Monaco Grand Prix Review

In a year when the other two emerging superstars of F1, Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso, have both stamped an emphatic mark on the sport, JPM needed to reassert himself, just as the Williams FW25 proved to be less than wonderful, and just as the relationship with BMW began to sour. In Melbourne he threw the win away by his own hand, but in Austria a water leak conspired to thwart him yet again. Juan-Pablo would have been well justified to wonder if the stars would be in alignment ever again.

But all that raw ability was not to be denied its second triumph any longer. An excellent drive of controlled aggression saw Montoya break his 25-race losing streak, and Williams claim their first win in over 14 months. In another sign of how F1 is coming out of the doldrums, JPM was the fifth different driver in seven races this year to taste victory, and Williams the fourth different team. And there are still nine races to go. Last year, in 17 events, only four drivers and three teams shared the spoils.

Admittedly, for a season that has been enthralling thus far, the Monaco GP promised more than it delivered. The nature of the track meant that all passing was confined to the pit stops, and an unusually high level of reliability saw the top four teams - Williams, McLaren, Ferrari and Renault - monopolise all eight points-scoring positions, giving no-one else a look-in. When the points system was revised at the start of the season, perhaps the FIA had not expected Renault to join the top three to create a big four.

In creating a new pit and paddock area the changes were definitely good, but now Ste Devote and all four corners at the swimming pool did not have an armco at the apex, but only a kerb that was all too easy to leap over. For sure this decreased the challenge of the track. Over the years, many drivers have found the outside wall after misjudging the entry into Ste Devote; that will now never happen again. The gentler approach to the Rascasse also took away one of the trickiest bits of tarmac anywhere in the world.

So instead of the race of attrition that we have become accustomed to, this was just a race like any other, but one in which tyres played a major role yet again. In the past two years, Monaco was one place where the Michelin 'sweet-spot' phenomenon was more graphically illustrated than just about anywhere else. This year, from Saturday onwards, the Michelins emerged as the more suitable and more consistent tyre, and surprisingly the Bridgestones were the ones that seemed to come and go depending on fuel load.

Of course, in 2003 both rubber manufacturers are able to bring various compounds depending on what suits their respective teams better. Perhaps, with three of the big four (Williams, McLaren, Renault) and one of the 'best of the rest' teams (Jaguar) on their books, Michelin have been pushed to a greater level of development and improvement. Whereas with only Ferrari and, much less importantly, BAR as the competitive teams on their customer list, Bridgestone risk falling behind their rivals.

As such, this was a genuinely competitive outing for Williams. And to be fair, apart from the Spanish GP, their package has improved a lot since returning to Europe from the fly-away races, despite the rumblings of discontent from the Munich side of things. Perhaps by season's end, the FW25 will be fighting the F2003-GA and the MP4/18A for wins on a regular basis, but Williams' slow start to the year may mean the title is out of reach. Still, hopefully this result will heal the rift between team and engine partner.

Having said all that, Ralf continues to disappoint. His pole time and early laps were fabulous, but a poor in-lap before his first stop saw him drop to 3rd by the second stint, and he lost out to his brother at the second stop to finish 4th after experiencing balance problems. Add to that also the embarrassing three-point turn after locking his brakes at the Rascasse, and Ralf continued his season of having finished every race between 4th and 8th, but as we've said before, Williams are not employing him to score minor points.

On the other hand, whereas in some races he's off like rotten eggs, at Monaco Montoya proved that he can run consistently and quickly over a full race distance. After a good start that saw him relegate Raikkonen to 3rd at Ste Devote, he was able to push harder when he needed to, and his 1:15.166 before his first stop effectively won him the race. That, plus excellent work by his sometimes-mediocre Williams crew at his second stop, which kept him ahead of a charging Raikkonen. All in all, a very well-deserved victory.

Still, with that kind of pace in his McLaren, it was sad that Kimi didn't make more effort to pass Montoya on the road. It seemed, from the body language of the car and from his post-race comments, that he simply gave up hope of getting by anywhere other than the pits. Such is the malady that seems to afflict the modern F1 driver. Nonetheless, with a 6 podium finishes from 7 GPs, Kimi still leads the title chase, although under the old system he would be equal with Michael Schumacher but behind on count-back.

Meanwhile, in the exact opposite to Williams, David Coulthard has gone off the boil since returning to Europe, and surely now McLaren are pinning their title hopes on Kimi alone. DC made the mistake of changing his car for worse before second qualifying, and under the new rules found himself stuck with the set-up for the race. He hounded Jarno Trulli from the second stint onwards, almost collided with the Renault in the pits, and then found Alonso sweeping by both at the second stops, leaving him a lowly 7th.

Coulthard now ranks 6th in the all-time points-scoring list. Schumi is way out in front with 989 career points, ahead of Alain Prost on 798.5, Ayrton Senna on 614, Nelson Piquet on 485.5, and Nigel Mansell on 482, with DC next up on 425. Somehow the Scot seems grossly out of place in such illustrious company. Someone who claims every year that that year will be his year, but who can never deliver, just doesn't seem to rank with high achievers of the calibre of Schumacher, Prost and Senna.

As such, their eventual tactic of making two stops but running longer first and second stints were the best possible option. Had Michael not been stuck behind Trulli during the first stint he may have been in with a chance, but he too didn't look as though he was madly keen on passing the Renault on the track. From 5th on the grid, passing four cars in the pits was always going to be a tall order. As it was, leapfrogging Trulli at the first stops and Ralf at the second to finish an eventual 3rd was as good as he could ask for.

He did close right up on the leading duo in the closing stages, just to make a point, but Michael must hope that Bridgestone stays on level terms with Michelin for the rest of the year. Meanwhile, Rubens Barrichello was rather anonymous, starting and finishing 8th, never troubling the men in front for 7th, and not showing the Michael-beating pace that he had on occasions last year. Perhaps, now that Michael is in a real title fight for once, the attention at Ferrari is once again becoming very unevenly divided...

With less emphasis on top-end power, and with the R23's superb aero package, Renault was always going to do well at Monaco. Alonso has been blotting his copybook with a few mistakes of late, such as his second qualifying error in Austria, his poor Thursday qualifying at Monaco, and his minor crash in Saturday free practice, but his race speed is nigh-on unbelievable sometimes. The way he nonchalantly picked off both Trulli and DC at his second stop showed once again what a fabulous racer the young Spaniard is.

Trulli only held off DC by virtue of a close shave in the pits when both came in together, and the Renault lollipop man let Jarno out just in time to squeeze back in front of the McLaren with inches to spare. You have to feel sorry for the lollipop man. He is caught between the interests of safety in the pit lane, and the interests of his own team and driver. If an accident ensues, he gets the blame for letting his man out. If he holds his man back, he is lambasted by his boss for being a coward. It's a no-win situation.

And so the top four teams locked out the top eight places, but if anyone could have intruded, that man was Jenson Button in the BAR. 2nd in Thursday free practice and 3rd in first qualifying, he looked like continuing his points-scoring and Villeneuve-thrashing form. That is, until his sickening crash on Saturday morning, hauntingly similar to the crash that put Karl Wendlinger in a coma for almost three weeks. There must have been a few jangling nerves when it took 10 minutes to extricate Jenson from his car.

Feeling nauseated after the accident and admitted to hospital overnight for observations, it was the right decision for Button not to race on Sunday. Having to start from the pit lane, with minimal chance of points, what would it have served for him to compete? Besides, the 76 laps of the armco canyon makes Monaco a nauseating place to drive around at the best of times anyway, let alone when your head's still spinning after an accident which exerted 30g on your neck muscles.

The other big news from BAR, though, apart from the silly rumours that the cars were going to be impounded after the race because of an old sponsorship dispute with former backers Teleglobe (as if David Richards would just allow that to happen without a bevy of lawyers putting up a massive fight), was that Jacques Villeneuve had acceded to George W. Bush's road-map to Middle East peace, followed the about-face example of Ariel Sharon, and smoked the peace pipe with team-mate Button.

Perhaps Richards had become sick of the ongoing bitchiness and ordered the two to start working together, or perhaps Jacques was simply stung by being awarded 'Reject of the Race' in Spain, but the Canadian was certainly speaking of Button in more genial terms. Not that that stopped Jenson from having the upper hand until his crash. And not that it ended Villeneuve's run of reliability woes, but until his Honda engine blew he was running a lonely 9th anyway and not pressuring for the points he would never have got.

With Button out of the picture, the Australian was a clear 'best of the rest', but he jinxed himself by saying after practice how Jaguar had had a trouble-free build-up. One feared that they were saving up their problems for the race, and that's exactly what happened, with both Webber and Antonio Pizzonia retiring within six laps of each other before the race had hit quarter-distance. Mark's consolation would have been that, although he was able to keep pace with Barrichello, it was unlikely he would have broken into the top 8.

Having said that, a super result for Jaguar seems just a matter of time. The same doesn't apply to Jordan. They had their fluke in Brazil, but it's clear that the EJ13 is not a competitive proposition, regardless of the skills of Giancarlo Fisichella. And the same also applies to Sauber, which at least didn't try to fool anyone by a low-fuel qualifying run on Saturday. Frentzen's first lap crash, which brought out the safety car, was ridiculous and careless, and earned him our 'Reject of the Race' award.

REJECT OF THE RACE
Heinz-Harald Frentzen
Rookie mistake from 4th most experienced driver in the field

One hopes that the injection of funds will give Minardi some much-needed development and performance improvement, because the PS03s remain bottom of the pile. They were faster than the Toyotas on Thursday qualifying, but that was more to do with the red and white cars being crap. On a one-stop strategy, Paul Stoddart reckons they would have finished in the top 10 were it not for their near-simultaneous retirements, but even if that were the case it would have been a morale-boosting result but little else.

Finally, Toyota ought to leave Monaco red-faced. The other Michelin teams were right up there; why Toyota can have some weekends when they never come close to sorting the car out is not only a mystery, it is a worry. Cristiano da Matta continues to run steadily without setting the world on fire, but for a man who brilliantly won the 1996 Monaco GP, Olivier Panis was bitterly disappointing, running last pretty much all race. Will he now get more votes in our current F1 Rejects poll?