Chilton - Drive through penalty - for forcing Maldonado to build a fort
- Romain Grosjean - 10 place grid penalty - for mounting Vergne and causing safety car three
The Penalty Points Series
Away from the official penalties and things here are the other penalty points awarded for Monaco
- TV crews - Missing any of the Raikkonen charge, and coverage of the support races was a weak this weekend
- Sergio Perez - To far on those towards the end
- Dario Franchitti - For bringing out the yellow that ruined the end of the Indy 500
Looking ahead to Canada
Monaco may be the most popular of the races on the calendar, even people who don't pay attention to the series are aware of the race on the streets of the principality, but Canada has a firm place as a fan favourite. It has all the excitement of Monaco without any of the pomp and circumstance that surrounds the street race, it is a track which is surrounded by concrete walls and very little room for error, but with a wider range of opportunities for overtaking and wheel to wheel competition. Monaco may be famous for its fancy location and fancier population, but the Montreal circuit is just as exciting a prospect. Both tracks have seen multi-safety car races. In fact the present degradation goal of the tyres was put into place because of the unpredictability of the 2010 Canadian GP - so how will the current evolution of those tyres react on the track that inspired their very existence.
Having two brilliant venues one after another doesn't occur all to often in the season, like Spa and Monza later on, and it helps a lot having one of those races go as well as it did today - the next fortnight is going to be a wash with anticipation. So until then farewell from blog HQ.
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