2011 Monaco Grand Prix - Vettel lucks in at the Principality

A MISTAKEN tyre strategy and a red flag helped Sebastian Vettel to be the new king of Monaco.  The German held off stiff challenges from Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button yesterday to win the Monaco Grand Prix.  It is his fifth win from six races in 2011, cementing his place as the runaway leader of the drivers’ championship.  His main challenger, Lewis Hamilton had a dog’s dinner of an afternoon, incurring two penalties and then sensationally blasting the race stewards in a post-race interview.

KISS: This will be the sweetest of wins for Sebastian Vettel

      The Monaco Grand Prix was building into a dramatic and nail-biting finish.  Vettel was on worn soft Pirelli tyres, which he’d had on his car from lap 16 onwards.  He only got those tyres after Red Bull had two awful pitstops in less than a minute, and put the wrong type of tyre on.  Despite this, Sebastian managed to master the quicker Alonso and Button behind him.  He then got a huge slice of luck, which could have ended in a cataclysmic disaster.

       With six laps to go, Adrian Sutil struck the barriers at Tabac, and was limping with a right-rear puncture.  Lewis Hamilton hit the brakes to avoid the Force India, but was clobbered by the Toro Rosso of lapped Spanish driver Jaime Alguesuari.  The Toro Rosso rebounded into the Swimming Pool guardrail, leaving the Renault of Vitaly Petrov with absolutely nowhere to go.  The Russian hit the same wall, and was briefly knocked unconscious in the crash.  The three race leaders were right behind the drama and only just avoided the stricken cars.  The safety car was deployed, shortly followed by a red flag.  Petrov complained of pain in his left ankle, and remained in the car as the paramedics attended to him.  He was admitted to the Princess Grace Hospital, with concussion and light bruising, and thankfully, was released last night.  Following Sergio Perez’s horrifying crash in qualifying on Saturday, which knocked the Mexican driver out of the event – Formula One can count itself lucky to have had two major escapes in the jewel in the crown of the racing calendar. 

      Surprisingly, the race wasn’t stopped and a result given and the drivers lined up on the grid for a restart behind the Safety Car.  Sadly for the neutrals, new tyres were allowed for all the drivers, which meant that Vettel’s tyre disadvantage had been wiped out.  It meant that he could have a fairly processional run to the chequered flag.  The McLaren team did a sterling job to fix Hamilton’s rear wing, which had been badly mangled up in the multiple crash with Alguesuari and Petrov.  However, Lewis wasn’t out of the wars just yet.

SMASH: Hamilton's hopeless attempt ended Maldonado's race

     As the green flags waved again, the Brit attempted a hopeless overtaking lunge on the Williams of Pastor Maldonado into the Ste. Devote corner.  Maldonado was knocked into the barriers, losing his chance of world championship points for the first time in his short career.  Remarkably, Hamilton escaped undamaged and went onto finish sixth.  After the race, he was given a 25-second time penalty for causing the crash with the Venezuelan.  Earlier in the race, Hamilton tried an ambitious lunge at Felipe Massa into the tight 30mph Loews hairpin corner.  The two interlocked wheels, and continued their fight into the tunnel.  Lewis charged through and pushed the Ferrari onto the marbles, which left Massa in the wall and out of the event.  The Brazilian’s crash bought the Safety Car out for the first time this season, and it’s fair to say, he looked unimpressed as he strode away from his damaged chassis.  Hamilton got a drive-through penalty for causing this collision.  After the race, he called a stewards a ‘freckin joke’ for the incidents, called Massa and Maldonado ‘stupid,’ blamed the team for a kamikaze pitstop, then made a jokey reference of being victimised to BBC’s Lee McKenzie by responding; ‘I don’t know, maybe because I’m black, that’s what Ali G would say.”  The comments were disgraceful and an hour later, Hamilton went back to the circuit to make his peace with the race stewards, who accepted his apology.  Whether the FIA will want to bring him into disrepute remains to be seen.

      McLaren had a terrible weekend with race strategy.  They covered a possible Safety Car for Timo Glock’s Virgin with Button, which turned into the wrong move.  A horrendous miscommunication led to no-one being in the pits with Hamilton when he arrived for tyres on lap 25.  The possibility of another race victory slipped through their fingers.  Behind the first three, Mark Webber recovered from a horrible pitstop in the early Red Bull chaos to finish fourth.  The Aussie pulled off a stunning pass on Kamur Kobayashi to clinch fourth spot with two laps remaining.  Kobayashi still finished an outstanding fifth, having made a one-stop strategy work to perfection.  It is the Japanese’s driver best finish of his career, and a much-needed boost for the Sauber team after Perez being hospitalised by Saturday’s smash.  Sutil recovered from his puncture to end up 7^th behind Hamilton, with the final points going to Nick Heidfeld, Rubens Barrichello (Williams first of the season), and Sebastian Buemi’s Toro Rosso.  Scotland’s Paul di Resta clashed with Alguesuari and Jerome D’Ambrosio during the race and also earnt a drive-through penalty for his risky overtaking attempts.  He finished 12^th.

      In the celebrations, BBC pundits Eddie Jordan and David Coulthard were thrown into the Red Bull party pool by an ecstatic Vettel, who now looks uncatchable in the championship.  Vettel’s achievement will however be overshadowed by F1’s worst weekend of serious crashes in a decade.  Luckily, there were no serious injuries.  As for Lewis Hamilton, he has a lot of soul-searching to do before the circus meets up in Montreal in a fortnight’s time.