Sebastian Vettel Wins Chaotic Formula One Grand Prix of Monaco

Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull finally has a win at the crown jewel of the Formula One season, the Grand Prix of Monaco on the Monte Carlo circuit.

This was not another easy flag-to-flag cruise for Vettel. The race was chaotic, with bad pit stops, on-the-fly strategy changes, collisions, drive-through penalties, a red flag and a restart.

"As expected it was not a straightforward Monaco Grand Prix," Vettel told the post-race press conferences on SPEED. "It happens very rarely here that there are no safety cars, and surely at some stage they were helping us today, but we did have the pace and we took the risks. We wanted to win and at the end we got the reward.

"I am really, really happy. Fantastic result and extreme honour to put my name down on the list of previous winners here

"It is one of the best grands prix all year—surely a nice one to win."

Vettel came into the race so far ahead in the points, he didn’t have to worry about where he finished. He wanted the win at Monaco because every F1 drivers dreams of winning at Monaco, and receiving the winner’s trophy from the Prince in the royal box.

Vettel earned the win with excellent driving, bolstered by some very lucky breaks.

Tire Confusion, Strategy Failures

Tire strategy determined the course of most of the race. After Jenson Button took second on the start, Vettel opened a gap of almost four seconds over the McLaren driver. The top four—Vettel, Button, Fernando Alonso, and Mark Webber—opened a big gap over the rest of the fields, where Lewis Hamilton was mired after his qualifying penalty.

Hamilton started on the harder Prime tires, hoping he could keep up with the leaders (all on softs) and take the lead when they pitted. Because the McLaren driver was caught behind slower cars, his strategy went up in smoke.

Sebastian Vettel pitted from the lead on lap 16, and nearly lost the race on the stop. His crew seemed not to know which type of tires to put on his car, costing him several seconds while the crew took off tire warmers and got him back out in third on prime tires.

"I didn’t have the cleanest pit stop," Vettel explained. "I think it was the first one this year that probably was not perfect.

"Everything seemed to be okay and I was ready to go out again.. Then i looked at the front right and the wheel wasn’t there. Then all the mechanics were rushing to bring the front-right wheel.

"I lost probably two or three seconds. At that moment you don’t count, but surely that cost us the lead at that stage."

Mark Webber came in on the next lap, and his stop took even longer at 15.5 seconds, dropping him to 14th. Again the Red Bull crew seemed not to know which tires to put on the car. It seemed the tire engineer might have made a last-minute strategy change, which the crew wasn’t ready for.

On lap 23 Lewis Hamilton pitted. His crew also fumbled with the tires, taking 9.7 seconds, and sending him out behind Webber—the worst possible place to be. Hamilton could have gained several places with a goo d stop—instead he lost two.

Worse still Hamilton was again stuck behind slower cars, wasting his fresh tires, and shooting holes in McLaren’s tire strategy again. It seemed things couldn’t be worse for the former World Champion.

Unfortunately there was more grief to come.

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