2012 Monaco GP - Monte Carlo

[Unc1e_M0nty]

I was so dissapointed with the race I've only just come round to posting.

I get exiceted about all races but even more so with Monaco, yet I never learn, year on year it's the same, a procession of cars following each other round unable to pass, only this year they only run at 90 / 95%

Yes the last 10 laps were very very close, and with rain thrown into the mix it looked like things might change for once, but no, normal service was resummed, half a second behind might as well be half a minute behind on this track, it makes no difference.

If they tried to introduce a new track like this today it wouldn't have a chance, does it have it's place due to all the history ? for me no, I wouldn't miss it if they dropped it from the callendar.

[Miguel]

Two weeks earlier: New tyres were faster than warm old tyres
Monaco: New cold tyres were slower than warm old tyres.
I guess nobody understands the Pirelli tyres.

I think Monaco had a variety of very special circumstances. Which is why, for the first since the Pirellis were introduced, warm used tyres were faster than new cold tyres:

1. We had a two-lap safety car period, right at the start, which allowed cars to burn fuel without burning the tyres.
2. Cars start with the least fuel in Monaco.
3. The feasibility of a one-stop strategy was well documented from last year, and highly publicised during the weekend. Since nobody is going to overtake you there if you have a decent exit from Mirabeau (or is it Portiers?) and people know it, as soon as the car in front of you is one-stopping, so will you, unless your tyres run out much faster than his.
4. Rain was forecast in about 20 minutes. Because noone wanted to get caught off foot between stops against the slower one stoppers, this made everyone a one-stopper. And then, you only really had to force your tyres near the tunnel. Why wear them off if you don't need to?
5. The temperature seemed to drop near the pit window, making harder tyres harder to warm... and you didn't really want to wear them off for the remaining 40 odd laps.

So what I think happened is that almost everyone's tyres were in decent status in the front, with the exception of Kimi's. Kimi made a gap for the forerunners, and they took the chance to get new tyres. Alonso could then use his nursed tyres, and he might have had a strong lap remaining in them. After the pits, since the top 5 were up to the end, at least Webber, and probably the next three, was just managing the gap. See how as soon as it got too close to comfort, they started running faster again. And once Vettel was with them, drive to delta again, with good tunnel exit. After all, Kimi had given the top 6 a very nice gap to the next driver. Why waste your tyres if only Perez is faster?

EDIT: In short, without the weather forecast, we might have seen a few drivers in the top driving a "fast" two-stopper. It's perhaps the first time that rain has made a race less interesting, even if the end was a thriller where nothing actually changed.

[FakeAlonso]

Did anyone feel that McL could have thrown a curve ball around 15-20 laps to the end by bringing Lewis in from 5th and coming out in 6th with brand new super softs when a pit stop window opened behind him caused by Schumis failing fuel pressure. A gamble of dropping one place but this could have forced everyones hand into a second pitstop and therefor overtaken them on the undercut

What makes you think they would have changed strategy and go for a second pit stop? He might have been faster but still is hard to overtake in Monaco. Like Vettel last year.

[McMrocks]

Will a 2 Stop strategy be better for Macca in monaco?

[FakeAlonso]

Will a 2 Stop strategy be better for Macca in monaco?

For the top runners one stop was the best strategy. So even for Massa two stop would have been useless.

[bgroovers]

Did anyone feel that McL could have thrown a curve ball around 15-20 laps to the end by bringing Lewis in from 5th and coming out in 6th with brand new super softs when a pit stop window opened behind him caused by Schumis failing fuel pressure. A gamble of dropping one place but this could have forced everyones hand into a second pitstop and therefor overtaken them on the undercut

What makes you think they would have changed strategy and go for a second pit stop? He might have been faster but still is hard to overtake in Monaco. Like Vettel last year.

I said could have as we will never know. Historically this season we have oftern seen stratergies forced from behind rather than from ahead. For instance Webber struggling on tires at the end of the first stint in China i think forced Hamilton to cover him off by pitting earlier than he wanted to to keep track position which in tern forced button but didnt force Rosberg as he already had a big enough lead to go further. This gave the impression that Merc went way further than the McLs but in reality we dont know because the McL were covering off Webber.
If one team, in this instance McL with Hamilton went for the second stopbecause its a faster stratergy (which on a clear road probably would have been) then the other teams must take that into account. Then again its Monaco! Track position is king! We saw it best in 1992 but again yesterday with Kimi and also with the front 6 cars. What we didnt see was any really counter strategies (more than one stop) from someone that could have finished higher than 5th...

[nacho]

Has anyone else noticed that Lotus are making a habit of staying too late at the track with old tires. Ok it was the rain, but I wish they would sometimes just pit immediately when they reach the cliff. I don't know where KR would've dropped but he surely lost a lot of points again by not having a "normal" strategy.

[bgroovers]

Just looked at the excellent page linked by McMrocks
http://en.mclarenf-1.com/index.php?page ... 20Hamilton

Shows that Fernando saving tires upto lap 17 then blitzing onto back of Lewis on lap 29. Lewis in lap is 1.39.696 ( i believe this includes the pitstop that is only 0.6sec slower than Fernandos). Whilst Lewis pits Fernandos tires start to drop off following his charge upto back of Lewis. His in lap whilst Lewis is struggling to warm up new primes is 3.43 seconds quicker at 1.36.242! Massive difference. Is this because Lewis drove a poor in lap? Its not the difference in pit stop times! So we cant blame the team...
Fernados out lap is then also 0.386 faster than Hamiltons out lap although by then he had track position. The rest of the differnce to the 5.6seconds he made up on Lewis in those 2 laps is the 1.8 seconds he made up by staying out a lap longer than Lewis although this is when he started to experience the drop off on lap 29.
Fernando jumping Lewis was therefor caused by better understanding of when and how to use the tires to best effect by team AND driver...
From the drop off Fernando experienced from lap 28 to 29 they also brought him in at the perfect time rather than get greedy and try to jump the two ahead as well in my humble opinion....
This is very reminiscent of the kind of driving we saw by Schumacher in the refueling era to jump another car. Conserve fuel, whilst bottled up and unable to overtake (due to domination of areo prior to DRS) , get an extra lap to bang in a fast time, emerge several seconds down the road leaving the other bewildered driver to blame his team for pitting too early.... Discuss.

The Ferraris were just faster full stop.

Both Alonso and Massa were able to hound Lewis whenever they felt the need.

As much as people like to say the Ferrari is a dog, the fact that both Ferraris qualified right next to each other while Lewis was clearly not on top and Button was absolutely nowhere shows that the Ferraris just had the pace and the McLarens were struggling.

I could see it right after Q3 ended and I called it on page 33 that Lewis would be under pressure from everyone behind him. If Grosjean didn't crash out, he, Schumacher and the Ferraris would all be there trying their luck. Then there was Vettel on his alternative strategy.

I thought i was praising Alonso and Ferrari on what a great job they didnt and shining a light on how it played out rather than saying the Ferrari is a Dog... Also defending against those that say he threw away the victory by simplistically thinking he could stay out indefinatly lapping faster and taking the lead. He played a super hand and got what i felt was the best he could achieve on the day.
Ferrari and McL are both top cars with Alonso exploiting his package better and sitting at at top of drivers championship.
Button is not exploiting his car. Just as Massa has not been in other races. Buttons style means he is on fire when the balance is spot on and even Lewis or an Alonso cant beat him, but, when the car is not ideal is generally a long way off. His career is littered with this phenomenon. Its why he is not regarded on being as fast but still gets terrific results every know and agian. IMHO...

[bgroovers]

Will a 2 Stop strategy be better for Macca in monaco?

For the top runners one stop was the best strategy. So even for Massa two stop would have been useless.

You say "useless" but he could have pitted for a second stop in the same way as i suggested for Hamilton with even less to loose. He would have still been 6th so why not try it? If you know all the drivers ahead are going to be nursing and close to the cliff at the end and you wont loose a position but potentially be in a better postion at the end why not try it.
It would have made Lewis and McL nervous for sure as he was already saying it was difficult and the top 6 were not able to overtake on virtually equal tires as we witnessed.
He could have forced change on the other teams with potential to get ahead on undercut or overtake and had nothing to loose as he still finished 6th.
I guess no team did this as they all thought/hoped that the rain would come and it would give "their" driver the best chance to move up. No of which transpired...

[FakeAlonso]

@ bgroovers

Ferrari played it safe with Massa and even Alonso so they preferred the easy route.

They could have pitted Massa but why take the risk to push HAM and risk a collision similar to last year so I think it was the best choice for Massa.

I am not sure for ALonso if they were a bit more aggressive he could have been first but with Domenicali Ferrari will be always on the safe side. If someone like Briatore was there maybe we would have seen a more aggressive approach.

[Redragon]

It might be a crazy idea, because of the phycology effort demanded by this race.
But I was questioning myself why not to extend the distance and add 10 laps more,
so they are force at least to stop twice.
What you think?

[elFranZ]

If someone like Briatore was there maybe we would have seen a more aggressive approach.

Or even Massa crashing at Rascasse, who knows...

[i70q7m7ghw]

Something else I noticed is everyone is much more likely to accept points this year instead of fighting for position. I think we saw this at Barcelona. Alonso felt the points of second position were worth more than fighting Maldonado for the victory, as it was likely Maldonado wasn't going to be a title contender. Lewis' approach this year is similar, he hasn't even won a race yet, and he keeps talking about good points finishes being key to winning the championship. Perhaps they are right, but is the racing suffering as a result?

With the championship so close this year, and the relative performance of the cars being close, everyone seems to be thinking about the next race. They accept good points in one race on the basis of a better chance at the next race.

If the championship stays this close all year it will definitely get interesting at the end of the season when drivers start taking more risks.

[FakeAlonso]

If someone like Briatore was there maybe we would have seen a more aggressive approach.

Or even Massa crashing at Rascasse, who knows...

As long as Alonso wins for Briatore thats ok.

[kemalcan]

Hint: They're not going to strip Alonso's podium...

And... People blaming Grosjean for driving into Schumi. Really ?!? What was he supposed to do ? He got banged from the right and a racing driver's reflex to that is obvious. Too bad Michael was there. The odd thing is, had Michael not lifted (which was also a reflex) his car wouldn't have lost it's speed and Grosjean's rear left wouldn't have made contact. It could've given Grosjean a vital tenth of a second to go to right again. But I don't think Grosjean and Schumi are at fault at all.

Always complaining after Alonso beat Hamilton. You wouldn't argue about the start incidence if Hamilton finished ahead of Alonso. Blaming Alonso for a racing incident which happened at the start (most possible time and place for contacts) with Hamilton's mistakes of last year is just an indication of being in full of hatred against Ferrari and Alonso.

Even Hamilton started to change his attitude this year and accept his past bad behavior and try to keep calm and matured every time he interviewed after poor performances of this year, you better reconsider your imaginary facts about punishments against Hamilton.