The Principality holds host to one of the most prestigious races on the calendar. By night its a road by day it's a race track, you can have a drink at Rascasse along with many other corners, the nightlife spilling out on to the track, it's hard to imagine that a mere few hours earlier and later there's 24 drivers racing around the Monaco playground.
Qualifying was an eventful one with a new pole sitter, or shall i say a returning veteran... Michael Schumacher! Sadly though he had a five place grid penalty from Spain from his incident with Bruno Senna so pole went to Mark Webber, which was his first of the year.
Pastor Maldonado is very much a racer with two sides - a fast, composed driver who get's the job done and a fiery, less composed driver; in Monaco (his favourite circuit) during FP3 he was showing the latter and made a dangerous move on Sergio Perez. Maldonado was given a grid penalty, then his team decided on a gearbox change which demoted him to the back of the grid, ironically behind Perez as the Mexican yet again didn't have a good qualifying around the streets of Monaco and crashed out, not setting a time.
The Race:
It was pole sitter Mark Webber that led the pack in to the first corner, followed by Nico Rosberg, who is one of many drivers who live in Monaco however is one that has grown up in the Principality.
The Ferrari's were on the pace at the weekend, with Felipe Massa having his best qualifying of his season so far.
Of course a Monaco GP wouldn't be complete without an appearance of the safety car and it was out to lead the cars by the end of Lap 1 after numerous incidents. The first being Pastor Maldonado getting to close for confort with HRT Pedro de la Rosa, the Williams driver had a battered front nose while the HRT's rear wing looked more like a flat packed box.
Romain Grosjean was the cause of the other incident, banging the wheels of Michael Schumacher and a Ferrari, spinning round and causing many drivers to cut the chicane to take avoiding action.
With the Monaco marshalls doing an amazing job at clearing the debri and cars quickly, the race was on it's way again. A driver who did particularly well was Heikki Kovalainen who was verging on championship points, battling with a struggling Jenson Button. Kovalainen finished in 13th.
Red Bull got tactical with Sebastian Vettel to ensure that Mark Webber would stay ahead and for Vettel to finish in the top 5 with a chance of a podium - The team kept him out on soft tyre's for as long as possible, hoping to jump Hamilton, Alonso and possibly Rosberg in the pits, which was half successful as he got out in front of a frustrated Lewis Hamilton but had to settle in behind Alonso, finishing the race in 4th.
With a fairly standard race in between the first and last laps, as predicted there was little over taking.
Water was the main topic throughout the race; the stuff that falls from the sky and sends teams on the pit wall crazy. 'It's going to rain in 15 minutes'... 'Rain in 5'... *Few drops of rain later*...'No more rain expected'... 'Rain could be coming within the next 10 laps'.... you get the picture, where in actual fact other than a few spots, rain missed the race completely and bucketed it down after.
The last few laps were incredibly tense, with 10 or so laps to go. The top 5 became bunched up, not being able to afford to slip up however it also meant that nobody wanted to pit either and so they all hung on to finish the race. Further down the grid Jean-Eric Vergne took a costly risk, switching to wet tyre's with the pending threat of the rain that never materialised, costing him a top ten finish.
Red Bull brought it home again in Monaco, for the third year in row for the team, Mark Webber finished in 1st which broke Formula 1 records with the 6th different winner in as many races! Perfect excuse's for a third Monaco pool party at the RBR energy station!!
Nico Rosberg made his second appearance on the podium finishing in 2nd place around his home town, in the 3rd spot was Fernando Alonso. Sebastian Vettel who had a brilliant race finished in 4th followed by Lewis Hamilton in 5th, team mate Jenson Button retired.
RESULTS:
Fastest Lap: Sergio Perez: 1:17.296
Podium:
[1st-Mark Webber, 2nd-Nico Rosberg, 3rd-Fernando Alonso]
& Adrian Newey.
Favourite helmet:
Monaco is one race of the year (unless you are Sebastian Vettel) where a few drivers will modify their helmets, glaming it up or tribute's to their favourite driver.
I have two favourites:
Sebastian Vettel's sequin helmet; i like the idea of it and it's a twist on the usual diamonds featured on drivers helmets, apparently it took 15 hours and had over 1,000 sequins, to however made it, hats off to you!
My second is Kimi Raikkonen's tribute James Hunt helmet, i learnt that Kimi is/was a big fan of the late Brit racer and so am i, so naturally i like the helmet a lot as it's a replica of Hunt's.NEXT UP:
MotoGP in Barcelona, a home race for a lot of riders in all three series, let's hope it's a good show for the Spanish fans!
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