MONACO — Your worst fear Lewis Hamilton And Fernando Alonso came true on Sunday when the Monaco Grand Prix produced the largest race of the year Formula one history. For the first time since the championship began in 1950, the top 10 finished in first place.
Interesting story of Ferrari Charles Leclerc eventually won his home race After years of heartbreak comes a glorious end to what was once a disastrous event at the most famous race venue this side of the Atlantic.
Conflicting feelings. While Leclerc tried to hold back tears of joy at the end of the racechampion leader Max VerstappenRunning uncharacteristically down the order in sixth place, fought back other tears.
“F— me, this is boring,” he said in a radio message to the Red Bull wall in the race’s opening stages. “I should have brought my own pillow!”
Ahead of the weekend, Verstappen’s old rival Hamilton asked the media how they stay awake to watch the annual Monaco Grand Prix. That same day, Alonso said that Monaco was the highlight F1 week of the year, right up until race day.
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Hamilton and Alonso are among a group of drivers who agree that F1 would not be the same without the Monaco Grand Prix and that something may need to be done to improve the spectacle of the championship’s most famous race.
Verstappen had his own suggestions on what needed to change on Sunday night. The championship leader spent most of his race behind Hamilton’s Mercedes teammate George Russellboth drivers operated well below the limits of their respective cars in an attempt to get their tires towards the end of the race.
Russell’s radio communications were equally critical of the ongoing race.
“At this stage we get nothing from driving fast,” he told Mercedes with 68 laps still to run. Hardly anything you’d expect to hear from someone competing in a top racing series.
Monte Carlo’s narrow, twisting roads and the ever-increasing size of F1 cars have cemented the race’s reputation for monotonous racing in recent years, but even by the standards of the Monaco Grand Prix, this race is still very bad in terms of quality. An extenuating circumstance turned the blur level up to 11.
Red flag on Lap 1 due to collision involved Sergio Perez, Kevin Magnussen And Nico Hulkenberg, causing the race to be suspended. Due to violation of F1 regulations, teams can change tires in the meantime. This meant that when the race resumed more than half an hour later, each driver had made the one tire compound change prescribed in the rule book and could, in fact, get to the end of the race without stop.
“It was a very static race,” Red Bull boss Christian Horner said. “The top 10 is as it was when it started. … The red flag effectively killed the race, because everyone was trying to make it to the end.”
It’s not just Russell and Verstappen who drive slower than they should. A little further, RB’s Yuki Tsunoda dropped even further to eighth place. From the start, three groups formed: Leclerc and the three chasers behind him, then the group of Russell, Verstappen and Hamilton, then the rest of the guys behind Tsunoda.
Williams driver Alex Albonwho secured his team’s first points of the season in ninth, was the rider stuck just behind RB throughout the entire competition.
“It’s frustrating because he has speed, he has too much speed,” Albon said of Tsunoda after the race. “I thought, we can all manage, I’m happy to manage. We don’t need to manage this much. We already manage so much. I thought, ‘Oh my God , I can go out and ride my Vespa around here .’
“I mean, it’s so slow. It’s painful. It’s really hard to concentrate when you’re driving that slow because you’re not even close to anything. You’re not close to any limits.” . He absolutely passes at that level.” when the race ended and I thought, ‘You could have done this the whole time!'”
When asked whether the regulation on changing tires under red flags needs to be considered in the future, Albon said: “We need to calculate [something] outside. Or maybe if it was a red flag Lap 1 there might have been a pit stop or something.
“Honestly, it worked in our favor, so I’m not complaining about that, but that’s part of it. The middleweights at the start of the race just…I think they could have kept to the finish within the first few laps.”
The fact that the pace increased towards the end shows another problem for Monaco. Verstappen was one of the few to make a pit stop, which he was able to do thanks to the huge gap Tsunoda had created, but after easily catching Russell on the new tyres, he got stuck again and couldn’t even move up. fifth place.
Russell and Verstappen don’t always see eye to eye, but they appear to have shared a bonding moment about their lack of interest in racing, a topic of conversation that is likely to attract attention in 12 months until the next F1 race in Monte Carlo.
A transcript of their interaction, recorded while Verstappen was being interviewed by ViaPlay, is as follows:
Verstappen: I think George and I will go for a run now because we don’t really have any exercise. My God! That’s terrible. Boring! Well, anyway.
Russell: At least a little more interesting at the end. I was afraid we would puncture our tires if we drove too slowly.
Verstappen: Alright. You can’t pass, so…
Russell: We need to do something. They need to change something for Sunday. Mandatory stop, I don’t know.
Verstappen: About five or something!
Russell: Yes, five!
Interviewer: Refuel?
Russell: Refueling, yes. `
Verstappen: Mandatory naps! I do not know.
Russell: A round walk!
Interviewer: Going to the bathroom?
Verstappen: I need to go to the bathroom, yes. It’s bad. I went, fortunately, everything was fine!
While there are clearly some satirical suggestions, the prospect of a format or track tweak for the next Monaco Grand Prix must certainly be considered once the 2024 event takes place. Horner thinks the prospect of improving Monaco’s main event will be high on the agenda of F1’s decision-makers.
“It’s something we should look at together,” he said. “It’s not like a race where you’re only driving about three or four seconds off the pace because the other car has no chance of overtaking. Monaco is a great place to do racing, but the cars now too big.” that we just need to consider, ‘Can we do something to introduce an overtaking zone?’ Or at least the ability to overcome it? Because the top 10 is exactly the same as when it started on the grid and there’s not a single overtake in the top 10.”
However, F1 will have to carefully consider any changes to Monaco.
A statistic spread on social networks a few hours after Leclerc’s victory: In the Formula E race around a slightly different version of the Monaco track earlier this year, there were more than 200 overtakes. It’s proof that F1’s bigger cars are to blame, some say, while others say it’s proof that the track could be adapted to suit racing better .
But the Formula E race at Monaco should provide a cautionary tale. It’s nowhere near the world-famous equivalent of F1. Part of the reason is that Formula E is a new race that doesn’t have a history comparable to the Monaco Grand Prix, but there’s another reason why fans aren’t flocking to see all-electric cars around the circuit. streets of Monte Carlo. : they just don’t look very good. These cars don’t awe in the same way an F1 car moves around narrow streets and in the process the kind of mystique F1 can create at different times during the weekend just isn’t there.
There is a prevailing school of thought in some corners of the paddock that the sport can always have dull racing on Sunday at the Monaco Grand Prix as long as Saturday’s qualifying event is outstanding . And, as noted last weekthe spectacle of a flat circuit at Monaco remains one of the greatest things you can see in modern Formula One.
“We’re always more excited when we qualify because everyone knows it’s a really important session,” Tsunoda said on Sunday night. “Maybe more than a normal race, qualifying has more value and we got into the top 10. Obviously the race is hard to pass and maybe less spectators pass or whatever, but I think this is Monaco, and this is why the qualifiers are more special than other tracks.”
Is that enough for everyone to see?
