Round 6 - Monaco 2015 - Qualifying

Greetings Internet, 

It is often remarked that this is the most important qualifying session of the year, make pole position even more coveted on the narrow streets. This time last season the fight for pole ended in controversy and suspicion - one year on and it was a lot more routine. With the barriers a constant threat I was surprised to see today's qualifying be so well behaved. There was no-one bouncing down the armco or losing bits of carbon fibre. 

Q1

The first part of qualifying started with a long queue of cars waiting at the end of pit lane, which doesn't make a lot sense because on a track infamous for traffic congestion - why would you want to line up right behind each other... At the front of the queue was the Manor of Roberto Mehri, a sentence that I can't foresee being repeated too often this season. And one that won't be repeated throughout the race weekend. Some drivers were less pleased with their position in the queue than others, Valtteri Bottas for one was looking for every opportunity to overtake Mad Max Verstappen in the Toro Rosso. At the pair reached Rascasse they all dropped back from each other - as it the way in Monaco. The Mad Max set the initial pace before the Mercedes cars took to the track. 

As soon as they did the domination continued, as we have come to expect over the years. Rosberg had a brief spell at the front as Hamilton lost time waving at various Saubers, it was like Shanghai all over again as Lewis seemed to keep finding Ericsson and Felipe 'Fred' Nasr in his way. Eventually Hamilton was able to set a time and it was good enough for the top spot - at least for a little while before Rosberg took it back. Both Mercedes' were a second clear of the Ferrari of Vettel in third. 

At the other end of the spectrum, Stevens was not having things his own way for once, Merhi put up a much stronger fight in the immensely important battle for last place. Two of the other three relegation places appeared to the heading the way of Sauber, both Ericsson and Fred were struggling, an indication of how the development race can leave some teams behind. Hulkenberg looked to be on track to join them when he had a near spin in Mirabeau - for some inexplicable reason he called it turn 5 on the radio... they have names Nico... Despite brushing the barrier, the German was able to make it through into Q2. The last contender to try and escape the relegation zone was the Williams of Valterri Bottas - Williams were not having a good day - Massa barely made it through and the Finn wasn't quite so lucky. I can't tell if it was a scheduling error by the team, as Valterri had to allow Massa through on the Brazilian's final lap - but didn't have enough time to start another lap, securing Bottas' relegation. 

Q2

Moving swiftly on to Q2 and the track temperature had dropped yet further as

the cold sea air met the mountains bordering the country. The threat of rain was suggested but failed to materialise, which is always a disappointment. There was an air of positivity in the McLaren garage as both cars were comfortably through into Q2, and had a reasonable chance of making it into Q3. So just when things looked promising - Fernando Alonso pulled over to the side of the road on the exit of St Devote with another mechnical failure. As for the rest of the grid, an interesting pattern was emerging, due to the lower track temperatures drivers were taking an extra lap to build some tyre temperature. Which meant we had several lock-ups and powerslides, but everyone kept it out of the barrier. This seemed to cause a problem for Hamilton who couldn't manage to find any kind of rhythm - he complained on the radio about tyre pressures. All the while Rosberg took the initiative and carved a considerable margin to his struggling team-mate - were we on track for a repeat of 2014's front row...

While Ferrari and Mercedes were safely through into the next session they decided it would be a good idea to have another go - more so on the part of Hamilton as he wanted to fix whatever was costing him lap time. The grumpy arm waving Lewis from Q1 metamorphosed into Zen Hamilton as entered a state of inner calm on radio, and for a few seconds it sounded as if he was talking to himself - which wouldn't surprise me these days. This time in the relegation zone we had Jenson Button in the remaining McLaren along with Hulkenberg, Massa and Ricciardo. The latter was in a much better place to make progess as the Red Bull wasn't too hampered by the struggles of the Renault engine on a track where power isn't the dominant factor. After Ricciardo moved clear into the top ten, but suddenly there was a problem. Yellow flags appeared in turn one behind a cloud of tyre smoke, at the bottom of St Devote was the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg. Was this a rehearsal for Q3, the conspiracy theorists were in force across the internet. The late mistake by the German did compromise Jenson Button however, who was on for time good enough for Q3. Somehow while no-one was watching Pastor Maldonado: Road Warrior dragged the Lotus into the top ten at the expense of Romain Grosjean.

Q1

As the final part of qualifying was approaching there were a couple of drops of rain in the pit-lane - which could have amounted to so much more - dammit. Alas that was not the case, but the drivers queued at the end of the pit lane, just in case there was some rain hiding in the hills. This time Hamilton ensured that he was on track in front of Nico, you know, just in case the German considered trying something a little questionable for the second session in a row. Both Mercedes' drivers followed the pattern of completing an additional tyre warming lap and thus set relatively slow times as the crossed the line on the first timed tour. Sergio Perez wasn't adhering to this routine and proceeded to give it full refried beans on each of his laps - taking an early provisional pole. However Sergio's charge meant that he didn't have enough tyres left to run later in the session. I can only imagine that Force India gambled on the rain coming and that the track would be too wet later to set better times. 

Despite the Mexican's best efforts, he was easily eclipsed by the Mercedes pairing once they started setting representative times over two seconds faster than the Force India. Hamilton had provisional pole position, meaning that if Nico was planning to park the car in Mirabeau once more, it wouldn't help him this time. Ferrari were having a mixed bag of things, while Vettel was the closer to the front row Raikkonen was down in 9th - turns out the Finn was still having issues with qualifying. Perhaps after a tyre change things might go a little better in the second runs.

The threat of rain had subsided completely and didn't even come back for the GP2 race later on - dammit. At the end of the first sector all three of the top drivers failed to improve on their previous laps - but this after all was the second warm-up phase so no real improvement was anticipated. Nico it seemed was pressing a little harder on his tyres but backed off considerably in the final sector around Rascasse. As a result he lost a lot of the tyre temperature by the time he arrived at St Devote and locked up once more - throwing away his chances of taking pole. By the time he got to the end of the middle sector, after apparently another lock-up at Nouvelle Chicane off camera he abandoned the lap and pitted. This made life easy for Hamilton, all he had to do was complete the lap, pole was already his but he moved the goalpost even further ahead - just in case Vettel found a miraculous burst of pace. That burst never materialised and he almost lost third place to Ricciardo who would have taken it had it not been for a technical error on setting the engine mapping at the start of the lap. So we have another all Mercedes front row with the Nico taking his almost obligatory second place.

The Bonus Points Championship Points Winners

Even though the rain never came, and everyone was reasonably well behaved - only Hulkenberg brushed the barrier in Mirabeau points have to be assigned to someone, and here are the winners from qualifying

• 10pts - Jenson Button - If it wasn't for Rosberg, Jenson would have scored McLaren's first Q3 appearance of 2015
• 8pts - Sergio Perez - Despite running almost no development on the car, Perez still managed to make it into Q3
• 6pts - Daniel Ricciardo - So close to being the closest car to the Mercedes 
• 5pts - Pastor Maldonado: Road Warrior - After having a less than ideal season the Venezuelan once more exercises his Monaco speciality
• 4pts - Roberto Mehri - Lead the field out in Q1 - which is a nice novelty, before Stevens demoted him to last place once again
• 3pts - Daniil Kvyat - The wearer of the death stare gets points for being the most aggressive through the swimming pool chicane. 
• 2pts - Carlos Sainz Jnr - Gets two consolation points for making it into Q3 before being demoted to the back for missing a weighbridge check
• 1pt - Alex Rossi - Gets a couple of points for his brief flight in the GP2 race after contact with Red Bull Junior driver Pierre Gasly.

• -1pt - Nico Rosberg - Gets a penalty point for ruining Jenson's day
• -1pt - Pierre Gasly - Has to have a penalty for being a bit of a prat in the sprint race, pushing De Jong into the wall and then launching Rossi
• -1pt - Rain - Where was the interesting weather...
• -1pt - Nico Hulkenberg - Turn 5... that would be Mirabeau, the corners have names here

Looking To Tomorrow

It would take some degree of destruction and madness for anything other than a Mercedes 1-2 to be on the cards tomorrow, and the order of those two silver cars comes down to the start. If Hamilton makes the same weak launch he did in Spain, Rosberg will be off into the distance never to be seen again. 

There are usually only two ways a Monaco GP can go - it can either be terribly dull and processional, because overtaking is exceptionally difficult - unless you are Sergio Canamassas who delivered two magnificent passes in GP2. Therefore the order at the end of lap one is often not too different to the final order - minus retirements. But there is always the chance of option two, option two is chaos and disorder - I like option two, but option two probably needs some rain - and a grid with cars out of position. As things stand we don't have either of those factors in play... But we can still hope for a lot of option two... please...