Monaco: post-race analysis 2021

Well, that was a procession. But a green one. And there was a smidgen of strategic interest among the hour and a half or so of televisual Horlicks.

Before the race even began Leclerc was out. His drive shaft had not survived fully intact and failed, apparently, during the formation lap. This lead to a DNS and the odd fact that Verstappen still started from the number 2 slot on the grid.

Off the line Bottas went well but Verstappen aggressively (but fairly) cut across to hold onto the lead. A lead he never truly relinquished.

Cue the procession.

Bottas ended up DNFing in the weirdest of ways. He came in for a pit stop only to have a nut so crossthreaded it was irreparable and his car could not resume racing. Bizarre.

Aston Martin get bonus points for being very smart. Hamilton was brought in for a pit stop, but his swapping of soft tyres for slower hard tyres left him open to other cars banging in hot laps (as most were cruising to conserve the rubber the majority of the time). Both Gasly and Vettel did this. It enabled the Toro Rosso driver to stay ahead of Hamilton and Vettel to leapfrog the pair of them. Not only that, Stroll was out for ages on his tyres (I forget if they were medium or hard) and simply waited until he had a pit stop window to retain his 8th (at the time of writing he’s under investigation for crossing the pit lane on exit but it looks like he should be ok).

Verstappen achieved a flawless victory, and Sainz was impressive in 2nd. Norris seemed nailed on for 3rd but his second set of tyres were not to his liking and Perez, who had leapt ahead of about four cars by being able to bang in hot laps when everyone else pitted, put him under pressure, but the Briton and Mexican kept their places.

Vettel scored his first points with easily his best performance at Aston Martin, and Gasly got 6th in an assured drive.

Hamilton should be grateful for the two big hitters who failed to score because he ended up 7th and really should’ve been 9th. He got the fastest lap but otherwise looked like an also ran this weekend.

Stroll is 8th but that may change if he gets lumbered with a penalty. Ocon got 9th, with Giovinazzi 10th.

Ricciardo was lapped by Norris, which isn’t a great look. Like Hamilton, a talented driver who had a weak weekend.

Kudos to both Mr. Sandpit and Mr. B for no safety car and Ferrari bets respectively.

However tedious the race was (very), it does have significant implications for the title battle.

Verstappen 105

Hamilton 101

Norris 56

Verstappen takes the title lead for the first time. He perhaps should’ve been in the lead after Hamilton crashed but got flukey with a red flag a race or two ago. But he now has a slender 4 point margin over Hamilton. Red Bull are also 1 point ahead of Mercedes, with McLaren just 2 points ahead of Ferrari in the battle to be best of the rest.

In a fortnight we’re off to Azerbaijan. There might just be some ridiculous crashes.

Morris Dancer

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

F1 2014 - Second and Third Tests

Image
Bit of a whopper of an article, but it didn’t make sense to write two for the Bahrain tests, as they were so close together. Many of the rule changes are helpfully outlined here: http://www1.skysports.com/f1/news/22058/9077826/gearing-up-for-2014-the-rule-changes-uncovered-and-explained-part-one This is one more reason why reliability is to critical. Losing a whole power unit (exceeding the 5 per season limit) means starting the next race from the pit lane. Losing a component, such as the turbo, means a 10 place grid penalty. On day one of the first test in Bahrain it appeared the Renault/Red Bull woe might continue. However, both Red Bull and Toro Rosso got in good running on the second day. Any remaining issues seem more to do with the car rather than the power unit. It’s been suggested the Renault requires significantly more cooling than rival engines, but apparently there are upsides. If the horsepower rumours were true (Mercedes being mighty and Ferrari better
Read more

Japan: early discussion

Image
As we enter the latter stages of the season we have multiple pairs of back-to-back races, hence this discussion starting a day after the Korean Grand Prix (which may be the last, incidentally. The circuit’s too isolated, surrounding developments haven’t been built and the organisers are annoyed by the high cost of staging the race which is the only use of the circuit all year). The Suzuka circuit is a proper one, with lots of elevation changes, a very fast flowing section (similar to Silverstone) and some very high speed corners. Sadly, I expect this will mean it’ll suit Red Bull. However, given their resurgence, it’s worth mentioning that last year Sauber had a strong result at Suzuka, when Kobayashi got third. Perhaps Hulkenberg will be able to get good points again (thanks to him Sauber are now tied on points but ahead of Toro Rosso in the Constructors’) and Gutierrez could nab his first point or two. Lotus benefited from some fortune with the safety car timing in Kore
Read more

America: pre-race

Image
Q1 saw the pointless teams ditched as usual, but there was a stark divergence between the Williams’ drivers. Bottas was 1st (in Q1 only), and Maldonado 18th. Turns out money can only buy seats, not speed. Surprising to see such a difference between the two drivers, though. Sutil went out in 17th, and may have suffered some sort of technical problem as he peeled off after his final lap. During Q2 it was confirmed Sutil had a problem, namely a slow puncture. Q2 saw the surprise departure of Rosberg. The Mercedes seemed to be the best of the rest, so that’s quite a shock. Not only that, he’s 14th, behind Ricciardo, Di Resta and Button (although Button suffers a 3 place grid penalty for ignoring red flags during practice). Massa is behind Rosberg, followed by Vergne. Impressively, Sauber got both of their cars into the top 10. Q3 was surprisingly close, but Vettel narrowly got pole ahead of Webber. Grosjean continues his strong form with 3rd, followed by Hulkenberg, who is
Read more