Monaco: pre-race 2018


Qualifying was really rather interesting and close. Behind Ricciardo, who dominated it throughout.

Verstappen had buggered his car (crashed in third practice) sufficiently it couldn’t be mended in time. So, he starts last and has a five place grid penalty for a change of gearbox into the bargain. Slightly surprisingly, Magnussen was the slowest man to set a time (the Haas has been oddly ropey all weekend, the only car to struggle to find pace on the hypersoft), with, less surprisingly, Stroll just ahead of him. Hartley and Ericsson were also eliminated.

Q2 was quite interesting in that every driver eliminated came from a different team. Hulkenberg, beaten for the first time straight up by Sainz, was fastest of those departing, a tiny margin ahead of Vandoorne, with Sirotkin close behind. Leclerc managed to qualify just ahead of Grosjean. During Q2 the Mercedes chaps tried qualifying on the ultrasoft, but after the first run both were in the elimination zone so they wisely opted to switch back to the hypers.

In Q3, after the first run, Ricciardo was a day and a half (nearly half a second) ahead of the rest. However, Hamilton was just two-thousandths ahead of Vettel, who was three-thousandths ahead of Raikkonen. Rather close. After the second runs, Ricciardo acquired pole, Vettel got closer but will start 2nd, and Hamilton will start 3rd. Raikkonen will be directly behind his team mate and right beside Hamilton.

Bottas and Ocon comprise row three, but there was six-tenths between them on pace. Alonso and Sainz, separated by two-hundredths, make row four a Spanish affair, with Perez just edging Gasly on the fifth row.

Very rarely does someone win in Monaco who doesn’t start on the first two rows. Lucky safety car timing can help a lot, and passing is very difficult, but Verstappen should have sufficient pace advantage to rise several places on-track.

Naturally, DNFs happen fairly often and can be due to either making a mistake or being unlucky enough to have someone plough into you.

To be honest, the only bet that sprang to my mind was Ricciardo to win. Because he’s the fastest and he starts top. However, his odds are 1.36.

And so commenced the ancient tradition of perusing the markets, hoping something had been horrendously mispriced.

To my surprise, I saw something. There’s a market on Ladbrokes, Winner Without Ricciardo. Each way pays out a third the odds for the top 3 places. I’ve backed both Raikkonen and Bottas at 10 and 19 respectively, splitting a single stake so it’s more or less equally profitable either way (and green overall if either of them is top 3 behind Ricciardo).

The top three teams are miles faster than the rest so it’s highly likely one of them will be at least 4th. If Vettel/Hamilton have trouble, both could do it. If you’re feeling frisky, then a pound or two on someone like Alonso (67) might be worth a look.

Anyway, give this Year of Woe has typically seen terrible misfortune or horrendous misjudgement, I’m intrigued to see how the race turns out.

Morris Dancer

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