2017 Monaco Grand Prix Star Performers

2017 Monaco Grand Prix

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Carlos Sainz Jnr, Sebastian Vettel and Romain Grosjean were F1 Fanatic’s Star Performers of the Monaco Grand Prix. Here’s why.

Stars

Carlos Sainz Jnr

My Driver of the Weekend, Sainz produced the goods when it was needed in qualifying, taking the ‘best of the rest spot’ behind five far quicker cars.

In the race he was quick enough to keep out of Lewis Hamilton’s reach. There’s no way a better result was on offer for him this weekend.

Sebastian Vettel

Vettel unleashed tremendous pace to beat Raikkonen
He may have lost out to Kimi Raikkonen in qualifying for the first time this year but the margin was slight. But it was his long-run pace which made the difference in the end.

Vettel kept close to Raikkonen as the first stint drew to a close, then extracted enough pace from his worn ultra-softs to out-pace his team mate on fresher tyres. The cards fell in his favour as far as traffic was concerned, but Vettel did the heavy lifting and earned his win.

Romain Grosjean

More ‘solid’ than ‘star’, perhaps. But Grosjean deserves a mention for getting his car home in a competitive position at one of F1’s most unforgiving tracks despite clearly still being unhappy with his brakes – he was locking up left, right and centre during practice.

The Grosjean of five years ago couldn’t have done that, and his reward was an eighth place finish. The only driver he lost a position to was Hamilton, and there’s no shame in that for a Haas driver.

Strugglers

Lewis Hamilton

Monaco GP qualifying in pictures
Even before Stoffel Vandoorne binned his McLaren it looked likely that Hamilton wouldn’t make the cut for Q3. This was a serious blow to his championship standing at a track where overtaking is so difficult.

Mercedes played it safe with a vanilla strategy from which Hamilton seemed to draw the most, but the damage was already done.

Stoffel Vandoorne

Deserves some credit for getting his car into Q3. But crashes in qualifying and the race, on a weekend where the McLaren was uncharacteristically competitive and reliable, has to be marked down as a major missed opportunity.

Marcus Ericsson

Crashed during the Safety Car period, which he blamed on hot brakes and cold tyres.

And the rest

Button tangled with Wehrlein on his return
This was Raikkonen’s race to win and he didn’t. Team principal Maurizio Arrivabene suggested he “lost a bit too much time behind a backmarker” which is a bit generous: Button got out of his way immediately, he had the benefit of DRS when passing Wehrlein, and Ericsson was little trouble too. Significantly, Raikkonen had three traffic-free laps before Vettel made his pit stop, during which he lost the critical time which allowed his team mate to get out of the pits ahead of him.

Daniel Ricciardo had some recompense for last year as he benefited from his strategy to finish ahead of Valtteri Bottas and Max Verstappen. He also survived a hefty whack against the Sainte Devote barrier.

After problems in qualifying, Felipe Massa climbed five places to take some useful points for Williams. Team mate Lance Stroll bounced back from a practice crash to reach the chequered flag too, but there were five cars between then.

They were Kevin Magnussen, who took the final point; Jolyon Palmer, who lost a lot of running in second practice; Esteban Ocon, who was going well until he crashed in final practice and went out in Q1; Sergio Perez, who was unhappy about his strategy and picked up a penalty; and Daniil Kvyat, who was assault by Perez.

Among the non-finishers was the returning Jenson Button, who qualified superbly but spoiled his race with a hasty move on Pascal Wehrlein. The Sauber driver was already carrying a five-second time penalty. Nico Hulkenberg might have been among the points scorers but his gearbox failed.

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Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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41 comments on “2017 Monaco Grand Prix Star Performers”

  1. Season Star Performers:
    +5: Vettel
    +4:
    +3: Alonso, Perez
    +2: Hulkenberg, Wehrlein
    +1: Verstappen, Bottas, Sainz, Hamilton
    0 : Giovinazzi, Ricciardo, Massa, Ocon, Kvyat, Grosjean
    -1: Magnussen, Ericsson
    -2: Raikkonen, Vandoorne
    -3: Palmer, Stroll

    1. This is just a summary of @keithcollantine‘s race ratings, but I must add that I totally disagree.
      Alonso should have received star rating this weekend.
      I think we can find a loophole; he participated by being on Button’s board radio ;)

      1. @f1-liners I don’t agree with the article either. Ricciardo was a top performer, especially in the race. It was the first time a Red Bull has beaten a Mercedes in a straight fight. Verstappen was also faster, but didn’t manage to overtake. Frankly, there hasn’t been a single overtake on track apart from the start. So it’s clear that these cars are 1. too wide for Monaco overtaking to happen and 2. too fast. We could see two years ago when the cars were about 3 seconds slower and just as narrow as last year that overtaking did happen. That’s also why this was the worst race of the year for me. Luckily the Indy 500 made up for that and then some.

        1. Lol, Ricciardo a top performer? Outqualified by 0.5 (on the track he is supposed to own) by his teammate and very lucky with team strategy (orders) and not braking his front suspension when he drove his car into the barrier.
          Luckiest driver of the weekend, together with Vettel.

          1. +1

            Ricciardo ended up the podium without doing anything special. He wasn’t fast in practise, wasn’t fast in qualifying, wasn’t fast at the start, didn’t have to follow or (try to) pass any car but still got third place. The only thing he got was what he didn’t get last year: luck. And that’s not a skill.

          2. @dutch-1 Ricciardo was amazingly fast when it mattered, during tose 3 or 4 laps after Biottas and Max pitted. While i do agree that strategy played into his hands and that he was very lucky to not break his suspension after that restart, he still drove perfectly when it mattered.

          3. Ricciardo deserved his podium IMO. Driving in Monaco is very different from elsewhere and if one ends-up behind his teammate on the grid (as Ricciardo did), one has to change his personal strategy during the race to try and get ahead. Ricciardo did that with his pre-stop rush to leapfrog Mad Max and Bottas, knowing well that t Monaco re-passing would be next to impossible.

            I recall Schumacher did that once to beat Damon Hill. Not sure which year.

  2. @keithcollantine I don’t think Stroll saw the chequered flag. If remember correctly he retired in the pit just after the safety car

    Also it seems Bottas went under the radar of everyone, I think he seserved at least a shout-out. Not DOTW performance but still a strong showing.

    Grosjean impressed me, because he spent much of the weekend calibrating his GPS amd then when it mattered he delivered

    1. @johnmilk I don’t agree with Bottas. He was slower than both Red Bulls and seeing Hamilton was able to get himself from 14 to 7 with a good start and a good strategy, it only shows the lacklustre 4th place by Bottas. Granted, the final lap in Q3 from Bottas was mega.

      1. Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
        30th May 2017, 9:10

        @addvariety
        I think the Red Bull strategy worked better for their drivers than it did for Bottas. But yes, Verstappen couldn’t get past Bottas. But if Bottas had been on a similar stratagy, I think he’d have pulled away just like he did at the start. Because of his qualifying performance as well as the race, I certainly agree with @johnmilk

        1. @thegianthogweed What do you mean “if Bottas had been on a similar strategy”? He literally mirrored Verstappen’s strategy and was always more than 5 seconds behind the Ferrari’s and Max was never more than 1.5 seconds behind Bottas.

          In other words: Vettel was being held up by Raikkonen, Ricciardo was being help up by Verstappen and Verstappen in turn was being held up by Bottas. When Vettel got clear air, he immediately pulled a gap, just as Ricciardo did when Ver and Bot pitted. Bottas never managed to close the gap to the Ferrari’s and Sky Sports analysis has shown that the only reason Verstappen ended up behind Bottas was because their pit stop was not that great, they lost 4 tenths compared to Mercedes and another couple of tenths (I believe 7 tenths) in the pitlane compared to Mercedes. That 1 second was exactly the gap he needed, so Mercedes’ team effort was better, but they also showed Verstappen’s out lap was a lot better than Bottas, 1.1 seconds faster to be precise. His second lap (during Bottas’ out lap) was also almost a second faster. Finally, Bottas’ fastest lap during the race was 0.6 seconds slower than Hamilton’s. And Bottas had clean air at least 75% of the race.

          So Bottas:
          1. Was slower than his teammate
          2. Wasn’t able to catch up on either of the Ferrari’s
          3. Wasn’t able to catch Ricciardo after the pit stops (0.7 seconds a lap slower)
          4. Held up Verstappen during the whole race
          5. Lost his podium position due to the fact Mercedes had to mimic Verstappen’s pit stop call, otherwise he would’ve lost position to Verstappen. So either way, Bottas would’ve always lost his position to 1 Red Bull

          All this and you still call Bottas an “outstanding performer”?

          1. Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
            30th May 2017, 17:03

            @addvariety
            “Max was never more than 1.5 seconds behind Bottas”

            Bottas didn’t hold Verstappen up the whole race. He pulled away from him at the start. Once he had done this by lap 8, he was between 1.5 – 2.8 seconds ahead for over 25 laps. Most of the time, it was just over 2 seconds. I recorded the race so I’ve just skipped through the start of it before they pitted to confirm this. At this track, if Verstappen clearly was faster, he should have been in DRS range, which at this point, he only had in the first 8 laps. Once he got over 1.5 seconds ahead of Verstappen, that gap didn’t close up until after they pitted. Anyway, another possible reason for Bottas’s outlap being slow compared to Verstappen’s could well have been due to what Mercedes have known to have trouble with. Just like in qualifying. They struggle to get the best of of the tyres until they had done a few laps. Red Bull and Ferrari seem to be stronger instantly after they pit. I’m not saying this is the case, but it could well be.

            Bottas wasn’t slower than his team mate where it matters most, which here generally is qualifying. He performed FAR better in qualifying and finished several places ahead in the race and the gap will have been huge if it wasn’t for the safety car. There also was plenty of the race where Bottas was faster than Hamilton. I don’t want to say Hamilton had a bad race because he certainly didn’t. But he cost himself many points this weekend.

            I do still think Bottas is certainly deserving of a DOTW vote. He’s got a few here although strangely Hamilton has more. He also has several votes on Planet F1.

            I really do think the Ferrari’s were stronger than the Mercedes virtually all weekend. There was one practice session where they were well ahead, then in Q1 and Q2, they looked stronger. Then In Q1, Bottas came out of nowhere and was 2 thousandths of a second off Vettel and only slightly more off pole. That IMO was actually slightly out performing the car. In the past, this track has been slightly weaker for Mercedes so I really do think Bottas did very well. In the race, he kept reasonably close to the Ferrari’s and Vettel did say afterwards that Bottas seemed to be putting pressure on them early on and it could have not worked out for them if they didn’t pit when they did If Mercedes happened to do something that worked out even better for Bottas.

            Verstappen has been better than Ricciardo over most of the weekend but I think Ricciardo was slightly better in the race, especially towards the end when he pulled away from Bottas that much. He was lucky to get away with his mistake though. But I couldn’t vote him as he did badly in qualifying and looked worse than Verstappen.

            It isn’t just me that voted Bottas and some others such as @johnmilk say they are a little surprised how little Bottas has got mentioned for his performance even if he doesn’t think he’s quite worthy of a vote.

            Yet another point – Verstappen did have a different strategy to Bottas. So Bottas certainly didn’t do this: “He literally mirrored Verstappen’s strategy” Verstappen stopped twice. One during the safety car so he managed to loose no time and catch up to Bottas (who had older tyres) during the safety car period. It was after this that Verstappen was clearly faster than Bottas but still couldn’t get past. I do understand this is difficult though but he did have much newer Ultra softs compared to Bottas’s well uses Super softs.

            If you take a look at the votes on this page here on Planet F1 for drivers of the day, Vettel currently has the most at 48, then Ricciardo is next at 42. Verstappen doesn’t have any.

            http://forum.planet-f1.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=14278

            Now I’m surprised by this. I think they both should have some for driver of the day. If I had to chose one of them, I would vote Ricciardo, but I don’t think he did that much better than Verstappen in the race. But 100% of the votes between the 2 drivers for their performance that day went to Ricciardo. Ricciardo also has over 25% of the votes overall.
            It also looks like more people are voting Ricciardo more than Verstappen for driver of the Weekend which I think is a bit silly. Same with voting Hamilton over Bottas because Bottas clearly performed better where it mattered.

            Hopefully you understand why I think Bottas is deserving of a vote from my explanation. But we can all have different opinions.

          2. @thegianthogweed Wow, what a post! ;-) I have to admit that you’re right regarding the gap between Verstappen and Bottas before their pit stop. You could argue that it has no use to remain with DRS window during the first 32 laps, when you know you can’t pass. Verstappen knows this, as do all top drivers.

            Regarding the DOTW, I voted Ricciardo as well. Exactly like you said: he didn’t do much better than his teammate, but at least his strategy worked and he pulled a gap in the couple of laps after Verstappen and Bottas had pitted. He later admitted he didn’t think he could do the lap times that he did during that period, but he did and that’s what gave him his third place. So I agree he didn’t do much better (than Ver) but the other way around I was a bit disappointed that Verstappen didn’t manage to overtake anybody during the whole race. He wasn’t even able to pull off his 2015 stunt using back markers to pass others. So a little underwhelming.

            Regarding their strategy, I don’t agree (but like you said, we can all have different opinions). Verstappen pitted on lap 33 and Bottas immediately followed the next lap, that’s identical. And yes, Verstappen later on pitted for used ultra softs, but that wasn’t necessarily a different strategy. If it weren’t for the Safety Car, he would’ve stayed on his super softs just like Bottas. And he could also do this without any pain because he had more than 22 seconds of a gap to Sainz in 6th. In other words: he or his team knew they could pit safely without losing a position and then fall back into the gearbox of Bottas thanks to the SC.
            So technically it was a different strategy, but it didn’t make much of a difference. I believe (but correct me if I’m wrong) the difference in qualifying between both tyres was only 0.3 seconds. In the race that would be even less probably, especially when you have used ones.

            Regarding Bottas: I don’t think he did a bad job at all. But what he did was just a regular drive in my opinion, nothing out of the ordinary, a 7 out of 10 so to speak. But he is a great driver, very consistent. I would put him among others such as Massa, Rosberg, Ricciardo, Alonso. Whereas Hamilton is more like Vettel, Verstappen and such. This last bunch takes greater risks in order to achieve the maximum, but it also works against them sometimes. Just look at Verstappen during Monaco 2015 and 2016. I’m not saying one is better, but more that generally people will favour drivers who take risks or have an outstanding performance than ones that are overall good and consistent.

            Fun fact: Toto Wolff has now admitted that he and Mercedes are missing a driver that develops the car. I always knew Rosberg had a huge role in the development, he was also there from the start and immediately held his own against Schumacher back in the early days of Mercedes. This just goes to show that Hamilton is more and more the superstar that just sings/raps on songs that are written and produced by others. I used to be a huge fan of him, but since last year I’ve started to dislike him and like/respect Rosberg much more. That’s another story, but the point is that I hope Bottas will be able to push Mercedes by being at least as good in developing the cars as Rosberg was. In terms of raw speed, Bottas doesn’t match Hamilton and probably never will, the same was the case for Rosberg. But people tend to forget how multiple aspects play a role in F1 nowadays and developing the car isn’t something you can actually see, you have to read the articles and interviews only to find out who is good at it and who isn’t.

            So yes, I do understand your vote. And always great to have a grown-up discussion about this unlike those on YouTube. ;-)

          3. Ben Rowe (@thegianthogweed)
            31st May 2017, 8:57

            @addvariety
            Fair enough.

            I am different in that I often think it is better to be consistent. Bottas if may not have never made mistakes, but if I’m correct, he has never once been responsible for a retirement in his entire F1 career. There certainly are some advantages to this. I think it makes him look more professional in a way. Ricciardo has been liek this too for the last few years. (other than his crash in Australia) I find stupid mistakes resulting in retirements is hard to forget even if they make up for it later in the season. Just because there isn’t really any penalty for drivers for damaging the car. I don’t think Bottas has even been at fault for a crash in practice or qualifying if I am correct. I don’t think even what we consider as the top drivers have achieved that. To me, in that aspect, it does make them look slightly better. But yes, overall, there are clearly many better drivers better than Bottas.

            About Verstappen here in Monaco in 2015 and 2016, he he was impressive. But the quantity of mistakes he made just made it look terrible in the end. There is no point driving like that if it results badly in the end. I don’t think any other driver has crashed that many times in one weekend for quite some time. Verstappen’s over optimistic driving didn’t work out in Monaco in 2015 either. But it clearly works well most of the time as well as here this weekend.

            Bottas may not have had a truly outstanding race, but his qualifying to me did stand out. To me, when including them both, he impressed me the most. On the driver of the weekend page, I described the reasons why I didn’t vote for any of the other top 6 drivers. I seem to be wrong about what Horner said in an interview on Channel 4. I thought he said that Verstappen parked at an awkward angle. So what I said there isn’t true now. Anyhow, I still think Bottas did marginally better including qualifying as earlier on in the weekend, Red Bull did look quicker than Mercedes, or at leased equal. Such as in some of the practice sessions and early in qualifying. For driver of the weekend, I always count qualifying as a bit part of DOTW. One reason why I’m amazed anyone could go for Hamilton.

            I do agree with what you last said. Some of the arguments are really immature on Youtube. Sometimes they go on for simply months and the one who started the argument never gives a clear explanation! :D

        2. No way Verstappen help up Ricciardo. During the race the ideal distance for not ruining the tires and cooling brakes and engine is about 2 seconds. So Verstappen pushed several times within that window and drove at 0.7 to 1.5 seconds behind Bottas but then backed off a little and drove just around that 2 seconds behind Bottas. Ricciardo could follow Verstappen in the beginning but then felt back to 3 to 5 seconds behind Verstappen so to say that Ricciardo was faster during the race is total nonsense. The only luck he had was the free air he got after the early stops of Verstappen en Bottas. But without the full yellows and safety cars he would have ended far behind the two Ferrari’s. I think Verstappen could have done much better then his team-mate, but on this track and with these wide cars overtaking is almost impossible. Hamilton overtook one or two cars, the rest was during pit stops so that makes Monaco more then ever a track that is only interesting to watch who makes a mistake, not who can drive and pass the best.

          1. RIC kept close behind VER for the first few laps – keep close early in case somebody up front has an issue etc, then from looking a the gaps, dropped back to where he could save his tyres (SAI was next car ?) and as most teams planned for the single pit stop between laps 30 – 35, he then slowly closed back up to VER (or did VER and BOT slow down) just before the first pit stops. Maybe he was able to save enough tyre wear during laps 10 – 25 that allowed him to set those very fast laps between 32 – 38. As VES was keeping very close to BOT, maybe they both wore their tyres a bit more and had nothing left. VET alluded to this tyre performance in the post race talk with Rosberg, the tyres start to go off them after a while they come back.

  3. This was a fairly terrible weekend for Pérez. He might have done a good job in qualifying, but his race was subpar at best.

    He had contact with Sainz during the first lap, which is what led him to having to do an early pitstop because his front wing was falling off. Fair enough, he eventually managed to get back into the points, only to bin it with a kamikaze move on Kvyat that ruined both of their races.

    1. And he receives a rating higher than Sainz? Joke

      1. “My Driver of the Weekend, Sainz”

        “Sergio Perez, who was unhappy about his strategy and picked up a penalty;”

        Not sure how you conclude that Perez was higher rated than Sainz.

        1. I think he must have not read the article and then misunderstood the first comment…..

          1. l was agreeing with your point having read the article

  4. I’m generally a fan, but i wouldn’t have a qualm about the Force India drivers being labelled as strugglers. They had a dreadful week end. Occon during last practice and quali (but definitively the best rookie still) and Perez during second half of the race.

    I would put bottas in the stars but I totally agree about Grosjean. This was a mature display. During quali he went fast when it counted and didn’t put a foot wrong during the race while definitively having a car which seemed a handful. Good job.

    1. I think we can give Ocon the benefit of doubt bc. he never before drove here, and looking at Perez, the FI car wasn’t great here @tango, but Perez had a flash of his 2013 Monaco self – impressively fast and good at this track, but to rash to bring the result home.

  5. Fikri Harish (@)
    30th May 2017, 0:54

    This is why I respect Grosjean.
    Sure, he may complain a lot about his car but when push comes to shove, he put his money where his mouth is and put that Hass through Q3 and bag a couple points on Sunday. On Monaco. Which is probably the worst place you could find yourself in driving a car that you have little confidence on aside from Spa during a downpour.

  6. Hamilton should be a star performer for driving that homicidal gog of car to a points finish. It was noy his fault the car has mechanical inconsistencies!

    1. nelson piquet
      30th May 2017, 5:56

      yes this mercedes was 4 seconds slower around that track. and he didnt make profit out of several dnfs. he overtook all by himself in that inferior car. truly the next senna and a real hero

    2. HAM has a similar car to BOT’s, I believe. This weekend it (Merc) was a clear second in Qualifying mode, a third in the race… BOT got to .047 of pole, and their race pace proved there wasn’t much difference between the two cars. Only, BOT seemed to be able to get the tyres to work, while HAM needs to RTFM. OK, that’s a bit exaggerated :)

  7. Q2 really did highlight Lewis Hamilton’s greatest weakness as a F1 driver; his inability to adapt to a less than perfect car and get the best out of it. Where his team mate managed to get his car (in Q3) to within 45/1,000 of pole by carefully warming up and nurturing his tyres (outlap, slow warm-up, quick warm-up, best quali lap), Hamilton seemed dead set to force the car to obey his will, almost crashed and had to abort the *two* laps preceding his final attempt where his tyres were only good enough to be a tenth up on P10 when Vandoorne binned it. Compared with Bottas achievement as well as Alonso’s at Indy, it’s simply not good enough for someone with aspirations to be counted as one of the greatest F1-drivers in history.

    1. Q2 really did highlight Lewis Hamilton’s greatest weakness as a F1 driver; his inability to adapt to a less than perfect car and get the best out of it.

      Good observation but this has not always been the case. TBH, Hamilton did get the best out of a less than perfect car to win in the 2009 Singapore GP.

      But over the years he has got too much into this public image of his, the apparent desire to be seen as a playboy superstar. Quite frankly, his silly Tweets and other PR shenanigans look increasingly immature and third-rate; I am not sure how much time he spends in optimising his and his team’s position between races but it cannot be a great deal. That is in sharp contrast to Vettel whose work-ethic is applauded by even his critics. Vettel is always hanging about his team and tries to be involved as much as possible to get the best out of the next race.

  8. How can Button not be counted among the strugglers? Qualified last, ran last. Even without his other mistakes it looked more like McLaren had hired Badoer than Button.

    1. Actually, Button qualified 9th. He was dropped to last after a 15-place grid penalty for power unit changes.

  9. You mention that Raikkonen had three traffic free laps after his stops BUT fail to mention that it was on the weaker tyre. If Raikkonen had had the strategy that Vettel had, he would have won.

    1. Can you prove that? Because RAI was slow-ish on those US’s. What could be proved is that the 1-2 would’ve been near impossible if they both continued until RIC pitted, and without hindsight you can’t predict a SC where one Ferrari would be forced outside the points if both cars were unpitted…

    2. If Raikkonen had had the strategy that Vettel had, he would have won.

      No, he would NOT have won. In fact, there is every chance that Raikkonen would have finished third behind Ricciardo if they had called Vettel in first, if that is what you are suggesting. But then, most people would have criticised Ferrari for going against the grain and calling the P2 driver in ahead of P1.

      Keith’s analysis is spot-on, unlike the biased double-standards of the likes of Oliver Brown & David Croft.

      – Vettel kept close enough to Raikkonen throughout the first stint and was on hand for both the overcut and undercut as necessary.
      – By lap 30 Raikkonen was clearly losing time not only to his teammate but also Bottas and Ricciardo. Thus, in effect he was backing-up Vettel onto the drivers behind him. But Vettel, as he showed after Raikkonen pitted on Lap 34, still had plenty of pace.
      – If Ferrari had called Vettel in first, Ricciardo would have closed in on a struggling Raikkonen as shown by his pre-stop fast laps. That would have left the Finn in danger of being leapfrogged into P3 when he went in later for his own stop.
      – Finally, the massive pace differential between Vettel and Raikkonen with the SS tyres meant that Raikkonen would have not be able to keep Vettel behind him in the second stint. Note that Vettel built-up nearly 12 seconds advantage before the SC came out and wiped it out but even after the SC went back in, Raikkonen was unable to even stay close to Vettel who promptly pulled away again.

      To put in in a nutshell, Raikkonen did a great job to snatch Pole but simply did not have the pace to win the race itself.

      1. Neil Debacquer
        31st May 2017, 13:49

        Kimi gave up after Vettel pitted and came out infront you would’ve known that if you watched his post race interview so you can’t be sure

        1. Kimi gave up after Vettel pitted and came out infront you would’ve known that if you watched his post race interview so you can’t be sure

          “Gave up”? If he really did that – which I seriously doubt – Kimi has no business being in a top F1 team. The idea is to show that you have enough fire in your belly to fight to get the best possible position. Raikkonen could not have “given-up” all that much in the second stint because he still managed to keep Bottas, Ricciardo and the others at bay. But his pace on the SS tyres was not comparable to Vettel’s, who established a 11.5 second lead over his teammate only to get it wiped out by the Safety Car. That was Kimi’s chance to attack his teammate if he wanted to but couldn’t and Vettel pulled away again.

          1. He clearly gave up

  10. Driver of the weekend – Tiger Woods?

    1. I thought he crashed into trees?

      1. Fell asleep watching the race apparently

  11. Vettel took a well-deserved victory at Monaco this time around. I have to disagree with the majority who believe that Ferrari stole the victory from Kimi. Kimi was in front so he pitted first; this is normally what teams do. Vettel stayed out for another five laps. Kimi’s strategy was the faster strategy, but Vettel’s blistering pace was what I believe caused Kimi’s strategy to fail. Anyway, both make my Performers list for their performances for Saturday and Sunday. Carlos Sainz was also a decent performer; he had stellar pace in quali and the race. Grosjean was able to recover from his problems in quali to finish in a decent P8. Ricciardo had a great race this time around, as his excellent pace before the pitstops made the overcut work. Perez’s qualifying was good, but his race was terrible, as he forced two drivers out of the race. Anyway,

    My Performers:

    Sainz – 5/5
    Vettel – ⅘
    Ricciardo – ⅘
    Raikkonen – ⅘
    Grosjean – ⅘

    The Rest:

    Bottas – ⅗
    Verstappen – ⅗
    Vandoorne – ⅗
    Hamilton – ⅗
    Magnussen – ⅗
    Massa – ⅗
    Palmer – ⅗
    Stroll – ⅖
    Kvyat – ⅖
    Hulkenberg – ⅖

    The Strugglers:

    Ocon – ⅖
    Perez – ⅖
    Wehrlein – ⅖
    Ericsson – ⅖
    Button – ⅕

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