Sebastian Vettel claimed a fortuitous maiden Monaco Grand Prix win, but for the second time in two days his performance was overshadowed after a driver was injured in a heavy shunt.
On Saturday, an accident involving Sergio Perez led to qualifying being delayed, while on Sunday Vitaly Petrov was involved in a late-race crash that red-flagged the race.
It was a grand prix packed with incident which could easily have been won by Jenson Button, who finished third, or by Fernando Alonso, who finished second. Button's strategy was ruined by a Safety Car brought out by a Felipe Massa accident in the Monaco tunnel and Alonso was stymied by Petrov's accident.
Lewis Hamilton was later called before the stewards for some robust overtaking moves in the race.
Race Report
It was sunny and warm in Monaco with no likelihood of rain over the 78 laps. The ambient at 23C the track at 44C
Grid:1. Vettel, 2.Button, 3.Webber, 4.Alonso, 5.Schumacher, 6.Massa, 7.Rosberg, 8. Maldonado, 9.Hamilton, 10.Petrov
Start: As the lights went out Michael Schumacher got a dreadful start and went from P5 to P10 very rapidly. At Ste Devote Michael also got his braking wrong and drove his Mercedes into the back of Lewis Hamilton's rear wing and removed some carbon fibre.
In front of him, Fernando Alonso had already got the jump on Mark Webber for the second race running and was easily past him for P3. The Spaniard was almost in a position to challenge Jenson Button into the first turn.
The rest of the grid got away very much in grid order, though Schumi managed to recover one place with a great dive into the Station (Fairmount) hairpin inside Hamilton who generously gave him room and didn't turn in on him. Michael managed the same trick on Nico Rosberg later in the race (who also realised that his team-mate was through and didn't contest the place).
At the end of the opening lap Vettel had a massive 2.4 second lead.
Lap 1 Positions: 1. Vettel, 2.Button, 3.Alonso, 4.Webber, 5.Rosberg, 6.Massa, 7.Maldonado, 8.Petrov, 9.Schumacher, 10.Hamilton, 11.Barrichello, 12.DiResta
Vettel started to open a gap to second place Button and by Lap 5 it was 4.6 seconds. After which Button began to steady the gap and then haul him in.
What was immediately obvious was that the two Mercedes cars were very heavy on their rear tyres and starting to slow up the cars behind them. Michael Schumacher had Lewis Hamilton all over the back of him by Lap 7 and had dropped back from Petrov by almost five seconds. On Lap 8 he was three seconds off the leaders' pace.
Hamilton, using his DRS, got up inside Schumi into Sainte Devote on Lap 9, surprising the German, but he gave Lewis room to make a dramatic pass. At the end of Lap 12 he was in for more tyres and sunk to the back of the grid (not before Rubens Barrichello had overtaken him into Mirabeau) . Nico Rosberg was enjoying the same kind of luck with his rears and holding Massa back. Massa was looking at passing Rosberg into Tabac on Lap 14 and a lap later he got him there. Maldonado passed him, too. Massa was now P5 and Maldonado P6.
Rosberg was then in for tyres too, his race effectively ruined.
On Lap 16 Button became the first of the front runners to come in for more SuperSoft tyres and he exited into a huge hole created by Rosberg's lack of pace. Red Bull covered this by bringing in Sebastian Vettel a lap later. Unusually, he found his pitcrew with the tyres not ready after one of the tyre blankets got stuck to a tyre. When he resumed the track he was behind Button a fact singularly unobserved by the commentary team.
Fernando Alonso was now in the lead and Button was sprinting on his new tyres. Vettel had taken on Soft tyres and was much slower than Button. Alonso dived for his pit-stop but didn't manage to emerge in front of Vettel. So the front three were now: 1.Button, 2.Vettel, 3.Alonso.
Mark Webber should have been in fourth position at this stage, but Vettel's delay in the pits had a knock-on effect and delayed Webber when he came in straight afterwards. He fell back as far as 14th place, because at this stage of the race only three cars had made their first stop.
On Lap 19 the positions were: 1.Button, 2.Vettel, 3.Alonso, 4.Massa(not stopped),5.Maldonado (not stopped), 6.Petrov(not stopped), 7.Hamilton(not stopped), 8.Barrichello(not stopped), 9.DiResta(not stopped), 10.Kobayashi(not stopped), 11.Sutil(not stopped), 12.Heidfeld(not stopped).
Jenson Button started to pull out a huge gap on the SuperSoft tyres and by Lap 25 he had a 13.1 second lead. Further back Lewis Hamilton had a poor pit-stop when his tyres weren't ready and he dropped further back down the order.
Paul DiResta lost his front wing trying to get past an uncooperative Alguersuari at the Station hairpin and was given a drive-through penalty for his troubles. It looked more like a genuine but ambitious attempt to overtake - a racing incident, but such is the scrutiny of the stewards this year...
On Lap 28 the positions were: 1.Button, 2.Vettel, 3.Alonso, 4.Petrov (not stopped), 5.Barrichello (not stopped), 6.Kobayashi (not stopped), 7.Sutil (not stopped), 8.Heidfeld (not stopped), 9.Buemi (not stopped), 10.Webber, 11.Massa, 12.Hamilton
By Lap 32, the yet-to-stop Rubens Barrichello was holding P4 and was 50.6 seconds behind Fernando Alonso in P3. Jenson pitted and emerged into this space on yet another set of Option, SuperSoft tyres. It meant he would definitely have to stop again.
Lewis Hamilton had got onto the back of Felipe Massa's rear wing and was harrying him all the way around the track, hard on his gearbox at almost every point of the circuit. On Lap 33 he made an optimistic move on Massa into the Station Hairpin, not as clean as Schumacher on him, but not as clumsy as DiResta on the Toro Rosso.
Massa instead of turning out, actually turned into the accident and made it worse. Both cars continued with a small loss of carbon fibre. Earlier in the race a frustrated Massa had been unable to get past Nico Rosberg and driven into the back of him going up the hill into Beau Rivage losing a front wing endplate.
Later that lap Hamilton got the better of Massa going through the Monaco tunnel, making an incredible move - two cars flat out through the right-hander. Except Hamilton was on the racing line and Massa wasn't. The Brazilian lost control of his Ferrari into the barriers, bringing out the Safety Car.
Alonso immediately pitted, but Vettel kept on going. He had been accidentally given Soft tyres instead of SuperSoft tyres at the first pit-stop and was continuing. The Safety Car came in at the end of Lap 38 and the race order on Lap 39 was: 1.Vettel, 2.Button, 3.Alonso, 4.Sutil 5.Kobayashi 6.Webber, 7.Hamilton, 8.Maldonado, 9.Petrov, 10.Heidfeld, 11.Buemi, 12.Barrichello.
Button pitted again on Lap 48 and Hamilton on Lap 49. Hamilton had been awarded a drive-through penalty for his clash with Massa, which was unsurprising, but no worse than many GP racing incidents.
On Lap 50, the leader Vettel had stopped once, second place man Alonso had stopped twice and third place man Button had stopped three times. Button began to put in a series of fastest laps from Lap 50 to chase down the two cars in front, while it increasingly looked as though Vettel was going to try and run from Lap 16 to Lap 78 on one set of tyres.
Alonso's tyres were significantly younger than Vettel's as well. He was hoping that the Red Bull's tyres would suddenly reach the end of their working life - which had been predicted to be 45 laps. Lap 16 + 45 equalled Lap 61 and by Lap 61 they were all in line, though Vettel had the benefit of a diminishing fuel load and five laps run under the Safety Car.
As the laps ticked down Alonso looked to be the most likely to pass Vettel with Button holding a watching brief. Further back Adrian Sutil had manged to use the Safety Car period to his advantage and was holding P4 until Kamui Kobayashi launched a suicidal lunge up the inside of the Force India going into Mirabeau on Lap 65.
Kobayashi was so far back that he hit Sutil's rear tyre with his front left, pushed him wide and took the place. Sutil's tyre looked to be damaged in some way as he lost a place to Webber the following lap. The cars behind Sutil began to be severely held up as the ailing Force India limped round and on Lap 69 it all came to a head when the leading group of three cars met up with Sutil's train along the harbour front.
Sutil ran wide and let Maldonado through, then ran over the kerbs of the swimming pool exit. Lewis Hamilton, who had just pulled off an overtaking move on Petrov, came up to the wayward Force India not sure what it was going to do next and backed off slightly. Alguersuari ran straight into the back of the Mclaren then hit the barriers on the outside of the swimming pool, taking the following Petrov with him.
It was an immediate Safety Car, which turned into a Red Flag two laps later with the cars forming up on the grid at the end of Lap 71 (of 78). The medical crews extracted Petrov, who had a non-threatening leg injury.
Disappointingly cars were allowed to change tyres on the grid, so the last lap climax of Alonso hunting Vettel down on his very old tyres was not going to happen. Button lost the opportunity, too, as they could all use SuperSofts on the six-lap sprint to the flag. Lewis Hamilton was allowed to have repairs carried out on the rear wing that Alguersuari had deranged.
When the race was restarted after one lap behind the Safety Car (thus five racing laps) Mark Webber was able to overtake Kamui Kobayashi for P4 with a great overtaking move into the Nouvelle Chicane (Lap 77). Lewis Hamilton had already tried to do what he'd done to Schumi to Pastor Maldonado into Sainte Devote and got up the inside of the Williams into Turn 1, when the Venezuelan turned in on him, the contact spun him into the barriers.
Sebastian Vettel had no problems maintaining a lead over the final short sprint and took what was by his standards, a fortuitous win. It really should have been Alonso or Button's race. Mark Webber finished a distant fourth, but with Kamui Kobayashi and Lewis Hamilton under investigation by the stewards late after the race - the others places were yet to be decided.
FH
Results
01. Vettel Red Bull-Renault 2h09:38.373
02. Alonso Ferrari + 1.138
03. Button McLaren-Mercedes + 2.378
04. Webber Red Bull-Renault + 23.100
05. Kobayashi Sauber-Ferrari + 26.900
06. Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes + 27.200
07. Sutil Force India-Mercedes + 1 lap
08. Heidfeld Renault + 1 lap
09. Barrichello Williams-Cosworth + 1 lap
10. Buemi Toro Rosso-Ferrari + 1 lap
11. Rosberg Mercedes + 1 lap
12. Di Resta Force India-Mercedes + 2 laps
13. Trulli Lotus-Renault + 2 laps
14. Kovalainen Lotus-Renault + 2 laps
15. D'Ambrosio Virgin-Cosworth + 2 laps
16. Liuzzi HRT-Cosworth + 3 laps
17. Karthikeyan HRT-Cosworth + 3 laps
18. Maldonado Williams-Cosworth + 5 aps
Retirements
Petrov Renault 68
Alguersuari Toro Rosso-Ferrari 68
Massa Ferrari 33
Schumacher Mercedes 33
Glock Virgin-Cosworth 31
Perez Sauber-Ferrari 1
