Unfortunately, with the General Election held in the same week as the Spanish Grand Prix, I forgot to preview the Grand Prix. However, with the Monaco Grand Prix this week, you can now sit down to the treat of a dual review and preview.
Firstly, let’s look back to the Spanish Grand Prix. If I had previewed the Grand Prix, I would have picked like this:
- Vettel;
- Webber;
- Hamilton.
And that would have looked great with 10 laps to go! Even with 2 laps to go, it wasn’t too bad. Let’s be honest, Barcelona suits the Red Bull car down to the ground. Turns 3 and 9 are perfectly set up for Adrian Newey’s masterpiece to shine. So, on paper, the race had a Red Bull 1-2 written all over it. At the same time, the McLaren has been good in race trim this year and if Hamilton could show good pace in qualifying, he had definitely shown the race pace required to grab a podium finish.
As the weekend went on, so it turned out. The Red Bull was dictatorially impressive in qualifying, destroying the opposition. Webber shaded Vettel – just – and in doing so asserted that he can be just as quick as his highly rated team-mate.
Come race day, Hamilton made a good start but couldn’t quite jam a move down the inside into turn one. Webber held off Vettel to hold his place at the front, which, in the Spanish Grand Prix, is as good as winning the race, mechanical problems aside. Indeed, the previous nine Spanish Grand Prix had been won by the pole sitter. Still, Vettel was on his tail and could potentially jump him in a pit stop.
Unfortunately for Vettel, his pit stop wasn’t a smooth one and he instead fell back into the clutches of Lewis Hamilton. Hamilton himself had a problem in his pit stop with a wheel nut, but the team reacted quickly as there had been a similar problem with team-mate Jenson Button’s stop, and so they were prepared. I the meantime, Fernando Alonso kept his head down in fourth, and Schumacher – who scared his way past Jenson Button as Button came out of the pits – made his car wider than the M25 to stay ahead of Button in fifth, circling at a speed that at times felt closer to that of the M25 too. From this point on, it looked like the race was over. Webber led Vettel by about fifteen seconds, who was ahead of Hamilton, who was ahead of Alonso. Schumacher then led Button and Massa, neither of whom looked like passing the car in front.
This all changed with just under ten laps to go, braking in to turn ten, Vettel’s car looked fragile, and memories of Australia flooded back. The producer cut to a replay of Vettel bounding across the gravel at turn seven, and you realised something was up. Vettel pitted for new tyres but was quickly told his brakes were about to go. Consequently, he had to coast to the end of the race, hoping he could hang on to fourth ahead of Schumacher and somehow manage to stop his car at every corner. Webber must have allowed himself a wry smile, as must Alonso, who was now in a podium position in his home Grand Prix.
If he had a wry smile then, he must have had an ever bigger smile as he passed through turn three on the penultimate lap. Seconds before, Lewis Hamilton watched in horror as his left front wheel rim popped, sending his wheel nut flying in the air, causing his tyres to de-laminate at 150 miles an hour and sending him straight in to the wall. The second place he had inherited was gone,gladly taken by Alonso, and marked the fourth time in Lewis’ three and a bit year career that a tyre has exploded, causing him to go off track. Vettel, meanwhile, was counting his stars as it meant he could salvage a podium, and fourth for Schumacher gave him his best finish since his return in Bahrain.
So what did Spain tell us? It told us that the Red Bull is still far and away the quickest car in Formula 1 – especially in high speed corners, like turn three at Barcelona. It showed us that the McLaren is the next best, followed by the Ferrari, which has fallen back a little, with the Mercedes still fourth quickest. Michael Schumacher seems much happier with the car now, which is good, but Rosberg had a poor weekend and will be looking to put that right in Monaco, although he doesn’t have a great track record in the Principality. Which leads us nicely on to the Monaco Grand Prix this weekend…
Having seen the utter Red Bull domination in Spain, many people will be despairing, thinking they will wipe the floor again in Monte Carlo. They may, but there are three reasons why I don’t think they will, or there is at least a good chance they won’t:
- The Spanish Grand Prix is held at a track that perfectly shows up the Red Bull’s strengths – Monaco foes not have the high speed corners the Red Bull loves so much;
- McLaren have a very good history at Monte Carlo, winning 15 times – they build cars that run well in Monaco;
- Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button both love Monaco – Hamilton is great on street style tracks, Button is very smooth, tidy and won in Monaco with a convincing drive last year.
This, of course, doesn’t mean McLaren will walk it, but I fully expect them to be up there. So, he is my prediction for Monaco:
- Lewis Hamilton;
- Sebastian Vettel;
- Jenson Button.
I don’t expect the Ferrari to shine, nor the Mercedes. Watch out for Robert Kubica – if he can keep his nose clean, he may be able pick up some more very useful points. But more importantly, think back to the last time there were twenty-four cars on the grid at Monaco? What, you don’t remember? OK, I’ll save you F1 newbies the bother of looking it up, and instead extract the memory from my brain for you. It was 1995. There were, in fact, not twenty-four cars but twenty-six. Indeed, the 1995 Monaco Grand Prix was the last Grand Prix to feature twenty-six cars as the Simtek-Ford team dissolved very soon after. (Pedant alert: technically, only twenty-five cars took the “start” – neither Simtek took the official start)
Anyway, going in to the first corner, Jean Alesi and Gerhard Berger made a Ferrari sandwich out of David Coulthard, bringing out the red flag. It’s not the only time the start has caused problems, and I wonder, will we see it again this year? We shall see…
And before I leave you, I shall leave you with a little trivia, and a video. Want to know why one car didn’t make the restart in 1995? I’ll tell you. Well, see, there was this Italian driver called Domenico Schiattarella (he wasn’t very good – you’ll see if you read on!), who needed his car moving. So, the stewards attached it to a recovery crane and lifted it up in the air. And then they…well, they smashed it to pieces. It fell off. The dropped it. To be honest, if you’d ever seen him race, you could be forgiven for thinking they might have done it on purpose, and thanks to the marvel that it Youtube, I can show you why. Take a look!
See what I mean? His surname almost gave the game away, and if that didn’t, the video really did!
@Noelinho is this using the new blog layout?
You make it sound like vettel would have jumped webber at the first stop, despite webber being 5+ seconds down the road.
Webber owned everyone in Spain!