Vettel Wins the Monaco Grand Prix

Petrov is attended to by medics

The final session of qualifying was affected by a late crash by Sergio Perez, he took the wrong line through the tunnel and lost control over the bump at the breaking zone. His car first crashed into the Armco barrier before suffering a more severe impact with the crash barrier. The session was immediately red flagged, which affected drivers who were yet to set a lap. When the session restarted there was enough time for the drivers to complete one hot lap, Lewis Hamilton was amongst the drivers who didn’t set a time before the crash, and his one lap after the crash wasn’t counted as he cut the chicane. With Perez missing the race due to concussion suffered due to the accident Hamilton started down in ninth. Vettel managed to set the fastest time to start on pole, followed by Jenson Button and Mark Webber.

The early part of the race was relatively uneventful, however Red Bull’s usually reliable mechanics struggled with a tyre blanket as both Vettel and Webber pitted on the same lap, the confusion cost both drivers valuable seconds, especially Webber. Hamilton’s weekend went from bad to worse as he was held up by his pit crew not being ready for him during his first stop.

The first safety car of the afternoon was triggered by a collision involving Hamilton and Felipe Massa around the hairpin. Hamilton tried to overtake Massa on the inside but didn’t have enough room and drove straight into him. Massa regained track position, but was overtaken by Hamilton through the tunnel, however Massa’s damaged car lost control on the marbles and crashed into the Armco in the tunnel. Hamilton was later penalised with a drive through penalty for causing an avoidable collision.

With 10 laps to go to the chequered flag the race was finely poised for a classic finish. Vettel was using his controversial blown diffuser to keep ahead, but his tyres had been on since lap 16 and their performance was expected to drop rapidly over the final few laps. Alonso was just behind with fresher tyres and Button was chasing down Alonso with the freshest tyres of the trio.

As the lead trio were approaching a group of six cars to lap them all hell broke loose. Pastor Maldonardo managed to overtake Adrian Sutil through tabac, however Sutil was pushed wide and hit an Armco barrier puncturing his right rear tire. Hamilton tried to avoid him at the entrance to the swimming pool chicane, but went straight into the path of Jaime Alguersuari, who crashed into the rear wing of Hamilton before colliding with the Armco. Trying to avoid the chaos Vitaly Petrov drove his Renault into the Armco. Somehow all three leaders managed to get through the chaos undamaged.

Unsurprisingly the safety car was brought out to slow the remaining cars down to allow the marshals to clear the damage up. However the incident was so serious that the race was red flagged on lap 72, as Petrov had to be extracted from his car. He was later taken to hospital where he was released later that night.

As the cars were not under parc fermee conditions during the stoppage the team mechanics were able to work on the cars, this crucially allowed Vettel and Alonso to change their tyres. It also allowed the McLaren mechanics to repair Hamilton’s damaged rear wing after he managed to drive it through the safety car period.

Lewis Hamilton wasn’t done with incurring the wrath of the stewards, after the restart he tried an optimistic pass on Maldonardo at the first corner which put the Venezuelan in the tyre wall. The marshals were quick to remove the stricken Williams, so a third safety car period was avoided. Hamilton was later penalised 20 seconds for the same reason as earlier, but it didn’t affect his final placing. Later Webber managed to pass Kobaiashi to take fourth place by outbreaking him just after the tunnel. At the front it was fairly processional and the top three were unchanged from the red flag as Vettel crossed the line to win his first Monaco grand prix.

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