THE MONACO GP IN 3 KEY MOMENTS
1 A nightmare weekend for Mercedes
To see Lewis Hamilton genuinely failing to reach the top six when it mattered in Monaco was difficult to compute given how flawless he and Mercedes usually are.
Hamilton struggled all weekend. Third in FP2, 0.390s off Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari, was the closest Lewis came to being on the pace. He was 0.726s adrift in FP3, 0.684s off in Q1, 0.519s away in Q2 and 0.749s behind in Q3, classified only seventh in each of those sessions…
He called FP3 “a disaster”, saying Mercedes “completely missed the ball” with its set-up evolution from Thursday to Saturday.
Moncao is a low-speed, low-energy circuit with a smooth asphalt. This makes it extra difficult for a car which has proved to be gentle on tyres to generate sufficient temperature. Add in Hamilton’s natural propensity for protecting the rubber, on top of the W12’s long wheelbase – making it less nimble through tight turns than other cars – and the particularly cool ambient temperatures seen on Saturday, this created a perfect storm.
What confused Hamilton was how team-mate Valtteri Bottas generated better grip. Bottas was fourth in FP3 and never out of the top three in qualifying, setting the fastest time in Q1 and qualifying third, 0.255s off pole. But Bottas is naturally much tougher on tyres than Lewis, a disadvantage at many conventional circuits but a real boon at places like Monaco and Sochi – another smooth, low-energy track.
It should be noted Bottas was struggling too, just not as badly as Hamilton. “I would say tyre warm-up is the biggest issue we have and still balance-wise, a bit of understeer in sector two,” confirmed Bottas. “It’s not big things but the gaps are small and small things matter.”
The race was worse. Hamilton was audibly furious after spending the entire 78 laps staring at Pierre Gasly’s Alphatauri. Toto Wolff talked beforehand of taking “risks” with Hamilton’s strategy, but trying to undercut everyone by stopping early backfired. Sergio Perez’s Red Bull, which also struggled to generate tyre temperature in qualifying, leapfrogged Hamilton, Gasly and Sebastian Vettel’s Aston Martin by running a longer first stint…
Lewis complained, but Wolff maintained it was the right call given Mercedes chose to heat its tyres more aggressively following Saturday’s struggles. “We saw the tyre that came off, and there was nothing left,” he said. “Similar to Valtteri’s car”.
An interesting point, given one of the tyres on Valtteri’s car simply wouldn’t come off. Bottas ran second until heading for the pits at the end of lap 29. He never returned, front right wheel jammed
and unremovable without factory tools.
James Allison explained the wheel gun chewed the wheelnut rather like a Phillips Head screwdriver mashes a screw when not aligned correctly. Poor Bottas really does have no luck at all. Allison described the mood in the camp afterwards as “lower than a snake’s belly.”
2 Sainz bags podium as Ferrari returns to form
The atmosphere was rather better at Ferrari, though joy at Carlos Sainz’s first podium for the team was tinged with regret at what should have been for Leclerc.
Ferrari’s low-speed prowess through Barcelona’s final chicane foretold its potential for Monaco and Sainz was fast from the earliest laps of FP1. When Leclerc topped FP2 despite losing nearly all of FP1 to a gearbox problem, then Sainz finished FP3 within half a tenth of Verstappen’s Red Bull, Maranello’s hopes crystallised further.
Leclerc took pole, but then crashed heavily at the Swimming Pool in the dying moments of qualifying after misjudging his angles and clipping the inside barrier. Ferrari salvaged the gearbox and repaired the car, but damage to the left-rear driveshaft hub wasn’t detected during overnight inspections. The hub broke during Leclerc’s lap to the grid, so he couldn’t take the start.
Once Bottas was eliminated during the pitstop phase, the way was cleared for Sainz to finish second and rescue a podium for the Scuderia.
“Immediately when I left the box on Thursday,
I felt a lot of confidence with the car,” said Sainz, who was texted by former Mclaren team-mate Lando Norris before the weekend, telling him he had a chance to win.
“The team managed to nail the set-up for Thursday – that gave me big confidence. The whole team needs to be proud of it, and take some selfconfidence from this weekend.”
3 Verstappen ends Monaco curse (with Leclerc’s help)
Sainz did his best to threaten through the second stint, but Verstappen was untouchable. The most difficult moment came when starting from ‘pole’ in the second grid slot. Bottas was swifter away but Max closed the overtaking space, so that was that.
Amazingly, this victory was also Verstappen’s first podium at Monaco, after a penalty demoted him from second in 2019. This win also banished the demons of those expensive practice crashes that ruined genuine victory chances in 2016 and 2018.
Verstappen’s RB16B wasn’t well after FP2 on Thursday – too much understeer, said Christian Horner – but Max fought for pole on Saturday until locking up at Portier then aborting his final lap after Leclerc crashed. “We were a bit disappointed after qualifying,” said Helmut Marko. “According to our calculations, Max was already 1.5 tenths ahead.”
It didn’t matter. Verstappen won, and took the championship lead from Hamilton – a major statement after Lewis said Max’s aggression in their battles indicates he has “something to prove”.
“Actions always speak louder than words,” Verstappen countered. “You have to talk on the track. That’s what I like. We, as a team, so far, made the smallest mistakes. That’s why we are ahead.”