Reports from the Monte Carlo, Canadian and French GPS
1 Mercedes makes it hard for Lewis
In the years to follow, we may yet come to regard this tense rather than exciting Monaco GP as one of Lewis Hamilton’s greatest achievements, one in which he slipped and slid for 38 laps on ‘dead’ tyres under unstinting pressure from Max Verstappen. Lewis himself said it was “the hardest race I’ve had”.
And yet this is Monaco, where it’s possible for Formula 1 cars to circulate six seconds a lap off their best without being overtaken. Lewis laid the foundations of his epic win in qualifying on Saturday when he peaked at the perfect moment, having struggled to bend the Mercedes W10 suitably to his will throughout practice.
Outpaced by team-mate Valtteri Bottas on Thursday and by Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc in Saturday’s single 60-minute session, Hamilton dug deep to produce something special in qualifying. And it coincided with a Ferrari meltdown.
Focusing on getting Leclerc through Q1 on just a single set of tyres, Ferrari got its calculations terribly wrong, underestimating how quickly Leclerc would have to go to avoid elimination. Leclerc squandered his fastest lap of the session with a lock-up at Rascasse, flat-spotting his tyres, and this should have been Ferrari’s cue to abandon Plan A. Instead it parked Leclerc and was caught out as track evolution and growing confidence enabled other drivers to light up the timing screens in the closing minutes. Leclerc was then bundled into the elimination zone by his own team-mate, Sebastian Vettel, himself scrabbling after crashing in FP3.
That meant one of the biggest threats to Mercedes’ dominance would start 15th, and Leclerc wouldn’t even see the flag. In Q3, meanwhile, Hamilton shook off the tyre preparation issues that had dogged him thus far to deliver a cracker on his final run, annexing pole from Bottas by 0.086s.
When the lights went out on Sunday, Hamilton hooked up crisply from pole and was never headed. Bottas rebuffed a spirited challenge from thirdplace starter Verstappen at Ste Dévote and would likely have made it another Mercedes 1-2, with Verstappen and Vettel following in their wake, but for a Safety Car triggered when Leclerc smote the Renault of Nico Hülkenberg on lap 11. The leading group pitted and, although Bottas backed the others up to avoid being double-stacked, the Red Bull crew worked faster and released Verstappen into his path. Bottas cracked a wheel rim against the pitwall in the squeeze, forcing another stop which dropped him to fourth, while Max was hit with a five-second penalty.
While Hamilton was now equipped with medium tyres, Verstappen, Vettel and Bottas were on hards and well able to run to the end. Once again Hamilton had to dig deep and, amid frequent protests over the radio, managed to scrabble around and fend off Verstappen until the end.
2 Not so mad Max
If Monaco 2018 was the lowest ebb of Max Verstappen’s F1 career – he nerfed the wall in final practice and missed qualifying while team-mate Daniel Ricciardo won from pole – Monaco 2019 demonstrated his new-found maturity.
Verstappen qualified third, beating Vettel into fourth, and was barely troubled by the Ferrari in the race. He got a marginally better start than secondplaced Bottas but showed restraint at Ste Dévote on lap one, later saying: “There was nothing else I could do really. I was boxed in. I could run into the side of him [Bottas] but then you have the risk of a puncture or a penalty.”
Younger Max would have just sent it in and pondered the consequences later. The only blemish on his race, perhaps, was the forceful manner in which he occupied the fast lane when released from his pit box into the path of Bottas, earning a fivesecond penalty for an unsafe release.
“I didn’t know there was anyone next to me because they released me. It was all getting a bit tight,” he said. “I couldn’t see him.”
Verstappen continued to apply pressure to Hamilton while managing his own technical issues – during the pit incident he’d forgotten to switch his engine’s torque settings out of ‘start’ mode and they were locked as he left the pitlane.
Had he got by, Verstappen had the pace to break clear to the tune of more than the five seconds he needed – but Hamilton was resolute, and Max only got one half-chance at the chicane, which resulted in light contact but no damage. That meant second on the road, fourth in the results.
3 Leclerc dictates his own downfall
Charles Leclerc was under greater scrutiny than ever in Monaco, for this his home race – indeed, his face adorned the cover of the local edition of Forbes magazine. But while Leclerc was an innocent party in the error that caused him to be eliminated in Q1 – Ferrari ignored his suggestion for another run – he authored his early race departure.
Leclerc made progress from 15th on the grid, passing Kimi Räikkönen on lap one and Lando Norris on the next lap. But he then spent five laps behind Romain Grosjean’s 12th-placed Haas before barging up the inside at Rascasse. Attempting the same move on Nico Hülkenberg next time round, he found the Renault much tighter to the inside line but persisted anyway and clipped the barrier.
The result was a spin and a puncture. After two pitstops Leclerc retired, the car too badly damaged by flailing rubber to continue.
“I played fair, opened the steering and tried to leave him some space, and tried to let us both lift,” said Hülkenberg. “He was too ambitious in that moment. I think he was a bit impatient.”