Monaco Grand Prix

Now, with millions of dollars of spent on R&D and the top drivers at their disposal, Ferrari is once again at peak performance and it is the other teams praying for rain to break their hold. 

Ferrari shocked most of the grid with Massa capturing pole at a track that historically favors McLaren.  But, the Brazilian was not able to successfully deal with the changing weather conditions during race and watched Kubica go by and Hamilton score his first F1 win in the Principality.  Third place at Monaco is still an excellent finish (and he didn’t try and block traffic to get it), but it wasn’t what the powers that be in Maranello wanted after qualifying on pole.  But the Brazilian will escape most of the Monday morning quarterbacking by arguing correctly that he did, after all, bring 6 points to the team this weekend, more than his Finnish team mate. 

Kimi Raikkonen didn’t seem to get into the rhythm during the race and almost ended it with ten minutes to go.  He crashed into Sutil, who was driving the race of his career for Force India when the Ferrari force trumped his back wing.  The German was devastated in the pit lane, but became the talk of the normal cynics who saw him fight from the back of the pack to run fourth in what is known to be a weak car.  Expect a better ride in the future for Sutil.

Ron Dennis was ecstatic to be back in front of the cameras and was especially happy not to have to talk about being caught cheating or dealing with the implosion of his marriage.  He gets to hob knob a bit this week, but the speed of the red cars in a slow tight circuit must be on the top of his concerns list after the race.

Rain at Monaco usually means that some of the back markers will have a better shot at TV money for next year, and Red Bull/Toro Rosso were happy with the results that Webber and Vettel managed to post with their fourth and fifth places, respectively.  They definitely took the bragging rights for the also rans this weekend with Honda winning the Japan battle with Rubens Barrichello finishing in sixth ahead of Nakajima-san’s Williams in seventh.  Both Toyotas finished a lap back, but neither were ever a threat to anyone.  Kovalainen captured the last point of the weekend for McLaren, but the lead that Ferrari has built up in the constructors championship will require several DNFs or mid pack finishes to turn it into a horse race at this point.

The real entertainment this weekend was watching the Renault cars with nothing to lose coming out on dry tires when it was practically still raining.  Alonso made the most of it and kept the car out of the Armco.  The same could not be said for Piquet who is still waiting for some of dad’s luck to rub off on him, but this weekend was not to be his week. 

With the season a third done, we’re still seeing this as a Ferrari/McLaren/BMW season with Ferrari seeming to still have the best package at the time.  There will be some frantic development over the next couple of weeks as all of the circus packs up and makes their only stop in North America visiting my hometown of Montreal on June 8.  Hopefully for the fans we will not have flurries like we did in the late 70’s, but there will be more prayers for rain out of Woking… 

 

Race Results

1	HAMILTON	McLaren-Mercedes	2h00m42.742s
2	KUBICA	BMW Sauber	+ 3.0s
3	MASSA	Ferrari	+ 4.8s
4	WEBBER	Red Bull-Renault	+ 19.2s
5	VETTEL	STR-Ferrari	+ 24.6s
6	BARRICHELLO	Honda	+ 28.4s
7	NAKAJIMA	Williams-Toyota	+ 30.1s
8	KOVALAINEN	McLaren-Mercedes	+ 33.1s
9	RÄIKKÖNEN	Ferrari	+ 33.7s
10	ALONSO	Renault	+ 1 lap
11	BUTTON	Honda	+ 1 lap
12	GLOCK	Toyota	+ 1 lap
13	TRULLI	Toyota	+ 1 lap
14	HEIDFELD	BMW Sauber	+ 4 laps
15	SUTIL	Force India-Ferrari	+ 9 laps, accident damage
16	ROSBERG	Williams-Toyota	+ 17 laps, accident
17	PIQUET	Renault	+ 29 laps, accident
18	FISICHELLA	Force India-Ferrari	+ 40 laps, gearbox
19	COULTHARD	Red Bull-Renault	+ 69 laps, accident
20	BOURDAIS	STR-Ferrari	+ 69 laps, accident
FastestLap	RÄIKKÖNEN	Ferrari	1m16.689s

Driver’s Championship Standings

1	HAMILTON	McLaren-Mercedes	38 Points
2	RÄIKKÖNEN	Ferrari	35 Points
3	MASSA	Ferrari	34 Points
4	KUBICA	BMW Sauber	32 Points
5	HEIDFELD	BMW Sauber	20 Points
6	KOVALAINEN	McLaren-Mercedes	15 Points
7	WEBBER	Red Bull-Renault	15 Points
8	ALONSO	Renault	9 Points
9	TRULLI	Toyota	9 Points
10	ROSBERG	Williams-Toyota	8 Points
11	NAKAJIMA	Williams-Toyota	7 Points
12	VETTEL	STR-Ferrari	4 Points
13	BUTTON	Honda	3 Points
14	BARRICHELLO	Honda	3 Points
15	BOURDAIS	STR-Ferrari	2 Points

Constructor’s Championship Standings

1	FERRARI	69 Points
2	McLaren-Mercedes	53 Points
3	BMW SAUBER	52 Points
4	WILLIAMS-TOYOTA	15 Points
5	RED BULL-RENAULT	15 Points
6	TOYOTA	9 Points
7	RENAULT	9 Points
8	STR-FERRARI	6 Points
9	HONDA	6 Points

NOTE: Super Aguri withdrew from the championship after round four.