Monaco Grand Prix Review

The biggest story coming out of the race is how McLaren man-managed the tension between Alonso and Hamilton, which has been simmering for a while but is now threatening to break out like a teenager's acne. In terms of raw pace, once again Lewis had the better of Fernando in Monaco. The rookie's lurid, drifting style in practice and qualifying was not only spectacular - and it was unbelievable that it only resulted in one crash - it was definitely quicker than his World Champion team-mate.

But it was Alonso who took the pole. True, pole at Monaco is nine-tenths of the way to the race win, but Fernando was beaming more than usual in the post-session press conference. It was as if he felt he had finally struck a psychological blow, for the first time in a while. In contrast, Lewis protested a bit too much about being blocked by Mark Webber, who had in truth baulked the McLaren slightly but, given that this is Monaco, had got out of the way as quickly as was reasonable.

Hamilton rattled on about the Australian in his usual disarmingly friendly way, but the point was made - he felt that pole position, and perhaps the race win, was rightly his. That was a shift in attitude from the beginning of the season. But from here truth and fiction started to get distorted. Hamilton also promised that he would fight Alonso at the first corner, and rivals hoped for some Senna-Prost style argy-bargy. It never happened; indeed, Lewis tucked in behind Fernando the moment the lights went out.

Perhaps this was because, as was stated after the race, Hamilton was supposedly fuelled five laps longer than Alonso, and originally on a one-stop strategy. Hang on a minute - Hamilton started on the harder tyre, and if he was one-stopping, that obliged him to run 40-plus laps on the graining super-softs. That did not seem realistic. Eventually, he was 'changed' onto a two-stop plan, for apparently some incomprehensible reason to do with the safety car that made no sense to anyone apart from Ron Dennis.

What was myth? What was reality? Who knew - it was all lost in the Ronspeak. And it is this that makes the FIA's investigation a bit strange. Nothing as blatant as Austriagate in 2002 has happened since the 'no team orders' rule was introduced. Team orders are such a matter of nuance, and 'hold position' directives are nothing new, although usually later in the race. If there is indeed a line between allowable strategy and illegal team orders, it's far too blurred for the governing body to reach a conclusion.

Besides, the article the FIA are invoking refers to fraudulent conduct or acts prejudicial to the sport. Sure, what McLaren did made a boring race even more dull, but no-one - apart from the Fleet St tabloid press who have frenziedly jumped onto the Hamilton bandwagon in their usual sickly way - thinks McLaren have done irreparable damage by race-fixing. Worse will result from the inconsistency if the FIA punishes McLaren having taken no action against others previously (*cough*Ferrari*) for doing similar things.

No, the real issue is what's going on internally at McLaren. If they did try to shut down the battle whilst Alonso was in front, was this an act of appeasement for a champion starting to feel a little betrayed by his new team? Although they are a near-comfortable 20 points clear of Ferrari in the constructors title already, Hamilton and Alonso are only 5 points ahead of Felipe Massa. How McLaren tread this fractured and increasingly-fine line between their two stars could have a major bearing on the title outcome.

Aside from the McLaren ructions, there was little else of interest in the race itself, a race that was robbed of excitement due to some safe driving and the dreadful ultra-reliability of modern F1, such that the 2007 safety car rules still haven't been properly tested. Massa finished a lonely 3rd, a minute behind the front two. He could match the McLarens over a lap, but not consistently. Indeed, only a terrific last lap in qualifying put him onto the second row when his real place looked to be somewhere around 5th or 6th.

In the same way, Giancarlo Fisichella, who starred quietly in the Renault by starting and finishing 4th, will question if this was a Monaco one-off or if the new front wing they introduced for the R27 really will work wonders. Relatively, this was the highest Renault have been all year, but in time terms they were as far away from the front of the field as ever. And once again Renault head-honcho Carlos Ghosn is making noises about the company's long-term involvement in F1 ...

5th down to 9th in the final reckoning were all taken by one-stoppers. Once Nick Heidfeld had swept up to 5th at the first corner and in effect backed up the field, whilst the two-stoppers ahead of him skipped away merrily and maintained their positions all race, the two-stoppers behind him were never going to have any track position advantage and could kiss their afternoon goodbye. Indeed, BMW's gamble to put both Heidfeld and Robert Kubica on a one-stop strategy was a reasonable gamble.

If they had chosen a two-stopper, their pace in segment two of qualifying suggested that they could have matched Massa and challenged for the podium. But they bet on the possibility of a safety car, say, a third of the way into the race. At that point the leading two-stoppers would have pitted - but only after the field had been bunched up. The BMWs could then have been up front, holding up the field, with everyone only having one further stop to make, and sitting pretty.

It didn't turn out that way, so the Munich-Hinwil co-operative had to be content with beating whoever they managed to hold behind them in the early stages. As between the two BMWs themselves, Heidfeld pitted comparatively early and Kubica comparatively late, and so the Pole ended up in front in a classic case of 'he who pits first loses out'. Likewise, as the two-stoppers shot themselves in the foot, Alexander Wurz was elevated to 7th, Kimi Raikkonen to a precious point in 8th, and Scott Speed to 9th.

Raikkonen can thank all sorts of factors other than himself for somehow scoring a point in 8th that leaves him 15 adrift of the McLaren drivers and 10 short of Massa. His Q2 error that broke his steering arm and left him parked a la Schumi at the Rascasse was a silly one. He still hasn't quite got the hang of the Ferrari, he seems ill at ease with Massa's form and Schumi's presence in the team, and he hasn't had a McLaren-beating performance since Melbourne. Whisper it - is Kimi out of the title chase already?

In some ways, you could argue that Speed deserved the last point more than Raikkonen did. This was a fine performance from the American, who once again showed that in race trim he is perhaps a better bet than team-mate Vitantonio Liuzzi, even though Liuzzi was brilliant in qualifying and Speed was out after Q1 again. The problem is that Scott is just not a total package, and that is what frustrates his employers. But there is no doubt the Adrian Newey chassis is improving in the hands of both Red Bull teams.

Honda will no doubt be hitting the bars and casinos to drown their sorrows after committing the strategic equivalent of hara-kiri. Here at Monaco where aerodynamics don't matter as much, their improved form showed that perhaps their mechanical grip is OK. Both Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button got into the top ten in qualifying, both made a late first stop, and both could have scored points if only they didn't have to stop again. Which they did.

What we call the 'half three-quarter' strategy works at most normal racetracks. Make your first stop late, leapfrog over earlier pitters, then run like hell on lighter tanks in your second stint to maintain your advantage at the second stop. But Monaco is not normal. Traffic and other factors mean you can't exploit your car's pace fully. So in their middle stint, when they needed to sprint, they were stuck doing a one-stopper's pace behind the BMWs, and when they pitted again they flushed their points down the toilet.

REJECT OF THE RACE
Ralf Schumacher
Running last an odd place for the 3rd-best driver in F1!

Mired in 13th and 14th were David Coulthard and Heikki Kovalainen, which was ironic given that Kovalainen was disappointing all weekend and still hasn't silenced those doubters who think he's overrated, but Coulthard had the speed to be higher up except that he was stuck in midfield because of his penalty for blocking Kovalainen during Q2. DC blamed his team for telling him incorrectly that Kovalainen was in fact on an out lap when in fact the Finn was on his flyer.

Sounds plausible - until you think about it. The team should have tweaked to the fact that the Renault was not on an out-lap because they wouldn't have seen Heikki follow DC out of the pits. Even if they missed that, a quick glance at the timing monitors would have revealed that Kovalainen was on his quick lap. The recklessness of Red Bull was then compounded when the stewards only dropped Coulthard down several spots on the grid, instead of leaving him in 16th, because it was not his error but the team's.

The usual penalty would be to erase a driver's three best times in the session, which in Coulthard's case would have deleted his Q2 times altogether. There is no reason why that punishment should not have been applied. Instead, the stewards have now set yet another ludicrous precedent that will see drivers blaming a miscommunication from their teams whenever they block someone else in qualifying. Not to mention the fact that how the stewards determined that DC should start 13th remains a complete mystery.

Speaking of complete mysteries, then there's Toyota. They have a history of doing not very well at Monaco, but this year they were simply embarrassing. Even Jarno Trulli, whose only win came on these streets back in 2004, failed to make the top 10 on the grid for the first time all season and never had much of a hope starting 14th. But as for Ralf Schumacher, the German missed the first cut in qualifying again, made a poor start, and spent the first stint running last and applying no pressure to the Spykers.

Super Aguri could not repeat their Spanish GP heroics after both Anthony Davidson and Takuma Sato missed the first cut in qualifying, although Sato blamed a timing cock-up in leaving the pits. Actually, a relatively poor performance here does not surprise; the Honda was uncompetitive at Monaco last year as well. Davidson then made things worse by getting a drive-through penalty for ignoring blue flags, as his season of rapid speed mixed with errors in equal measure continues.

Spyker had the distinction of becoming the first team other than McLaren and Ferrari to top a practice session this year thanks to Adrian Sutil, but that was due to the vagaries of the weather during Saturday free practice. If nothing else, though, it confirms the German's innate ability. Once again he had the upper hand over Christijan Albers, but Albers also continually gets the raw deal in terms of Spyker's reliability problems, and it was also not an entire surprise to see Sutil's afternoon end in the armco.

Neither Spyker saw the chequered flag, and the only two other cars that failed to do so were those of Webber and Liuzzi. Until Albers stopped late in the race, Webber's Red Bull had been the only retirement due to mechanical failure. It was yet another heartbreak after Mark had qualified 6th, despite the fact that he was struggling with set-up in sector two and Coulthard was perhaps a touch faster. After his pain at Williams, how long can the Aussie keep up pushing to the limit only for his car to fail him?

Liuzzi had stunned everyone in Q1 by going 4th quickest, but he couldn't improve on his lap time and slipped to 12th on the grid, which was still a superb effort. A tap by Coulthard and the resulting deflating tyre sent him into the wall early, but one wonders what strategy he was on. If he was on a one-stop plan, and his Toro Rosso hung together, then given how Speed managed to finish in 9th, a points finish in around 7th might not have been out of the question.