Join Paul, Mark and me as we review the Monaco Grand Prix team-by-team. We discuss Mercedes and their dodgy strategy, Lewis Hamilton’s victory-turned-loss, Max Verstappen and the crash, Safety Cars and lapped traffic, Williams and running over parc ferme signs.
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Negative Camber
Chief Opinion Officer, TPF
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Great having the whole gang back. On sky Ted confirmed that Maldonado’s break by wire system failed and so the MGU-k wasn’t interacting with the breaks properly and caused the overheating. Second, on the pre-show there is a great, spectacular segment where Ted is answering reader questions and you get an amazing shot of the NBC studio set. You get a great view of Lee Diffy in shorts behind the desk looking as goofy as can be. Ted even makes a great comment about how sky didn’t have nearly as good a spot to do their broadcasts compared to NBC… Read more »
All in all, a relatively uneventful race until the events near the end turned things on its head. Still, Monaco is always Monaco, and no matter how processional it may be, seeing the cars whizzing round that track, impossibly close to the barriers, is always a rush. The Mercedes pit call was a massive blunder. I’m sure Niki was right when he said radio chatter confusion contributed to the mistake – as Toto Wolff said, the decision was taken 50 meters before the pit entry. And I’m also sure Lewis getting the impression that they’d already brought Nico in for… Read more »
Yes! Vettel was hilarious!
That’s what I love about Seb, seizing the moment with the down faces and pouting from Mercedes to say…”I’m happy”. Awesome!
I only started really following F1 at the start of last year (soooooo glad I found FBC soon thereafter). I was down on Vettel as were a lot of people. But Happy Seb really makes up for it and then some!
Kimi’s efforts are starting to become a trend again rather than just bad luck. Really hope he pulls through! “That’s not nice” was pretty funny, too. Glad to see Ricciardo keeping spirits up!
Welcome to F1, it’s great to have you my friend. We’re elated you are at FBC too. I am with you on Kimi, I’m hoping he can get out of this slump because the beginning of the year looked really promising with a car that seemed to suit his driving style.
To my point re the blue flags, here’s a radio transmission from Kimi on lap 55 of the Monaco race:
“Come on, where is the blue flags? Do I have to [censored by FOM] try to overtake him or what? Lapped car.”
I love Kimi, but honestly – is this what it has come to? Yes, you should have to try and overtake. The blue flags should only be used when the lapping driver has shown a clear intent to make a pass.
The song that plays for the drive of the race award is beautiful.
Was Max’s collision with Grosjean a mistake or collision avoidance? From the angle on the world feed it looked like Grosjean was going straight and Max suddenly cut across but Mie on the forum thinks otherwise. With all the bumps and barriers at Sainte Devote, do you think that was an over ambitious move? Grosjean needed to brake at that corner regardless of whether he was defending his line and braking early. If Max’s tires were fresher, he could have had him at Nouvelle or even at the hairpin.
As Paul mentioned, it just takes a split second to mis-judge that corner under braking and at first blush it looked like Romain braked earlier than Max anticipated but Lotus says he didn’t. I tend to think Max just missed that by a fraction and regarding Nouvelle, No one was making any passes there. I think the engine disparity was making that difficult all day.
So I sat down to watch the race, only to discover that my DVR had failed to record the broadcast. So I was cursing the woeful technology my cable provider gives me for the extortionate monthly fees, and the fact that the series record feature had failed to record the monaco grand (it did record the practices and qualifying, and already has the canada race scheduled ???) So, I had to venture into the murky underworld of alternative sources for F1, and had the pleasurable experience of the Sky broadcast instead. Seriously, it is like a different world. Insightful commentary… Read more »
I must admit those murky waters are where I get my F1 fix as well. I too made the same “mistake” once, and it is quite hard to imagine going back to the broadcast that is on offer in my region…
After much searching on the worldwide web, finally I found the definitive answer on the LCH pit call by Mercedes. Paddy Lowe, Nikki Lauda, and Toto Wolff were completely bored by the processional race with LCH leading by a mile. Paddy asked Toto who was cuter Kylie or Kendall Jenner! Toto was confused by who was who, Nikki explained that Kendall was in the pit not Kylie. Paddy was adamant about Kylie being in the pits!! Nikki and Toto both hit the LCH radio button by mistake to say “Kendall pit”. Being to embarrassed not to recognize the two sisters,… Read more »
1. Just when everything is going right, Merc gets it wrong. I’m sure that Hamilton was fuming when the trophies were awarded. 2. Admittedly, having grid guys was different, but that’s for gals. It would have been better if there were both guys and gals. Then we’d all have something to look forward to. 3. Great effort for Ferrari, even if they couldn’t get anywhere except by Merc’s mistake. 4. Hello, Raikkonen? Would you like some cheese with that whine? 5. That was a much better performance for RBR. Now, if they can at least make it consistent. 6. Roughly…I’d… Read more »
Paul, on your point 8, these are racing engines, and I don’t think you will find a single racing engine that goes that far between rebuilds. The driver who did the most mileage in F1 last year was Kevin Magnussen, who completed 9111 miles during the 19 race weekends. Using five power units that equates to just over 1822 miles per power unit. While in road car terms that sounds poor (and even by endurance racing terms it is, the winning distance at Le Mans last year was 2964.26 miles), but compared to the V10s of a few years ago… Read more »
I’m calling it now … winner of next week’s Bravado Award is Sepp Blatter. It really doesn’t matter what anyone else says in the interim. :)
There are actually four voices for the ‘drive of the race’ sound bite. As explained there was Villeneuve, Hill and Berger, but at the start there is some ‘politician’ saying “I’m a politician, I tell you what, why don’t you put some money…” or something to that effect, what’s that inclusion about?
That was Bernie. :) He’s the voice saying he’s a politician.
Ohhhh cool. Thanks. Just looked up the full exchange, with Martin Brundle in Monaco: http://vidcad.tripod.com/quotes01.htm