2012 Monaco Grand Prix
- Webber wins close Monaco Driver of the Weekend vote
- Monaco GP receives lowest rating of 2012 so far
- Williams were capable of top five in Monaco, says Gillan
- Top ten pictures from the Monaco Grand Prix
- Vote for your 2012 Monaco GP driver of the weekend
Jay Cooper (@coop)
27th May 2012, 14:53
For me that was an extremely boring race.. It was like playing follow the leader and all about tire preservation!
Jay Cooper (@coop)
27th May 2012, 14:54
as a side note I’m thrilled at Webber’s win :)
Eggry (@eggry)
27th May 2012, 14:59
Not so much action but it was piercing. really.
Eggry (@eggry)
27th May 2012, 15:03
Great race from Webber, Nico, Alonso, Massa as well. While Hamilton’s failure is not his fault, Button is simply disappointing. Vettel’s strategy scared me a bit(:D) but I’m pleased with the result. BTW Mclaren should do something to pit work!
Slr (@slr)
27th May 2012, 15:10
Feel really bad for Schumacher. Why does Lady Luck hate him so much?
VettelS (@vettels)
27th May 2012, 15:13
Monaco is his Schumacher’s 5th race this season that has been ruined by someone else or car issues.
Guilherme (@guilherme)
27th May 2012, 15:42
Australia: gearbox problem
Malaysia: hit by Grosjean
China: pit stop failure
Bahrain: DRS failure in Q1
Spain: crashed out, his own fault though
Monaco: grid penalty, hit by Grosjean again, had to retire later.
I guess Lady Luck is charging Schumacher for all the time she’d played more than fair on him throughout his glory days :P But yeah, I can’t wait for Schumacher to have a clean weekend when the car has the pace. Rosberg will probably definitely finish ahead on points again, but this is the first time I think Schumacher deserved to be ahead.
necrodethmortem (@necrodethmortem)
27th May 2012, 15:47
Exactly. Karma for all the connerie he has pulled during his career.
dkpioe
27th May 2012, 16:23
schumacher is receiving Karma for all his indescretions in his career. i feel no sympathy for him, the way i see it, he has 2 points and rosberg has 59 and is being paid much less. he has also made his own luck this race when he speared Senna in the last race. so 2 races in a row he scores less then he should through his own fault
Robbie (@robbie)
28th May 2012, 13:19
@dkpioe…agree very much (not sure I believe in the Karma thing but about his hit on Senna making for his own luck in these two most recent races)…
sumedh
27th May 2012, 15:12
The only drivers who did something substantial after lap 1 are Alonso and Vettel. Alonso did a great job jumping Button and Vettel tried his very best on an alternate strategy and could have won had the rain arrived at any time between laps 30 and 50!
dirgegirl (@dirgegirl)
27th May 2012, 17:01
I assume you mean Hamilton, not Button? The latter would have been delighted to be fighting a Ferrari rather than a Caterham (and losing).
Oople
27th May 2012, 15:12
Was hoping for a bit more chaos down front… Just helping Kovalainen get Caterham’s first points :P
ed24f1 (@ed24f1)
27th May 2012, 15:17
Fantastic drive from Webber – followed the old Jack Brabham adage of winning in the slowest time possible!
It looked like after Bahrain and Spain that he might be slipping back into his 2011 tendencies, so it’s great that he was able to bounce back.
BasCB (@bascb)
27th May 2012, 15:18
Liked the race, as it was again quite a bit different from what we had so far this year.
Pretty tense, a bit of driving on a slick track and only some 4-5 passes all race!
MahavirShah (@mahavirshah)
27th May 2012, 15:23
A pretty ordinary race and I doubt if rain would’ve spiced things up or not. Seeing how everyone could easily defend their position even on worn out tyres I doubt that last year the result would have been different even without the SC.
That said Webber drove a clean race while Rosberg pursued efficiently. Nothing more can be said about the race or individual drives. Di Resta and Hulkenberg giving Force India’s best result this year was extremely pleasing to watch.
On an amusing note, it is entirely possible that the best drive of the race was by Karthikeyan. He finished 15th and being 8 laps down it meant that he had to avoid a train of 5-6 cars every time for 8 laps without impeding them. Good job for me.
All in all an unspectacular race on a circuit where the history is more interesting than the actual racing.
Antonio Nartea (@tony031r)
27th May 2012, 16:30
He finished 2 laps down. Button was classified 8 laps down on 16th.
Nirupam (@nirupam)
27th May 2012, 15:24
I did not expect much on-track action anyway, but this is still not at all exciting for me. Brilliant drives by Webber and Vettel though, with Fernando always there
carbon_fibre (@carbon_fibre)
27th May 2012, 15:27
If Vettel didn’t cut the first corner he would have finished much lower.
Guilherme (@guilherme)
27th May 2012, 15:44
If Vettel didn’t cut the first corner he would have crashed into Grosjean and finished 24th -.-
Coanda (@ming-mong)
27th May 2012, 16:05
I think he may have made a position up on Kimi though but I’m not 100% sure. How did others see it? Kimi went left & Vets went cut right which he had to do. Obviously the shorter of the two routes. Id like to find some footage to have another look to see who was in front at the time of the accident…
Massive well done to Webber! Nice control.
egsgeg
27th May 2012, 16:45
If he had given the two stolen positions back, he would have been stuck solidly behind Kimi and MS. Cant believe they let him keep his position after gaining so much by cutting the corner.
Coanda (@ming-mong)
27th May 2012, 17:38
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTLpn9UItNQ
After another look it all looks fine. Vettel is marginally ahead of Kim (see 2:04min mark) and on the inside line. Hate to say it but he really had nowhere else to go.
carbon_fibre (@carbon_fibre)
27th May 2012, 18:02
You ‘re right ,my arguement is invalid.And the gap he had closed to the Ferraris didn’t matter because of the safety car.
Santiago Ontanon (@santiontanon)
27th May 2012, 15:27
Quite surprised at how hard it is to overtake here. Can’t believe Button couldn’t get past Kovalainen for so many laps!
Todfod (@todfod)
27th May 2012, 20:00
It’s definitely not easy passing here as overtaking involves a little bit of wheel banging. Perez pulled a few nice overtakes, but Button didn’t have a clue of how to actually pull an overtaking maneuver on this track
Jason12
27th May 2012, 15:29
Are Redbull and Ferrari the only teams that know anything about STRATEGY and PIT STOPS??
FernandoL
27th May 2012, 15:57
I think Red Bull team is the only one that knows about strategy. If Alonso had stayed longer on track after Hamilton pitted he could have passed even Weber, not only Hamilton. I was watching his sector times and he was much faster while the rest struggled with their tires. He would have set the fast lap by far.
Jason12
27th May 2012, 16:23
You’re absolutely spot on, it seems most teams just panic rather than analyse the current situation, and make decisions based on that.
And these guys are supposed to be geniuses :)
@HoHum (@hohum)
27th May 2012, 23:51
You are being a bit harsh, no-one knew the primes would take so long to heat up, what Ferrari did was “cover” the opposition and gain a place rather than take a risk and lose out, see Torro Rosso try something different after leaving tyres on to long.
Eggry (@eggry)
27th May 2012, 16:26
I’m not sure Ferrari knows strategy but they definitely learned from what happened in Spain.
AndrewTanner (@andrewtanner)
27th May 2012, 17:02
I think that’s a fair result based on on-track performance. It also keeps the championship nice and fresh. Awful for Schumacher, hopefully he can carry some speed from qualifying to Montreal. I imagine that will be a good track for them.
Lotusfan
27th May 2012, 18:59
It was a great race, specially for Mark Webber, but very bad for the earlier winner, Pastor Maldonado. Monaco’s street circuit proved again that a good start and survival through the first corner are the key elements for winning or successing through the race.
Michael Schumacher’s lost pole position was a little bit frustrating though, because it would have given a lot of extra spice to the race if he had the possibility to start from the pole – to let everybody see if his nerves are still working like they were when he was younger. But for Mercedes, Nico Rosberg had a good start for the team. The Finn gave a lot of pressure in the end to Mark Webber, as did Fernando Alonso for Rosberg. The ending laps were luckily exciting, but probably not exciting enough.
Only thing we missed was a heavy rain at the end. It would have made the ending of the race very dramatic and possibly led to the similar show we saw back in 1996. It is a shame that Monaco does not give good opportunities for passing – even when DRS is there today. Anyway, a great victory for Mark Webber, who proved to be a specialist at the nerve-breaking Monaco street circuit.
JamieFranklinF1 (@jamiefranklinf1)
27th May 2012, 19:35
The Finn? Rosberg is German…lol.
wilky (@wilky)
27th May 2012, 19:33
Scrap drs but insted if your in the detection zone you get a full kers charge insted then drivers can use it where they please and the other driver cant use kers to defend (unless they were within a second of the car infront) whould this work better???? Also make people who dont go out in q3 use the tyres they got there lap in q2.
suka (@suka)
27th May 2012, 20:59
I’m annoyed by Grosejan banging against other’s drivers’ cars at the starts.
The guy should have known better by now.
hays33d (@hays33d)
28th May 2012, 1:02
I respectively disagree with that assessment. That incident was caused by Hamilton being slow off the line, Alonso bolting left to get around him, pushing Grosjean left as well into Schumacher who moved up along side him. Grosjean had two choices. Keep his ground and let Alonso hit him or move left. Schumacher wasn’t all the up as evidenced by his front right hitting Grojean’s left rear, breaking his suspension and putting him into the spin.
BasCB (@bascb)
28th May 2012, 7:06
They even touched wheels when Alonso went for an opening that really was not there (from his on boar, you see how Grosjean is almost completely next to him). Only thing Grosjean might have done wrong there was that he moved over too far to avoid and did not see Schumi (no wonder when he was watching Alonso).
Robbie (@robbie)
28th May 2012, 13:59
Agree with @hays33d and @bascb
James Robertson (@mclarenboy0310)
28th May 2012, 0:30
Did anybody else see at the end of the race on BBC where JH DC & EJ were outside McLaren garage and the team had high vis McLaren tops? I really want one!
damonsmedley (@damonsmedley)
28th May 2012, 15:54
Ricciardo is listed as having retired due to an accident. Is this correct? I saw him park in the garage, but I never heard the reason for it!