F1-Blog

Lewis conquers Monaco

Lewis Hamilton and McLaren have taken the race win in Monaco on a rain drenched day.

Lewis managed to get the jump on Kimi at the race start, taking corner one behind Massa.

He then managed to bump his rear wheel against a barrier, and had to pit for replacement, where the McLaren team switched him to a one stop race. This turned out to be the winning move for Lewis, who then proceeded to get up to speed, and was the fastest of the front runners, which ultimately gave him the race.

BMW-Sauber took second spot with Robert Kubica running a solid race, and Ferrari took the last podium spot with Felipe getting his strategy all wrong, and was caught on a drying track, with wet tyres.

Drive of the day must go to Adrian Sutil though, as he drove a fabulous race all afternoon, setting fastest times in difficult circumstances, right up until Kimi Räikkönen smashed the back of his Force India into submission on the breaking into the chicane after coming out of the tunnel.

Monaco Qualifying

A shock result from the qualifying session for Monaco, the McLaren’s have only managed to take the second row of the grid, being out qualified by the Ferrari’s at the ‘McLaren Track’.

Lewis Hamilton seemed to be struggling the whole session to get a good time in sector 2 of the track, and it seemed to be where he was loosing his time.

Massa eclipsed his team mate in all three sessions of the qualifying, and seemed to have the Ferrari hooked up better than Kimi.

Heikki put in a solid lap considering he was in a rebuilt car after putting his McLaren into the barrier this morning in practice.

Robert Kubica’s BMW-Sauber looked a complete handful, so it’s impressive to see him on the fifth spot of the grid, he certainly faired better than his German team mate, who start’s thirteenth.

Nico was possibly the outstanding driver of the session, putting the Williams onto the third row of the grid. He seemed to have a well planted front end to the car, and drove well to get his car there. Constantly 1.2 seconds faster than his young team mate.

Monaco Preview

The Monaco GP is the most prestigious event of the F1 season. It has history, glamour and most importantly, money.

The track is the tightest and slowest of the championship, and recently has suited the McLaren cars well, coming in with a one-two last year (Alonso, Lewis). They also hold the record for most wins at the track with 14 wins since they started competing.

From what we saw in the Turkish GP I do not expect that to change, the McLaren’s should be strong here, so expect Lewis and Heikki to do well.

The Ferrari’s wont be far behind them though, with 9 wins to the teams credit around the principality, and Massa finished third behind the two McLaren’s last year. The Ferrari team have also brought changes to the car (at least in practice), in the shape of modifications to their nose hole design, which should help them with the aero balance on the high downforce track.

Monaco GP

Alonso has added another achievement to his increasingly impressive repertoire with a win at Monaco.

It was a fairly interesting race  by Monaco standards, there where bumps, bangs, and politics aplenty, and to add to it all some overtaking!

I'll lay out the podium order first, just to make those who missed the race wonder exactly what happened.

In first place was Fernando Alonso, second we have Juan Pablo Montoya, and incredibly in third we have David Coulthard.

The end results do not represent the whole race however, the race started fairly uneventful with just the Midland cars bumping each other. However on lap 2 Mark Webber made a mistake at Sainte Devote that allowed Kimi Raikonen to get passed into second place, he then set about catching the front running Alonso.

For the next 10 laps or so the first 4 cars ran within 4 seconds of each other, one of the tightest races we have seen this year in the championship.  Michael Schumacher who had started from the pit lane after the steward decision and an engine change was caught up behind the struggling Jenson Button.

However on lap 21 things started to happen, Michael Schumacher passed Jenson Button and proceeded to pull away from the ailing driver. Then the front runners started to pit, first up was Juan Pablo Montoya who took on around 10 seconds of fuel, then a lap later his team mate and then second place running Kimi Raikonen stopped for around the same amount of fuel.

We believed at that point the Renault team could probably go further, as we had expected the McLaren team to do as well, however on lap 24 and 25 the two Renault’s and Mark Webber pitted. However Kimi had upped his pace on his out laps from the pit and Renault had to short fill Alonso with just 7 seconds of fuel to maintain track position.

This then seemed to put the next set of stops into the hands of the McLaren’s, as the Silver cars could run longer than the Renault’s and hopefully get track position.

This strategy was however ruined for the McLaren team as Webber still running in 3rd position seemed to struggle and loose power down the main straight on lap 47, his engine was then seen smoking and the exhaust’s caught fire forcing him to stop just passed the pit lane exit around the Sainte Devote corner. This caused the safety car to be deployed and all the front running teams to call their drivers into the pits for a fill up.

More bad news for the McLaren team, on lap 51 whilst still under the safety car pace, Kimi’s car overheats and sets fire at the Loews Hairpin , he pulls off the track just before the tunnel at Portier corner.

This then leaves the podium as Alonso, Montoya, Barichelo. Nico Rosberg understeers into the barrier at the Anthony Noghes corner, cementing a bad day for the Williams team. The unfortunate Klien has gearbox failure ending his day early, however this promotes David Coulthard to fifth behind Jarno Trulli.

Barichelo is then penalised and has to take a drive through penalty, promoting Trulli to 3rd and Coulthard to fourth. However more bad luck for the Toyota team as Trulli’s car is the third of the day to have a smoky engine failure. This promotes Coutlhard to his final third place podium spot.

What can be deemed from today’s race? Well the Renault’s are still strong, fast and reliable cars, as even Fisichela showed signs of speed in both qualifying and the race. We can also take it that the improvements to both the McLaren chassis and the Mercedes/Ilmore engine have helped both the McLaren cars, as they both looked fast all weekend. The Red-Bull car of David Coulthard finishing third, may not be because of the car necessarily, however a mature drive from Coulthard has lead to the teams first podium, that will boost the team in more than one way.

Other things to note, Toyota showed that the new TF106B car can be quick, it took some setting up as it showed little sign of speed all weekend up until the Qualifying session, but hope is there for the team. Michael Schumacher will be stinging from the decision in qualifying, and depending how the press respond to it could ring the end to his career at the end of the season.

The Cosworth engine in the Williams cars proved again that it can be quick, given a chassis that it can show itself in. I would not be surprised if the Red Bull team announced the purchase of the engine manufacturer, possibly alongside VW group sometime soon.

JV leads the assult

Jacques Villeneuve has had his clashes with Michael Schumacher before (Jerez in 997 comes to mind). But he has taken the attack to Schumi over his 'mistake' at Rascasse corner that ultimately ended up in him stalling his car on the outside of the corner.

JV told reporters “I hope it was deliberate, because if that was a mistake he should not even have an F1 super licence, If you can make a mistake like that, you shouldn't drive a race car.

There’s no way you could make a mistake like that. It’s the kind of thing I couldn't dream of doing myself. I don't know what goes through your mind when you decide to do that, when you know that the rest of the world can see.

I don't understand it, it's stupid. He didn't need to do that, he's a seven-times world champion, he was on pole position. Why do that? It’s only going to make him look bad.

This is embarrassing. Embarrassing for a world champion. It would even be embarrassing for Ide.”