Patronise F1

The 2011 season continues to be the anti-2010 on at least two distinct levels. Firstly, another win for Sebastian Vettel, his first around the streets of Monte Carlo to tick off another event on his rapidly-dwindling list of 'races I am yet to win', extended his championship lead to an almost obscene 58 points over Lewis Hamilton. From the dramatic, season-long title battle we enjoyed 12 months ago, the scrap for the 2011 championship is slowly petering out.

But, on the other hand, it once again barely seemed to matter that the Red Bull driver secured victory once again, because again in 2011 the route taken to the result was a hugely entertaining mix of clashes, controversy, overtaking and a singularly barmy post-race interview for one of the leading title contenders that all served to keep viewers on the edge of their seat until the very end. Or at least quite close to the very end.

And to keep everyone still craving some sort of semblance of a title fight in 2011, the good news was that although Vettel took another victory, you could have made an argument for any one of the top three of Vettel, Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button taking the glory, showing that although Vettel is continuing to dominate, he doesn't have the championship-destroying advantage that the results may imply. With a bit more luck for one or two of his rivals in the next few races, we might still get a close-run battle for the 2011 crown. Honest.

Practice and Qualifying

The weekend began traditionally early, with Thursday practice seeing Alonso end the two sessions with the fastest time, starting off his Monaco weekend in a similar way to his ultimately futile 2010 race weekend at this track. In the morning the Spaniard was second-fastest, a fraction behind Vettel who set the pace, but in the quicker afternoon session he moved ahead, finishing a smidgen ahead of Lewis Hamilton's McLaren and Nico Rosberg's Mercedes.

It was a day peppered with the odd crash, as is always the way in Monaco, though the most surprising of the incidents involved Michael Schumacher crashing at low speed at the Ste Devote corner, ending his morning's work early. Also biting the Monaco barriers were Tonio Liuzzi, who sat out the whole afternoon session after crashing at the Nouvelle Chicane in FP1, and Vitaly Petrov, who tagged the barriers late on in FP2.

There was also a traditional dose of bad luck for Mark Webber, who was forced to sit out FP1 thanks to a gearbox issue, the sort of incident that inspired Webber's manager Flavio Briatore to rant that he felt that Webber and Vettel's cars "may be equal only in their colours", adding some vital fuel to the stuttering Red Bull conspiracy theorist bandwagon. Still, with FP1 at Monaco featuring little aside from some meandering destruction of a set of prime tyres on a green track, the damage caused to the Australian's weekend by the lost time was probably not as bad as all that.

Into Saturday then, and Alonso stayed on top of the times in final practice, in a session where the main talking point was a spot of near-total failure from Rosberg, who crashed his Mercedes heavily before he had even set a lap time in the session at the Nouvelle Chicane. For a moment the German driver appeared to be skidding head-on into the barrier at the end of the run-off, but the car just avoided the collision.

Nevertheless, that gave the Mercedes squad a huge rebuild job for qualifying, while the Hispania squad were also struggling after Liuzzi binned his car for the second time at Ste Devote late in final practice. In the end, neither HRT made it out for qualifying itself, with the team somewhat less than reassuringly keeping Liuzzi's team mate Narain Karthikeyan in the garage to adjust the car's suspension after deeming it to not be safe as a result of Liuzzi's crash. Thankfully for the backmarkers though, the 107% time in Q1 didn't drop below their best practice times, and the stewards granted the pair dispensation to race around very slowly at the back of the field on Sunday.

The fight for pole position was, in the end, a bit of a damp squib. Vettel topped the first runs from Button, but with preparations being made by the top then for a second round of flying laps, Sergio Perez crashed his Sauber at high speed at the chicane. He lost control in the bumpy braking area in identical fashion to Rosberg, but while the Mercedes man had avoided the end barrier, the Mexican slammed into it side-on, the car stopping in a worryingly short space of time given the speed it had been travelling at.

There followed a red flag and an eerie period of silence, as medical crews and marshals went into their well-drilled but nevertheless unnerving procedure of shadowing an injured driver from public view with their cars and using the slightly less technical method of white sheeting. It took 35 minutes to extricate Perez and his car, and he was rushed to the Princess Grace hospital by ambulance, but fortunately before the session restarted the news came through that he was conscious and responding to questions, a happy outcome given the initial footage of his car that appeared to show him still and unmoving inside the cockpit of the Sauber.

The session finally restarted, but there were no real improvements in times when the cars got back onto the track, and Vettel was left to comfortably take his fifth pole of the season by half a second from Button, with Webber and Alonso on the second row and Schumacher securing his best qualifying position of the season in 5th alongside Felipe Massa's Ferrari.

The big losers in the interrupted qualifying session were Rosberg, who couldn't fully deliver on the car's promise despite the team's quick work to repair his damaged car, and Hamilton. The 2008 champion gambled on making one single flying run, but his first effort was interrupted by the red flag, and his second go at completing the run was only good enough for seventh. Worse was to follow when it transpired that even that time had been set after he short-cut a corner, and his time was deleted, leaving him 9th with Rosberg elevated to seventh.

After the session, though, the main concern for everyone was Perez's condition, but the news from the hospital continued to be good. Aside from a sprained thigh and concussion, the Mexican was unhurt, though he would remain in hospital on Sunday and would miss the race itself. Still, it was a happy enough outcome from a nasty crash, and another feather in the cap for F1's ever-improving commitment to safety.

The Race

The field numbered one less than usual, then, as the cars lined up for the start of the race, with Perez's absence seeing the rest of the field bumped up a spot to cover for the missing Sauber. As the lights went out, Vettel controlled his getaway with the sort of maddening perfection that showed off the extra confidence that pole position will inevitably give a driver. Button was forced to slot in behind him at Ste Devote for the first time, while Alonso scampered ahead of Webber to demote the second Red Bull immediately and begin yet another frustrating afternoon for the Australian.

The man who didn't get going at all well was Michael Schumacher. The seven-time champion has been making bullet starts all season, and has gained places on every opening lap so far in 2011, but this time as the lights went out, the Mercedes anti-stall software kicked in and left the German crawling, swamped left and right by other cars. Nevertheless, he still showed enough composure after fluffing his first lines of the afternoon to pick up a spot from Hamilton at the Grand Hotel Hairpin (Loews in old money) midway around the first lap, shortly after he had given the McLaren a biff up the rear under braking for the first corner. The pass, made possible by Hamilton dawdling and neglecting to cover his line while in a queue of cars, may have opened Hamilton's eyes to the concept of turning F1's tightest corner into an overtaking opportunity. If it did, then it would end up having a lot to answer for.

At the end of the first lap, Vettel was already streaking away, 2.4 seconds clear of Button, who appeared to be holding up Alonso in the early stages. Webber followed, with a fast-starting Rosberg now 5th for Mercedes ahead of Massa, Maldonado, Petrov, Schumacher and Hamilton. Early on, the race was a picture of dominance from Vettel, who quickly extended his lead out to over five seconds in the opening four laps. After that, though, his pace plateaued, and after a slowish few laps Button began to assert himself from second place and comfortably matched the leader's pace.

While the first ten tours were standard Monaco follow-my-leader fare, as Vettel's lead stretched the field, attention still remained focused on the scrap between F1's former hardest charger and one of the men fighting to replace him in that category, as Hamilton swarmed all over the back of Schumacher in the fight for ninth place. Despite appearing to get a couple of runs down the pit straight towards Ste Devote, possibly assisted in part by the short and ever so slightly impotent Monaco DRS zone in the process, Schumacher looked to be hanging on comfortably.

Until, that was, lap 10, when with Schumie's Merc having entered into its traditional tyre-chewing phase Hamilton was able to get a genuine run up the inside into the first corner, executing a picturebook pass for position and getting himself into some clear air, while Schumacher was left to perform a minor driving miracle to somehow keep himself out of the barriers at the exit of Ste Devote despite being forced wide. For a moment it appeared that the elder statesman was about to crash at the same corner twice in a weekend, but he somehow flicked the car out of trouble, controlling an imperceptible fishtail as he did so. Still, with his tyres now spent, his weekend was now unraveling, and he then suffered the ignominy of being passed by his former Boobens for the second time in three races a couple of laps later when Barrichello dived past the ailing Mercedes into Mirabeau.

Schumacher was in for a stop, and a change of nosecone, at the end of lap 13, and by now his team mate was also struggling with a car determined to churn up the super-soft Pirelli tyres much earlier than their rivals. Rosberg had been holding off a train of Massa, Maldonado, Petrov and now Hamilton for a number of laps, but he was finally picked off by Massa at Tabac on lap 14, after the Brazilian had lost a front wing endplate clipping the right rear tyre of the German on the run up to Casino Square in slightly daft fashion. Maldonado followed Massa through on the run to the Swimming Pool, and although Rosberg gave it another lap on his failing tyres, he was then in on lap 15 for a fresh set.

The pit stop window was now well and truly open, slightly earlier than many had expected, with Button the first of the runaway lead trio to pit on the same lap as Rosberg, keeping on the super soft Pirellis in an effort to leapfrog the leading Red Bull using the tyre 'undercut' that has become so crucial in 2011. His efforts may have worked, but the fight for the lead became a bit of a non-event after Vettel pitted next time by and the caffeinated team fluffed his stop horribly to gift Button a clear lead. Crucially though, Vettel had taken the prime soft tyre for his second stint, in a move that eventually turned out to be thanks to a botched call from the Red Bull pit wall, and now in theory the championship leader did not have to stop again, though most doubted his chances of doing the remaining 61 laps on a single set of tyres given Pirelli wear rates this season.

Not content with fluffing Vettel's stop, the Red Bull team then conspired to make an even worse job of Webber's first stop from fourth place, seemingly surprised by the Australian arriving in his pit box just as Vettel was leaving. Alonso was in from the lead next time by, but he had no chance of jumping Button given the McLaren man's extra lap of fresh tyres. Alonso had taken the Pirelli softs for his second stint as well, and with both the Ferrari man and Vettel's pace now compromised on the slower tyres, that meant that by lap 20, Button now led by some 8.8 seconds from Vettel, with Alonso almost four seconds further back. Massa was now fourth, running longer on his first stint, ahead of Maldonado, Petrov and Hamilton. Webber had rejoined down in 13th place, now stuck behind the Toro Rosso of Sebastien Buemi, while the Mercedes duo were now out of the running for points, and both were trapped behind the Virgin of Timo Glock at the back of the field.

Hamilton, getting badly held up behind the Maldonado/Petrov battle, pitted at the end of lap 22 to change his soft Pirellis for a fresh set of super-softs, but his stop was also a complete mess, with the mechanics still dashing out with the new tyres as he arrived at his pit box. "They said 'box to overtake', I came in, and they weren't there," Hamilton pouted afterwards. But the error meant that he rejoined in 14th place, behind Webber up the road, now elevated to the dizzying heights of 12th, but also then behind Massa when the second Ferrari finally pitted on lap 26. A weekend of frustration got even more frustrating for the 2008 champion, though he had at least jumped Maldonado and Petrov, who emerged from their own later first stops behind the McLaren.

By lap 31 then, Button led by some 13.7 seconds from Vettel, while Alonso had the gap to the Red Bull stable at three seconds. That lead trio was now a minute clear of the late-stopping midfield drivers who started on the more durable soft tyre, with Barrichello temporarily fourth from Kamui Kobayashi in the lone Sauber, Adrian Sutil's Force India, Nick Heidfeld's Renault and Buemi. Webber was now up to ninth, with Massa tenth and Hamilton now boxed up behind him. Meanwhile, although it might not have seemed so at the time, a precedent had been set on lap 26, as Paul di Resta's debut Monaco race unravelled when he attempted an ill-conceived heft up the inside of Jaime Alguersuari's Toro Rosso at the tight hairpin. He savaged Algie's sidepod with his Force India, picked up a broken front wing for his trouble which necessitated a long pit stop, and was then issued with a drive-through penalty for causing an avoidable accident.

That message from the stewards for drivers making poorly-planned moves at the super-tight track clearly wasn't picked up on by Hamilton though, and after a number of laps swarming over Massa's gearbox, he attempted his own casual fling up the inside of his rival into the hairpin on lap 32, coming from way back to try and repeat Schumacher's move on himself earlier, but finding that the line between a successful pass and a shambles at Monaco is wafer-thin. His McLaren nuzzled Massa's sidepod after he rode his car over the kerbs around the hairpin, but the pass wasn't made. And with di Resta's earlier penalty for a similar move, he was now at the mercy of the stewards. Despite that failure, Hamilton managed to pass Massa through the tunnel later on the lap, with the Brazilian getting forced off-line and into a shunt with the barriers as he did so.

The safety car was called for after that crash, for the first time in 2011 so far, and that played out disastrously for the other McLaren driver. Button, having got his lead up to some 14 seconds over Vettel, was in for his second stop the lap prior to the safety car emerging, but the scrambling of the silver Mercedes now seemed to give his rivals a big advantage. Alonso took that advantage, pitting for a fresh set of Pirelli softs, but Vettel stayed out in the lead, and if he wanted to win the race, he was now locked in to getting to the end on his current set of Pirelli softs. "I said I wanted to stay out as it was the only chance to win the race," he grinned after the race. Worse for Button was the fact that he had taken on more super-softs, meaning that he still owed a pit stop to his rivals.

When the safety car pulled off for lap 39, and Vettel resumed in the lead from Button and Alonso, while the two late stoppers Sutil and Kobayashi had gained massively by pitting under the safety car period to resume in 4th and 5th, ahead of a frustrated Webber and Hamilton, who was soon called in for a predictable drive-through penalty for his savaging of Massa which dropped him down to 9th place behind Maldonado and Petrov. The one piece of good news for Hamilton was that the other effect of the safety car had been to leave the front nine a lap ahead of the rest of the field, minimising the positions he lost thanks to his slow dawdle through the pits. Nick Heidfeld led the fight of the lapped runners for the final point in 10th.

The field resumed some rather stagnant and processional Monaco-spec running for the next dozen laps, but the fight for victory was now becoming a thriller, after Button was forced to make his final stop for the soft Pirellis on lap 48. That left Vettel with a 6.2 second lead over Alonso, while Button was now 17.9 seconds down the road, albeit well clear of Sutil in 4th. But the top three were now in reverse performance order tyre-wise, as Alonso began to close in on Vettel, and Button started to steam up to the back of the pair of them by a second and a half a lap.

By lap 59, Alonso was right with Vettel, and set about trying to somehow frighten the German into a mistake. But the Red Bull man, whose driving has taken on a calm and collected style in 2011 that was absent from his more crash-happy 2010 campaign, appeared equal to anything that Alonso could do, which was admittedly largely limited to making himself look big in the wing mirrors of the RB7 as often as he could. As the Spaniard's frustration grew, he also ended up both needing to somehow attack and defend at the same time, as Button joined the three-way scrap for superiority against his two rivals on lap 62. Vettel led, but his tyres were some 18 laps older than Alonso behind him, and a full 32 laps older than Button's. Surely, with the best will in the world, he wouldn't make it to the flag still in the lead.

Lap after lap ticked by though, and still the Red Bull held off anything that his rivals could manage, even with the mini-DRS zone available to him along the start-finish straight. Just as Hamilton had found a week ago in Barcelona as he scrapped for the lead in the closing stages, the Red Bull's immense traction out of the corners simply meant that he never really got a chance to even show his nose up the inside and maybe pass Vettel via a cheeky Hamilton-brand punt. As every tour of the circuit went by though, the potential for Vettel's tyres to suddenly hit the infamous 'cliff' on their performance, where his lap times would stop just degrading slightly and suddenly dropped off entirely.

Then, the race was decided in frustrating circumstances. Sutil, who was also attempting a similar monster one-stop stint to Vettel in his Force India, was firstly passed by Kobayashi in slightly dubious circumstances, as the Japanese driver finally got bored of staring at the German's rear wing and attempted a questionable move up the inside at Mirabeau. He slid his Sauber into the side of Sutil and essentially levered him out of the way to take fourth place, but that contact with Sutil's right rear only added to his grip issues. After Webber got through for fifth place a lap after Kobayashi with a neat move at the Swimming Pool, Sutil was then earmarked as a sitting duck by a gaggle of cars behind him.

As the leaders came up to lap this mass of Sutil-led traffic on lap 69, the race was inadvertently decided. Maldonado went up the inside of the ailing Sutil into Tabac, as Hamilton continued his curate's egg of a weekend with a similar move on Petrov for 7th place, which sent the German wide and into the barriers, picking up a puncture as he did so. The unwieldy Force India moved back onto track at the Swimming Pool, in front of the rest of the gaggle that included Hamilton, Petrov, Toro Rosso's Jaime Alguersuari and the second Renault of Heidfeld. As the mass of traffic tried to pile into the first part of the Swimming Pool, Hamilton was slowed by Sutil, causing Alguersuari to ride up into the back of him, and Petrov to then follow Alguersuari into retirement as he ended up with nowhere to go. The leaders somehow came through the carnage in front unscathed, but with Petrov complaining of pain in his legs and unable to extricate himself from the car, the safety car, and then the red flag was called for. The race was stopped.

And that, in the end, completely saved Vettel, as the drivers lined back up on the grid for what would not only be a single-file safety car restart, but would also be a restart in which everyone would be allowed to take fresh tyres for. The complicated grip-based dynamic of the lead scrap was ruined as Petrov was removed from the car and the teams prepared for a restart. It was quickly established that the Russian driver was mercifully perfectly fine, despite his own initial analysis of his legs, and repair work was also allowed to the rest of the field, including Hamilton, who needed a fresh new rear wing following Alguersuari's attempted mounting of his car during the accident.

So, we eventually got a six-lap sprint to the flag, as the safety car brought the remaining runners around and set them running again at the start of lap 74, with Vettel now able to establish a comfortable lead over Alonso and Button, with Kobayashi now fourth ahead of Webber, Maldonado, Hamilton, Sutil, Heidfeld and Barrichello. For the rest of the race, and now on fresh rubber, the German never looked like ceding his grip on the victory, and he duly wrapped up win number five from the opening six races to further extend his championship lead. Alonso and Button shadowed him home, but with the tyre differences now nullified, they had no real means of attack over the final few laps.

With the top three remaining static, two moves made the final six laps worth restarting the race for, one good and one bad. Mark Webber secured fourth place after a difficult race with a ballsy move on Kobayashi on lap 76 down into the Nouvelle Chicane. Kobayashi defended his place, but was forced to short-cut the corner, and then cede the position to the Red Bull. But meanwhile, the lap that the safety car pulled in, Hamilton was up to his old tricks again, this time attempting an optimistic move into Ste Devote on Maldonado. The McLaren never looked like getting alongside, and the Williams driver turned in to the corner to meet his doom at the hands of Hamilton's front left wheel, as the Venezuelan was pitched into the barriers to ruin what would have been a mighty sixth place after a faultless drive from the supposed paydriver.

After the race, Hamilton was unrepentant about either of his moves. "It's just ridiculous," he growled in an entertainingly-unhinged post-race interview, "These drivers are absolutely frickin' ridiculous. Just stupid." But most observers were apportioning that borderline-expletive to Hamilton's actions, rather than those of his rivals. Still, he could at least take some comfort that the stewards continued to be consistent in their penalties to him, opting to add on a drive-through equivalent 20 second time penalty to his race time after the event, which in effect failed to punish him at all, and kept him in sixth place in the final results, behind the front three, Webber and Kobayashi. Sutil recovered from his tyre issues to take seventh place, with Heidfeld elevated to eighth ahead of Barrichello and Buemi, who completed the points scorers.

Rosberg came home a hapless 11th, ahead of the penalised di Resta, while the two Lotus drivers benefited from the largely Hamilton-sourced attrition ahead of them to take 13th and 14th with Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen respectively. Jerome d'Ambrosio took 15th for Virgin, ahead of the two Hispanias, while Maldonado will take little joy from being classified in 18th, despite not making the finish. Joining the crashed Petrov, Alguersuari and Massa in retirement were Schumacher, whose race ended thanks to an airbox fire shortly after he had passed Rosberg into the hairpin on lap 30, and Timo Glock, who suffered a suspension failure on his Virgin.

The joy at the end of the race, then, was again with Vettel, as he established a 58 point lead over Hamilton in the drivers championship. Meanwhile there was little more than frustration from Alonso and Button, both of whom might have thought that the race could easily have been theirs but for circumstance and the red flag restart procedure, while there was little more than despair and anger from Hamilton at the end, as he let out all of his frustrations from his incident-filled weekend in his now-infamous post-race rant. "Out of six races, I've been to the stewards five times. It's a joke," he grouched.

Increasingly it is becoming a joke, though perhaps not for the reason that he thinks. And certainly right now Vettel is the only one who is laughing.

Driver of the Race

Pastor Maldonado - There were a number of contenders for this award. All three of the podium men drove impeccably, but with the final and climactic fight for the lead being ruined by the red flag, it will never be known which of the three differing tyre strategies had been the right call. Meanwhile, Webber staged a strong recovery after his nightmare first pit stop, while Kobayashi and Sutil both took decent finishes but were essentially gifted decent track position by the first safety car. And then even Hamilton would be a contender, if only for his single-minded efforts to provide some overtaking entertainment regardless of the legality of the move. But Maldonado wins the award for qualifying and racing solidly at the trickiest of F1's circuits in only his sixth F1 race weekend, despite ongoing titters wherever he goes, dismissing him as nothing more than a paydriver. Plus, he gains a whole chunk of sympathy votes thanks to his strong race ending ultimately without reward thanks to Hamilton's banzai efforts at Ste Devote.

Moment of the Race

Lap 72 - Vitaly Petrov's uncomfortable situation in his Renaultus required the red flags to come out for his own safety, but unfortunately that proved to be the decisive moment in the fight for the race lead. Prior to the red flag, we were being treated to what could have eventually become the greatest Monaco finale ever, with Vettel trying to get 61 laps of performance out of his Pirellis, while being stalked by the fresher-tyred duo of Alonso and Button. But after the red flag, and the rules that allowed everyone to change tyres as they waited on the grid for the restart, the fight for the win was over. While decrying Vettel's fifth win of the season as purely being down to this lucky turn is disingenuous, the fact is that we sadly never found out whether his tyre gamble would have paid off, or would have taken a final dramatic turn.

Quote of the Race

"I was quite a lot quicker than Massa. I went up the inside, and the guy turned so early and just turned into me. So I tried to go over the kerb to avoid him and we were stuck together. And of course I get the penalty, which is usual. He [Massa] held me up in qualifying and I got the penalty. He turned into me, and I got the penalty." - Part of Hamilton's epic post-race rant, and a quote that possibly suggests that nobody explained what he was punished for during qualifying.

Patronise F1's Monaco GP Coverage

Race Preview - Monaco Grand Prix

Minute-by-minute reports:
Free Practice 1
Free Practice 2
Free Practice 3
Monaco GP Qualifying
Monaco GP Race

Session reports:
FP1 - Vettel claims top spot in drama-filled FP1
FP2 - Alonso tops close-run second practice
FP3 - Alonso ahead as crashes disrupt practice
Qualifying - Vettel on pole but Perez shunt mars quali
Race - Vettel wins game of Monte Carlo roulette

Post-race coverage:
Five talking points from the Monaco GP
Fifth Column - Monaco

The Results

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