F1 2016: Red Bull hand Hamilton Monaco GP victory

Defending F1 world champion Lewis Hamilton has won the 2016 Monaco Grand Prix for Mercedes, as Daniel Ricciardo had to settle for second as Red Bull botched his pit stop.

On a day when the race track looked more of a water canal credited to the down pour, the 78 lap race started behind the Safety Car with all drivers setting on the full wet tyres.

After the initial eight laps of the race, the safety car went into the pits for the cars to finally go racing. Initially, only a few took the gamble to swap for intermediates. while most of the grid was happy on the wet pirelli tyres as the track was significantly still wet.

At the front was the Red Bull of Ricciardo pulling away from the Mercedes duo, with Nico Rosberg ahead of Hamilton in second. Rosberg held up Hamilton for a significant duration of the early stages of the race as he was struggling to get his brakes up to temperature. But on lap 16, Hamilton found a way past his team mate and onto charge at Ricciardo.

The pivotal part of the race was when Red Bull called Riccardo to the pits for the intermediate tyres. Mercedes decided to keep Hamilton out on the full wets instead and take the lead.

Hamilton seemed to be struggling on the wets on a drying track. Ricciardo on the other hand, for obvious reasons, looked more confident on the inters and started closing in on Hamilton. Hamilton stretched his stint on the wets up to lap 31 when he pitted for the ultra soft compound tyres.

Red Bull called Ricciardo in to cover off Hamilton on the following lap, but the pit mechanics were not ready with the Ultra Soft tyres. Ricciardo was left stranded in the pit box for a significant amount of time to Hamilton. As he finally managed to exit the pits, it was extremely close, but Ricciardo came out behind Hamilton in second place.

Hamilton didn’t lok quite confident on the slick tyres as much as the Ricciardo seemed to be liking his in the Red Bull. But the Brit was determined to win and kept Ricciardo at bay. It was un sure how long the ultra soft tyres would last, and if he two drivers at the front would need to pit one more time, but Hamilton and Ricciardo pulled their stints all the way to the chequered flag with Hamilton crossing the line to take his second win in Monaco. It was also arguably the first time Daniel Ricciardo was caught not smiling after the race.

Force India had one of the best races in a long time as Sergio Perez piped the Ferrari of Sebastian Vettel to take the final spot on the podium. Vettel finished fourth with Fernando Alsnso finishing fifth after a superb drive for McLaren. Nico Hulkenberg stole sixth place from Rosberg on the final lap by margin of a mere two tenths giving Force India valuable championship points with both cars in the top ten.

Kimi Riakkonen countered understeer at Lowe’s hairpin thus clipping the barriers and breaking his front nose wing of his Ferrari. The wing was stuck under his car and couldn’t manage to steer any longer to return to the pits safety, so he pulled the car into the escape routes to retire in the early stages of the race.

Max Verstappen also didn’t have the best weekend for Red Bull. In FP3, Verstappen nudged the barriers near Massanet, then clipped the barriers near smimming pool chicane in qualifying to crashed. During the race, Verstappen locked his front left again near Massanet, but this time the track didn’t forgive him as he crashed at the same corner he nudged during practice.

After Hamilton’s victory, the gap between him and Rosberg is now a mere 24 points as Hamilton moves up to second in the Driver’s Championship standings. Ricciardo is now in third with 66 points, 5 points ahead of Raikkonen who after this DNF dropped down to fourth, one point ahead of Vettel.

2016 F1 Monaco GRAND PRIX (29/05/2016)
Circuit de Monaco – 3.337KM, 19 TURNS (78 LAPS)