Lewis Hamilton and Daniel Ricciardo star in F1's showpiece as Nico Rosberg becomes undone in a race of crashes, collisions and chaos
Monday 13 June 2016 12:14, UK
As much as the Monaco GP was a race lost by Red Bull's pit-stop calamity, it was a grand prix won by Lewis Hamilton as a deserving victor. Critical to his win was the decision - made by the Mercedes pitwall in consultation with Hamilton's feedback - not to pit for intermediate tyres and, before that, the 10-second gap he built up over Nico Rosberg after being let through. Without that gap, which Hamilton then maintained despite running on used wets when Rosberg had been fitted with fresh inters, the tactical gamble that pressurised Red Bull into their pit-stop blunder wouldn't have been feasible.
Jubilant Hamilton: I earned it
"I was on it all race," said Lewis afterwards. In fact, he had been on it all weekend, from the first minutes of Practice One as long ago as Thursday when he immediately put a second's worth of lap-time between him and Rosberg - a staggering margin straight out of the box, on an incremental track like Monaco and when running on tyres he had never used before. Those blistering P1 laps were the definitive statements of a genuine and massive natural talent.
Rating out of ten: 9.5
Daniel Ricciardo did everything he needed to do to win his first Monaco GP. The agonising catch for him was his Red Bull team didn't.
Ricciardo is a happy-go-lucky kind of guy, but his steel shouldn't be underestimated and his understandably dejected reaction to having F1's blue-riband race snatched from his grasp - and by of all things, a pit crew without tyres - underlined he possesses the requisite competitive spirit to go with his natural charm. The race should have been his, but in this kind of form it shouldn't represent a one-off chance.
Right from the early laps in Thursday practice, the Australian's was 'on it' around the Principality's tight twists and turns. Flicking the RB12 in and out of the corners with panache, his half-second Practice Two advantage over Mercedes seemed to surprise even his own team. His first career pole on Saturday was just rewards for that pace and he then looked in a class of one in the tricky wet opening stages. Ricciardo may not have won, but when a triple champion tells a worldwide TV audience you're "one of the best drivers I've driven against" his self-belief should remain unshaken.
Rating out of ten: 9.5
If it rains in Monaco, you should get prepared for a surprise. The only thing is, it's not really a surprise for Sergio Perez to punch above his weight anymore.
Ever the opportunist, this was Perez's sixth career podium and one he fully deserved. While he was helped out by Force India's pitstop strategy, jumping his team-mate as well as Sebastian Vettel and Nico Rosberg, the rest was all down to him.
After coming in before his rivals and opting for the soft tyre, the Mexican kept a four-time world champion in a Ferrari at bay with consummate ease. He was consistently lapping faster than the front two, and the rest of the field, at one stage. No wonder he sensed an unlikely race victory.
Perez is reportedly close to signing a new contract with Force India but with displays like this, maybe he's worth another punt for a leading team. A popular P3.
Rating out of ten: 8.5
A curious weekend for Sebastian Vettel and Ferrari.
After a "scrappy" Thursday, when the German twice tagged the barriers, the SF16-H appeared transformed in the early stages of Saturday's running and Vettel looked set to challenge Red Bull and Mercedes when he topped P3 and then Q1.
But fourth on the grid prompted another of the former champion's now-famous radio outbursts and, after holding his grid position in the race's wet early stages, Vettel blamed himself for losing the final podium slot to Sergio Perez. "I think I could have done better when I stopped and I came out behind Felipe [Massa]," he said. "I apologise because I couldn't get to the podium,"
The solace Vettel can take from his fourth place is he has now taken 21 points out of Rosberg's championship lead in the last two races. But with his deficit still standing at 46 points, unless Ferrari can start winning - and quickly - it's hard to see how a title charge is going to materialise.
Rating out of ten: 7
On a day when drivers at both ends of the F1 experience spectrum came a cropper in Monaco conditions widely described as 'treacherous', was anyone really surprised Fernando Alonso stayed clear of all that chaos and delivered McLaren's best result of the season?
Sneaking into the top 10 in qualifying may have proved a relative disappointment for a team who clearly had slightly loftier ambitions on a track where their Honda power deficit is negated, but fifth in the race was surely better than either team or driver could have expected.
"Once we'd switched to dry-weather tyres, there was still only a very narrow dry line on the track, so if you went just half a centimetre off that line, you'd crash," he said. "There was just no room for mistakes today." For the umpteenth time in his career, Fernando didn't succumb to any - and even took the scalp of a Mercedes.
Rating out of ten: 9
Only Adrian Sutil, Pierluigi Martini and Philippe Alliot have started more F1 races without a podium than Nico Hulkenberg. At his 102nd weekend, the luck just wouldn't fall his way.
Hulkenberg manage to split the Ferraris with P5 in qualifying, a superb performance, but was brought into the pits by his team before Perez. This sent him into traffic, a nightmare in Monaco, while his team-mate found clean air and stole the plaudits.
The German admitted it was "very frustrating" as he had the pace and that it felt like a "huge missed opportunity".
He was able to finish the race on a high, making the most of Rosberg's lack of grip in the late rain to take P6 off the championship leader. He can't be accused of losing focus.
Rating out of ten: 8.5
Just where did it all gone wrong for Nico Rosberg in Monaco? 'Behind the Safety Car' would be one useful and reasonably-accurate answer given its race-starting deployment immediately set in motion a vicious cycle of low tyre temperatures, slow laps, cold brakes and an aching lack of confidence. "I am very curious to see the summary of the data about what actually happened," said team boss Toto Wolff before applauding his driver for allowing Hamilton through. "A real team player", said Wolff, although others may draw a different conclusion to Rosberg no offering objections to surrendering to his solitary title rival.
Hamilton thanks 'gentleman' Rosberg
Such a response - cheap point scoring, frankly - would be both unfair and a misjudgement. Appreciating that Rosberg felt unable to object instead offers a far more telling insight into how utterly helpless he felt in the car on a weekend when, in rain and dry, he never once appeared to be comfortable let alone a match for Hamilton. "I was miles away," he conceded. Bouncing back from this will be a tough ask in Canada.
Rating out of ten: 5
On a weekend when his newly-promoted former team-mate was struggling to keep it out of the barriers, and his newly-demoted current one was continuing his tumultuous season, Carlos Sainz was a model of consistency throughout the Monaco weekend.
Not that the Spaniard was thrilled about an eighth-place finish. "Lost an opportunity of podium today due to two slow pit stops," he tweeted. "Finished P8. Not good enough."
Sainz, who qualified a fine sixth, had been running one place ahead of eventual third-place finisher Sergio Perez, but dropped down to seventh after a slow first pit stop. Alonso then jumped him during the later switch to slicks.
Still, having convincingly put Daniil Kvyat away in their two races as team-mates, Sainz's star continues to be in the ascendancy.
Rating out of ten: 8
Though Jenson Button acknowledged that the wet weather helped McLaren seal another double points finish, once again it is his team-mate who earns the accolades.
Button was one of the first drivers to risk the intermediate tyre in the rain and, while it was a move the rest of the field followed and he was able to improve his lap times, the move sent him back into traffic. Manoeuvring past Pascal Wehrlein's Manor proved a tough task.
"In terms of communication between the team and myself it wasn't good enough really," Button told Sky F1.
On the soft tyre, Button couldn't get close to the chasing pack headed by Alonso - but neither was he challenged by Felipe Massa behind him. A step in the right direction as ever for the Briton and his team, but Stoffel Vandoorne's presence certainly leaves doubts over his 2017 seat.
Rating out of ten: 7
But for crashing into the St Devote wall - a popular spot for the Brazilian, who crashed in the same place twice in 2013 - at the start of Thursday practice, Felipe Massa's presence this weekend would have been negligible.
His race performance was steady enough, bringing home his Williams in 10th to save the team the indignity of failing to score a point in the year's showpiece event. A decent effort, if no more than that, for Felipe on a circuit which resolutely fails to suit the characteristics of the Williams car.
Rating out of ten: 6.5
And the rest...
If it had continued raining, a first points finish for the season was well and truly on for Esteban Gutierrez. He was comfortably in ninth in his Haas, even setting fastest laps of the race at one stage.
But unfortunately for the Mexican, the second half of the race proved much more difficult. Slick tyres didn't give him the same performance and he only equalled his joint-best 2016 finish because of Valtteri Bottas' time penalty.
"When we changed to the ultrasoft, I was struggling to get the confidence from the car," he said. "In Monte Carlo, when you don't have the confidence, it pulls you back quite a lot."
Rating out of ten: 6.5
Incredibly, Valtteri Bottas is still waiting to score his first points at the Monaco GP with his chances of doing so this year compromised by a rear jack failure at his first pit stop. Up until then, the Finn had been running in ninth having outqualified Massa again, but the problematic stop left him clogged up behind Manor's Pascal Wehrlein.
So it was his Williams team-mate who took the final point, with Bottas dropped from 11th to 12th in the final standings after a 10-second time penalty for tangling with Esteban Gutierrez. Williams will have better weekends.
Rating out of ten: 6
Romain Grosjean just couldn't catch a break this weekend. His qualifying session was waylaid by twice going out on track during Q2 behind a Mercedes car; because its superior aerodynamic efficiency requires less track speed to bring the W06's tyres up to temperature, Grosjean found himself in the rather unusual predicament of complaining the W07 was too slow for his liking.
There was to be no such wry irony on race day, just warranted bafflement at Kimi Raikkonen bizarrely blocking his path after crashing at the hairpin. "What the hell was Kimi doing?" Romain shouted over the radio. Answer there came none - except, perhaps, that sometimes it's just not your weekend.
Rating out of ten: 5
Pascal Wehrlein's debut racing at Monaco won't live long in the memory - with the four penalty points he picked up on race day arguably the most news-worthy aspect of his weekend.
Outqualified by Rio Haryanto again - they are now surprisingly tied 3-3 on Saturdays - a longer first stint on the full wets, which saw him rise to 11th in the order, moved Wehrlein ahead of his team-mate. He actually finished ahead of Romain Grosjean Haas' lkon the road, but a two 10-second time penalties dropped him back to 14th ahead of just the sister Manor.
Rating out of ten: 5
A lonely race for Rio Haryanto.
He can take solace form out-qualifying his team-mate again, but another finish at the back of the field won't do much for the Indonesian's confidence. Reports of a lack of funding are also putting a question mark over his 2016 campaign.
Haryanto felt he kept the pace in his first two stints, before losing a lot of time and temperature on the slicks as the blue flags were waved. He didn't ignore them like others, at least.
Rating out of ten: 5
Did not finish: Marcus Ericsson, Felipe Nasr, Max Verstappen, Kevin Magnussen, Daniil Kvyat, Kimi Raikkonen and Jolyon Palmer
