RICCIARDO BEATS THE ODDS CARLO IN IN MONTECARLO IN MONTE CARLO

Only one man left Monte Carlo with a smile on his face this year: Daniel Ricciardo, who slayed the demons of his bitter 2016 win-thatgot-away with a calculated, immaculately judged victory. Elsewhere there wasn’t much to smile about…

Qualifying

Judged on lap times alone, the difference in ability between Ricciardo and Max Verstappen around Monaco in their pacesetting Red Bulls was infinitesimal. After final practice, their PBS were a mere thousandth of a second apart: 1m11.786s for Ricciardo; 1m11.787s for Verstappen.

But the gulf in their attitude and mentality is, apparently, vast.

As Ricciardo sat at the top of the timesheets in the last minutes of FP3, Verstappen tried one more glory run. All aggression to Ricciardo’s athleticism, he took a touch too much inside kerb exiting the Swimming Pool, skipped wide and clattered the barrier. The shunt wiped off the right-front corner of his RB14 and swiped the rear hard enough for a gearbox change to be required. Result: no Verstappen in qualifying when the team had been eyeing a front-row lockout. The shunt was his sixth in six race weekends and for all his gifts and status as the natural heir to Michael Schumacher – a young man whose talent will define the coming F1 generation – Verstappen is still making a lot of mistakes.

Of course he was trying hard in a high-downforce car almost perfectly suited to this most sinuous circuit – “If you’re more than an inch away from the barrier there you’re a w*nker” noted a watching Jolyon Palmer – but he didn’t have to be trying that hard, then.

His team-mate, by contrast, simply oozed confidence both in his own brilliance here and in that of the machine gifted to him. Early in Q2 he set a new circuit record: 1m11.353s. And there was more to come. He scorched around Monte Carlo’s storied streets in 1m10.810s for pole – the only man to break into the 1m10s. Fastest in all sessions Ricciardo was taking no prisoners. The memory of 2016 here when he was similarly dominant and started from his only previous pole position had to be exorcised: this was a Dan on a mission, and he admitted it. “Obviously I need to finish the job tomorrow, but I’m pumped,” he said. “We didn’t really change much on the car all weekend, so I could just build up, find my rhythm and have some fun. I love this place. We had a great package all weekend so I didn’t need to overdrive. I just had to keep hitting my marks and reach my personal best levels.”

There are lessons here for Verstappen, should he wish to heed them.

Verstappen’s shunt aside, Red Bull’s performance advantage was marked, if not unexpected. Its chassis produces more downforce than that of any rival and, on a circuit that rewards grip and balance like no other, its edge against the others was clear.

The tussle between Mercedes and Ferrari for next-best placings was close. Neither chassis is short-circuit optimised, but the Ferrari’s inherently grippier nature swung the fight Sebastian Vettel’s way. He’d start P2 with 1m11.039s, despite going too deep into Rascasse on his best lap and losing any chance of pole. “I was pretty happy with my lap,” he said, “but there’s always the feeling that there’s a little bit more. We played around with the setup, trying to squeeze out everything and we’ve put ourselves in a good position. We knew Red Bull would be strong and the best man is on pole. Dan did the job and that’s what it’s about. Let’s see tomorrow. This is one of the longest and most fascinating races.”

Lewis Hamilton made it three teams in the first three places, after coaxing his grip-light W09 into a Ferrarisplitting position. Like Vettel, he was philosophical about the Red Bull’s advantage, reasoning that Monaco was an outlier for a design team focused on season-long competitiveness.

“Dan did a great job, but we knew it would be like this,” he said. “It was a question of grip, mostly, that kept us back. Over 21 races our engineers have to make sure the car works at the majority of tracks. We don’t mind if Red Bull has the upper hand here.”

A purple first sector on his final flier briefly suggested Hamilton was a pole contender, although he reckoned second was the best he could have done. “P2 was on the cards, which is a little bit painful,” he said.

Last year’s pole man Kimi Raikkonen in P4 and Valtteri Bottas in P5 kept the top three rows looking familiar, although Bottas, like his team-mate, lamented a lack of outright grip, which had prompted Mercedes into an (unsuccessful) experiment with ultrasoft Pirellis in Q2. Hypersofts were the only way to go.

Alongside him, with one of the laps of the session, was Esteban Ocon, who took full advantage of Verstappen’s absence to post a stellar P6 for Force India. With team-mate Sergio Perez in P9, the squad yet again showed what a potent race team it is, despite operating on a budget so stretched it seems certain the crew will be under new ownership within weeks.

Splitting them were Fernando Alonso in P7 and Carlos Sainz, P8 – the two Spaniards again exerting mutual attraction. Alonso, downbeat after free practice, was notably feistier postqualifying and praised his team for continuing to hone the Mclaren MCL33. “P7 is great and actually a nice surprise,” he said. “In practice we were not balanced, but we made a lot of changes and the car performed quite differently in qualifying. It felt good – more together, like the front and rear were connected...”

Sainz was delighted to have out-done team-mate Nico Hulkenberg (P11) who “made a mistake under braking coming out of the tunnel” and confessed to the sheer awesomeness of the lap times being conjured by 2018-spec F1 cars. “The speeds we are doing are pretty crazy,” Sainz smiled.

Happy, too was Toro Rosso’s Pierre Gasly, closing the top 10. Who’d have guessed he’d be second fastest Red Bull driver at Monaco…?

Race

“Thank God that’s over,” said a thoroughly jaded Hamilton after finishing third at the 2018 Monaco Grand Prix. “I think that was the most boring race I have ever participated in.”

“Yep, we agree mate,” concurred his Mercedes race engineer Pete Bonnington.

But weren’t they being a little harsh? Certainly there had been little to entertain a racer like Hamilton, who ran low on grip with increasingly degraded ultrasoft Pirellis for 66 laps. And watching the top five – Ricciardo, Vettel, Hamilton, Raikkonen, Bottas – circulate for just under two hours at somewhat less than full racing speed, didn’t make for obvious spectacle.

In the cockpit of car number three, however – Ricciardo’s Red Bull, which led from pole to chequer – brilliance was being played out. The foundation of his win, as always at Monaco, was his simply awe-inspiring Saturday qualifying performance, which eclipsed all peers from rival teams, while also reminding his whip-crack

team-mate that a slightly older head had learned a thing or two these past eight seasons – not least that F1 success is built not only on always being fastest.

Whether or not Verstappen would have challenged Ricciardo for pole and win is moot: his needless FP3 prang put him out of qualifying and an MGU-K change – possibly shunt-related – means he’ll face a grid drop the next time he needs a new one (only two are allowed per season, without penalty).

As it was he raced combatively and without incident, but only to ninth place. Given Ricciardo’s technical problems, which would emerge early in the race, it’s fair to say this was a victory blown for Verstappen.

No matter, for the weekend’s most worthy driver did take victory – bringing “redemption” for the lost win of 2016. And the nature of his triumph is one that will be recalled by all students of F1 history: he didn’t give up, even in a car crippled by the loss of MGU-K electrical power (worth around 160bhp) from lap 18 and using only six (of eight) gears. That compromised performance left Ricciardo lapping almost laughably slowly – routinely more than eight seconds off his own pole pace – but still able to hold the lead from Vettel and a tyre-troubled Hamilton.

Two years ago this race didn’t want Ricciardo to win and a fumbled pitstop cost him a seemingly certain victory. It didn’t want him to win in 2018 either, but he succeeded in facing down that jinx in memorable style.

“It was a serious problem and he managed it,” said Red Bull motorsport adviser Helmut Marko. “It was unbelievable. I don’t think any other driver could have done it. But he changed set-up, he changed driving style. Unbelievable.”

Ricciardo’s second 2018 win makes it two-all between himself, Vettel and Hamilton, for three different teams, lending increasing weight to suspicions that a three-team battle will sustain the championship, with these three stars as the drivers’ title protagonists.

While Hamilton left Monaco well clear in the drivers’ chase, on 110 points – comfortably ahead of Vettel on 96 and well up on Ricciardo’s 72 – all three men will take comfort from their podium finishes. Ricciardo’s cause of satisfaction is obvious; Hamilton can be happy with a podium in the thirdfastest car that on paper should have finished no better than fifth. Meanwhile, Vettel’s P2 represented the best result that could have been hoped for against faster opposition.

Graciously, Vettel admitted as much, recognising that his former team and team-mate had pulled one out of the bag: “We had the pace today but Dan had the answers at all times,” he said. Vettel identified Hamilton’s lap 12 pitstop – when Mercedes attempted an aggressive undercut by switching its man early to ultrasofts – as a key moment when the outcome might have changed, but didn’t.

“Daniel was still a bit stronger then [his technical woes were yet to emerge] and they were ultimately the quickest team. They did a great job,” said Vettel.

Quite how this three-way tussle plays out over the year will emerge race by race, of course, but it seems certain there will be no dominant car/driver combination this season, even if Hamilton remains the title favourite.

Behind the lead trio, matters remained static, yet interesting. Raikkonen finished barely a second behind Hamilton, though never looked like passing him, while Bottas – a mere 0.7s behind the Ferrari at the flag – at one stage looked a likely winner.

Around lap 40, after his lap 17 stop for supersofts, Bottas appeared to be easily capable of an untroubled run to the flag, on a slightly harder compound than the quartet ahead. Each of those four were suffering visibly (and audibly!) with degrading ultrasofts by this stage, with almost half the race still to run. In the event, Ricciardo’s ‘win-at-the-slowest-possible-speed’ approach helped prolong the life of the struggling purple-walled rubber, to thwart Mercedes’ canny gamble. It could so easily have paid off…

Behind Bottas, Ocon delivered on Force India’s qualifying promise, maintaining his P6 qualifying position. And Gasly, P7, was a contender for driver of the day, after gaining three places from his starting slot and fending off the urgent late attentions of a hungry Hulkenberg. Here was an example of a smart strategy working out. Gasly ran a remarkable 39 laps on hypers, before closing out the race on supersofts, yet still having enough pace to fend off the hypersoft Hulk. Gasly continues to impress, even as Toro Rosso team-mate Brendon Hartley suffered more grief after being clattered out of the race on lap 72 by Charles Leclerc. The local hero said he’d “run out of brakes” approaching the chicane, making contact with Hartley unavoidable; both would retire (as did Alonso, with gearbox failure).

Sainz closed out the points finishers unlapped, but 43 seconds distant from Verstappen, ahead; his attempt to run 62 laps on a single set of ultrasofts proved futile. “Scoring just a point feels very, very bitter,” Sainz lamented.

Ricciardo aside, his sentiments echoed loud around the streets of Monte Carlo.