Following the signing of a lucrative three year contract with team Mercedes, Lewis Hamilton came to Monaco to win with dominance, claiming his first pole of the principality and leading the race from the very start.
All was going well for Hamilton until Max Verstappen, the 17-year-old Toro Rosso rookie, unexpectedly miscalculated his timing when overtaking Romain Grosjean’s Lotus down the straight and crashed heavily into the barriers. Verstappen escaped unhurt and the safety car was deployed.
At that particular moment in the race, Hamilton had a comfortable 14 second lead, yet he was strangely called in for a preventive tyre change. Such an instruction not only slowed Hamilton down tremendously, but relegated him to third place when he exited the pits following his tyre change, behind team-mate Nico Rosberg and Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel.
The end result was an unexpected win for Rosberg, making him a three-time Monaco winner together with Graham Hill, Alain Prost and Aryton Senna. Vettel finished second with Hamilton in third place.
Was this a deliberate move to demote Hamilton or was it simply a team instruction gone dramatically wrong? What was going on in the minds of Mercedes’s strategists? One wonders why Hamilton accepted the call.
Is it the case that drivers are well and truly controlled by the pits? Can’t drivers decide otherwise? There were only eleven laps to the end of the race; why was Hamilton called in for a tyre change?
Truly speaking, in the case of the Monaco Grand Prix, the actual race tends to be over by Saturday once all the qualifying rounds are over. Overtaking is a somewhat forbidden word on the rather tight Monaco circuit.
Most teams are obviously looking to upgrade their performance but will it be enough to knock the Mercedes team off the top perch?
Only the brave attempt to overtake and when they do, most end up crashing into the side barriers. So Hamilton could have easily remained on the track and no other driver would have dared overtake him.
But can drivers go against their team’s instructions? While the strategic team in the pits might have all the calculated answers, surely it’s the driver who knows exactly how his car is behaving. Lots of questions... very few answers unfortunately!
The win brings Rosberg within just ten points of championship leader Lewis Hamilton. The forthcoming Grand Prix will take place in Montreal, Canada, where speed and grip are of utmost importance to all cars and drivers. This is one track where Mercedes is bound to excel.
Which leads me to pose the question of all questions... will there be a serious contender to Mercedes this season? Most teams are obviously looking to upgrade their performance but will it be enough to knock Mercedes off the top perch?
And what about McLaren Honda? In Monaco, Jenson Button scored his first points for the team which is currently experiencing a nightmare of a season.
Honda’s power unit had been bench tested for over a year, yet the marriage with the McLaren chassis seems to have gone dramatically wrong.
Witnessing the McLaren cars at the Spanish Grand Prix on May 10 was quite astonishing as the MP4/30s seemed to be grinding their engines to a halt at every corner, with pick-up speed dramatically slow when compared to the competition. After Monaco, it also resulted that the engine registered some heavy fuel consumption when compared to the other power units. Every point earned will be a boost for McLaren Honda but come Montreal on June 7, the team will be facing another challenge of reliability and competitiveness.
No doubt, it will be very difficult for any team to keep up with the might of Mercedes; their competitive edge from car to driver pairing is simply incredible. The closest contender might possibly be Ferrari, thanks to their ever-smiling Vettel who seems to be enjoying his new ‘prancing horse’ experience. Vettel’s attitude has certainly changed this year and he nowadays looks much more relaxed than when he was with Red Bull. One has to remark that as a four-time world champion now driving for Ferrari, and with a salary that supersedes his previous one at Red Bull, Vettel could be forgiven for having a permanent grin on his face.
The Montreal GP should be another interesting race, especially if we get that occasional rainstorm. Rosberg will definitely try to continue to close the gap on Hamilton, who fast needs to get over his Monaco mishap.