Monaco Grand Prix Review

To some degree one could say that Kimi capitalised on Renault's excessive rear tyre wear, on Williams' poor starts, on Ferrari's Bridgestones, but in a year when rubber preservation is key, here was the McLaren MP4/20 coming to the fore. Gone also were the stutters and mishaps of the first few races; this was a perfectly clinical, aggressive, precise and assured weekend from the Iceman. In short, it was seriously impressive. It was the drive of a man who can see his target and is honing right in.

To have driven consistently at his lap speed when he was on a heavy one-stop strategy is nothing short of staggering, and demonstrates the inherent speed of the McLaren that everyone knew was there from the start of the season but is now being unleashed. Moreover, the next race is at the Nurburgring, on Mercedes' home territory, where two years ago (when Raikkonen was last in the championship hunt) Kimi was doing a similar demolition job on the rest of the field when his engine packed up...

But if it's 'game on' as far as one McLaren is concerned, then Juan-Pablo Montoya's first season at Woking is going from the ridiculous to ... the more ridiculous. Having had to sit out two races with his mysterious shoulder injury was bad enough; so too was his error in Melbourne and the refuelling problem in Spain that both probably cost him podiums. But here in Monte Carlo he was playing catch-up as soon as he was put to the back of the grid after he triggered the multi-car pile-up in Saturday free practice.

In the scheme of things, for JPM to eventually climb up to 5th was a decent result, and it was very nearly 4th, for in the last few laps he was crawling all over the back of Alonso's ailing Renault. The R25 certainly has terrific traction off the line and out of corners, but that also meant working its rear tyres way too hard. In that context, their decision to switch to a one-stopper during the safety car with the second stint to last over 50 laps was perhaps not clearly thought-out.

Or would their Michelins have degraded on a two-stop plan anyway? At any rate, Alonso will be starting to get concerned at his inability to match Raikkonen's one-lap or race pace for the second race in a row. It starts to put Renault's wins in the first four races in a different light - were they just a case of picking up victories by default while others, most notably McLaren, faltered? Fernando's defensive driving in the second half of the race on shot tyres was admirable, but he doesn't want to be doing that to win the title.

Perhaps more telling was that Giancarlo Fisichella ran 3rd in the early stages, fell to 5th after his stop, and eventually fell all the way to a lapped 12th. The Italian was not quite on his team-mate's pace, but that kind of slide down the order was quite astonishing. Of course it included losing 5 places in two corners on lap 64, when it was almost as if Fisi was a helpless lamb to the slaughter. Renault need to improve their race pace consistency desperately if they are to maintain their championship momentum.

Two podium finishes for Williams was a great result for the Grove team, but then again the streets of the Principality tend to throw up some quirky results. The litmus test will be at the Nurburgring, where it will be seen if the FW27 is genuinely starting to get on the pace. Two years ago Montoya won at Monaco, and it marked a resurgence that nearly took Williams to their first title since 1997. Time will tell if Sam Michael and friends have really found that extra downforce that the car has thus far been lacking.

Mark Webber was spewing after the race, despite his first podium in 56 races, and understandably so. On average grid positions, the Australian leads the entire field, but yet again more start gremlins left Mark stuck behind a heavy Toyota. Then after the safety car he found himself stuck behind Alonso's fuelled-up Renault, only for team-mate Nick Heidfeld to get the jump on strategy when he was called in first for his second stop, the German's one lap on a clear track making all the difference.

Mind you, Heidfeld was looking good from the middle of the race onwards. Webber might suggest he was just 'sitting there', but whilst the Aussie was expending energy pressurising Alonso, Nick was able to conserve his machinery whilst keeping a watching brief. It was interesting to hear him say after the race that he was able to 'tune up' his engine when he needed to, suggesting that indeed he had speed in reserve for when it mattered. Heidfeld was always more likely to have the better car in the latter stages.

Whereas Webber pushed and prodded, Heidfeld took advantage of Alonso being distracted by Jarno Trulli's Toyota, and got the job done in one go - on the dirty line, whilst still making the chicane without so much as locking a brake. One wonders if Webber would have made the same move equally successfully. You can't help but think that there was an element of copycat when Mark pulled the same manoeuvre. And even then he had to try it twice (although Alonso defended more vigorously as well)!

But without being too harsh on Mark, his podium duck has finally been broken, and surely that has to be a weight off his shoulders. He will only go from strength to strength. Although Heidfeld may have had some of the better results, the Aussie generally has had the upper hand, and for all his edgy racecraft he didn't actually make a mistake this weekend. Moreover, he has scored in 5 out of the 6 races so far and is 4th in the championship, with no reason why he can't maintain that position by year's end.

Toyota has not traditionally been strong at Monaco, and once again their speed was competitive without ever really being front-running. But as for Renault, are some of Trulli's early-season podiums looking a little less creditable, now that Raikkonen and McLaren are showing their claws? The Italian's one-stop strategy had no real pace to go with it and never looked like being a competitive strategy, especially when the safety car bunched the field up and Jarno had to pit under green conditions soon after.

Ralf continues to have a difficult time of it at Toyota. Once he had been involved in that free practice incident, and once he had carelessly put his car into the wall at Tabac on his first qualifying run, like Montoya he was chasing the rest of the weekend. To finish 6th in the end - marginally ahead of his rampaging brother on the last lap - was not too shabby, but was his outburst against Michael after the race, labelling him "crazy", as much a venting of his own frustrations as anything else?

Ferrari may want to play it down and Bridgestone may be keeping quiet, but Luca di Montezemolo is dead right, and there's no hiding from it: Bridgestone are Ferrari's weak link at the moment. Simply there's no one-lap performance, which compromises grid positions and therefore race results, which in turn also hampers qualifying performance for the next race. And as the realisation increasingly sinks in that their title prospects are as good as over, Maranello is beginning to crack under pressure.

Not only that, but Michael's legendary luck is beginning to desert him as well - getting caught up with Coulthard when Christijan Albers spun his Minardi at the Mirabeau is not the kind of thing that tends to happen to Michael. That in turn badly held up Rubens Barrichello, who yet again was midfield anonymity exemplified. There must be so much irritation all round at Ferrari, and it's showing. Rubens stalled in the pits and sped in the pit lane, while Michael crossed the pit exit line but somehow avoided penalty.

And what if it wasn't? Then Barrichello's public attack on his team-mate was crying-over-spilt-milk sulking at its best, although to some degree it is understandable. Over the years, he has seen his claim that he can match Michael come to naught, and this year, even if he can defeat the German, the Ferrari is in a hopeless situation. And, in a cynical moment, doth we protest too much by suggesting that perhaps Rubens' post-race comments were designed to hide the fact that team orders had been used?

It was hard not to feel sorry for Red Bull. Coulthard was definitely set for a decent points haul, especially since he was on a one-stopper. It is hard to say where he could have ended up had the Albers incident not occurred, but perhaps 5th or 6th was on the cards. Meanwhile, Vitantonio Liuzzi has seriously not done enough to keep a race seat, and yet the team will persist with him for one more round before Christian Klien returns to racing action in Montreal.

This is curious. What if Liuzzi performs giant-killing feats at the Nurburgring? Will Klien still get to drive in Canada? Alternatively, has the lay-off from actual racing scuppered the Austrian's form in the early part of the season? Instead of the initial driver swap after three races being an exercise in determining who was better to drive the car for the rest of the season, it looks like Red Bull really is intending to job-share the second car, which, as we've said before, does nothing for either driver's momentum.

REJECT OF THE RACE
Jacques Villeneuve
Idiot move on teammate ruined Sauber's day

We thought about giving Renault our 'Reject of the Race' award for their horrendous tyre wear, but we're not going to miss out on an opportunity like Sauber have. Since his tardy start to the season, we've been waiting for the chance to give Villeneuve the award, even despite his brief redemption at Imola. So here it is - the ROTR goes to Jacques Villeneuve. What's worse, this was one weekend where he in fact looked as though he had the speed advantage over Felipe...

For the first time in a long time, Minardi were clearly not the slowest car in the field. The last time may have been in 1999, when on some occasions they had a definite edge over the Arrows. The PS05 is proving its potential, even if Jordan are simply atrocious at the moment and the black-and-whites are still two seconds off the Sauber-Red Bull battle. In practice and qualifying in particular, Patrick Friesacher was seriously quick, even if at times he looked like an accident waiting to happen.

Which, of course, happened when he crashed in the race, but there had been much to admire about Patrick's performance here, and also in how he has shown Albers the way at times this year. Liuzzi, Narain Karthikeyan and Friesacher are the main contenders for rookie of the year honours at the moment, although none have been regularly impressive. We expected more from Albers though; he is steadier than Friesacher but we thought he had more to offer in latent speed than he's showing right now.

To top things off, there were rumours throughout the weekend that Eddie Irvine was leading a consortium in negotiations to buy the team from Alex Shnaider, mere months after Midland bought Jordan in the first place. If Shnaider is indeed thinking of pulling out, then why? Is it because what he could gain from basing Midland on Jordan, i.e. the personnel and the windtunnel, was not worth the cost of running outdated cars that he's not prepared to invest in?

Or is he thinking of getting out of F1 altogether, having seen the Piranha Club? If so, then that is quite sad, because Midland was a fresh concept in a paddock that doesn't come up with many. But thinking positively, and dreaming for a moment, what if there's an Irvine-run Jordan, a Midland Dallara, and that touted Team Dubai with McLaren support all on the grid next year? A 24-car grid! It seems too good to be true, and, in all probability, it is.