The principality of Monte Carlo was once again graced with the presence of Formula One, with the 78 lap Monaco Grand Prix.
Mercedes AMG’s Nico Rosberg was under the spotlight, chasing what would be his third consecutive win around his home track, to join previous hat-trick legends Graham Hill, Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna.
It was the German’s world champion teammate Lewis Hamilton however who claimed the plaudits on the Saturday, with a fifth pole position of the season. Leaving Rosberg to defend his Monaco crown from second on the grid.
Grid penalties prior to the start of the race were applied to Romain Grosjean who dropped five places to fifteenth after an unscheduled gearbox change, and to Carlos Sainz who was demoted to the pit-lane for missing the weigh-bridge during qualifying.
These penalties elevated McLaren’s Jenson Button to start the race from inside the points paying positions, in tenth.
At the front, the race was processional; Hamilton extracted an early lead over Rosberg, whilst Sebastian Vettel in the Ferrari was content with third.
An early safety car was avoided when Fernando Alonso gave Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg a shunt into the wall at Mirabeau. The latter was forced to stop for a new front wing, whilst in tandem the McLaren driver was penalised five seconds at his first pit-stop.
Things went further awry for the Spaniard when he had to retire from the race due to a gearbox issue. This was third occasion that the former dual-world champion had failed to finish a race this season.
Come lap 64, the processional race was flipped on its head with the deployment of the safety car. Rookie Max Verstappen, who had been locked in a fierce stoush with Grosjean made an error trying to overtake the Frenchman, which saw him crash spectacularly into the Armco at Sainte Devote. Verstappen walked away from the wreck unhindered, but the same could not be said about his race.
Grosjean’s Lotus at least lived to fight another day.
The safety car precipitated an unusual pit-stop however for the race leader Hamilton. Mercedes AMG’s justification for the ill-fated switch to the super-soft tyres was that his lead of 25.7 seconds at the time would be enough to cover Rosberg and Vettel. They were wrong.
Neither Rosberg nor the Ferrari of Vettel pitted under the safety car and remained out on the soft tyres, whilst the impregnable race leader had lost not one, but two positions and was third.
Despite the fresh rubber, the difficult nature of the street circuit made it impossible for Hamilton to pass the red car ahead of him. On any other track, the switch to fresh tyres could be justified through a series of overtakes.
Hamilton had then exposed himself to Daniel Ricciardo, who was also on a new set of super-softs and was the fastest driver at the end of the race. Red Bull had allowed the Aussie to sift through to fourth with the intention of a pass being made on the Mercedes AMG, however ultimately Ricciardo conceded the position back to his teammate Daniil Kvyat, who achieved a career best finish.
Elsewhere, Kimi Räikkönen was left to rue a disastrous qualifying, which saw him start the race sixth and behind the two Red Bulls. In the latter stages of the race, the Finn survived a shunt from a charging Ricciardo – however was left fuming at the aggressiveness of the move made into Mirabeau. In the end, the 2007 champion settled for sixth.
Rounding out the points were Sergio Perez, Jenson Button, Felipe Nasr and Carlos Sainz. Button being the silent achiever during the course of the race and scoring McLaren their first points of the season and their first points together with Honda since Gerhard Berger’s victory in Adelaide during the 1992 season.
Sainz, after his pit-lane start made a one-stop strategy work to ensure a solitary point for the Toro Rosso team. Despite his retirement, teammate Verstappen still received praise for his overtaking around the tight streets – the retired Pastor Maldonado being an early victim.
Maldonado himself endured yet more poor fortune, with a brake-by-wire system issue handing him his fifth retirement of the season.
In the Manor-Marussia stable, Roberto Merhi for the first time out-raced his teammate Will Stevens. This weekend in particular was an emotional one for the team as it had marked one year since their first points were scored in the sport by Jules Bianchi, who still remains unconscious in hospital after his Japanese Grand Prix crash.
The pair finished sixteenth and seventeenth, behind the Williams duo who endured their first points-less outing since the Brazilian Grand Prix in 2013.
Rosberg’s second consecutive win of the season means that his deficit in the championship standings is only 10 points now. However the attention and scrutiny will be in the direction of the Mercedes AMG team, who are left to answer for the unwarranted pit-stop which cost Hamilton the victory.
Post-race, team boss Toto Wolff stated that “The simple answer is we got the maths wrong,” and that “we thought we had a gap which we didn’t have when the safety car came out, and Lewis was behind the safety car and the calculation was simply wrong.”
Whether this is enough to pacify Hamilton remains to be seen. However this being the second occasion where strategy has cost the reigning world champion a race win this year, an immediate redress would be necessary heading into Canada come June 7.
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