Vettel Seals Dramatic Monaco Win at BetLM

Vettel Seals Dramatic Monaco Win

Red Bull’s Sebas­t­ian Vet­tel won his first Monaco Grand Prix and pulled fur­ther ahead in the championship.

Ferrari’s Fer­nando Alonso and McLaren’s Jen­son But­ton, who briefly led the race, had closed in on Vet­tel but a late safety car helped the German.

Alonso fin­ished sec­ond for the first time in 2011, with But­ton third and Red Bull’s Mark Web­ber fourth.

Lewis Hamil­ton became embroiled in a row over crit­i­cal com­ments about stew­ards after finishing sixth.

The Eng­lish­man was called before offi­cials for two sep­a­rate inci­dents and, asked why he had been to see stew­ards five times in six races this year, he said, appar­ently in jest: “Maybe it’s because I’m black. That’s what Ali G says.”

The race was poised for a thrilling fin­ish as Vet­tel, Alonso and But­ton were cov­ered by less than a sec­ond and chas­ing each other hard.

But with just seven laps to go, Renault’s Vitaly Petrov got caught in a pile-up and plunged his Renault into the bar­ri­ers at the Swimming Pool.

After com­plain­ing of pain in his left ankle the Russ­ian was taken to hos­pi­tal for a body scan, but Renault sub­se­quently released a state­ment con­firm­ing there was no swelling or broken bone.

The reap­pear­ance of the safety car released the pres­sure on Vet­tel, and when the race resumed 20 min­utes later with the three lead­ers all hav­ing changed their tyres, Vet­tel com­fort­ably held off Alonso and But­ton to add the Monaco title to his grow­ing collection.

Red Bull team prin­ci­pal Chris­t­ian Horner said it had been par­tic­u­larly pleas­ing to win after the team had expe­ri­enced a series of unex­pected prob­lems dur­ing the race.

“We had prob­lems at Sebastian’s first stop, we had radio issues and didn’t get the tyres on that we wanted, so we had to change our strat­egy,” said Horner.

“The main thing was that we didn’t panic. We tried some­thing a bit dif­fer­ent, which was very aggres­sive, but Seb was mak­ing it work — that was what won him the race today.

“He was pretty con­fi­dent, kept talk­ing to his engi­neers, focus­ing on areas he could be quick.”

BBC F1 chief ana­lyst Eddie Jor­dan praised Vettel.

“Since he became world cham­pion he has been supreme,” said Jordan.

“He is always in the right place — but he also had luck on his side.”

Monaco is regarded as the most chal­leng­ing cir­cuit on the cal­en­dar because the nar­row, twist­ing streets push the dri­vers to the limit.

And Vet­tel had taken his first pole in Monte Carlo dur­ing a qual­i­fy­ing ses­sion which had been over­shad­owed by Ser­gio Perez’s heavy crash which kept him out of the race.

But­ton, who started along­side Vet­tel on the front row, tried to play a deci­sive card in the race when he trig­gered the pit stops on lap 15.

Vet­tel had no choice but to respond and came in for his first stop on the fol­low­ing lap, but his crew of mechan­ics in the Red Bull garage did not have the tyres ready. The result­ing delay saw Vet­tel return to the track in second place.

With a clear track ahead of him, But­ton quickly built a lead over the world champion.

But while a clever strat­egy call helped McLaren and Hamil­ton win in China, this time their attempt to out-think Red Bull backfired.

But­ton was on a three-stop strat­egy and when he came in for a sec­ond time Vet­tel regained the lead, and But­ton dropped to third after his final stop.

The Eng­lish­man refused to blame his team’s strat­egy for fail­ing to deliver him his first win of the season.

“We had to take the risk and go for more stops so we shouldn’t be upset with what we did,” said Button.

“The team did a great job this week­end and I was happy with our strat­egy. We had to try to do some­thing dif­fer­ent to beat Vet­tel, it was work­ing but it didn’t work in the end.”

Alonso had mus­cled his way past Web­ber and up to third with a typ­i­cally aggres­sive start and the Spaniard gained another place thanks to a two-stop strategy.

Vet­tel looked in real dan­ger as his one-stop strat­egy meant he had to nurse his tyres for more than 60 laps.

But the restart after the sec­ond safety car meant the three lead­ing cars were able to change their tyres and Vet­tel com­fort­ably cruised to the line.

Alonso said: “Seven days ago we were two min­utes behind the lead­ers and now we are fight­ing for victory.

“The car is iden­ti­cal to Barcelona so [this result] is just related to Monaco’s unique circuit.

“It is also true that the car is work­ing well on the super­soft tyres. They will be avail­able for the next two races so hope­fully we can repeat this performance.”

Hamil­ton had a roller­coaster of an after­noon and was con­stantly in the thick of the action.

After a tus­sle with Michael Schumacher’s Mer­cedes, Hamil­ton received a drive-through penalty after he bumped Massa in a three-way bat­tle with Web­ber at the hairpin.

It’s not too late [to win the world cham­pi­onship] but it’s not looking great McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton

The Eng­lish­man was ninth with seven laps to go, before Jaime Alguersuari’s Toro Rosso rode over his McLaren, break­ing the rear wing.

The team repaired Hamilton’s car before the restart but Hamil­ton was soon back in trou­ble with the stew­ards when he col­lided with Pas­tor Maldonado’s Williams at Sainte Devote — an inci­dent for which he was sub­se­quently penalised with the addi­tion of 20 sec­onds to his fin­ish­ing time, although the pun­ish­ment which left his fin­ish­ing posi­tion unchanged.

The bat­tle at the hair­pin also had reper­cus­sions for Massa as Hamil­ton hus­tled him again in the tun­nel, and as the McLaren sailed safely through, Massa lost con­trol on the tyre debris in the tun­nel and hit the barriers.

It is the sec­ond race in a row that Massa has retired.

“I was quite a lot quicker than Massa, I went up the inside — and he turned in,” said Hamil­ton in a fiery inter­view after the race.

“I get the penalty [though], which is usual. He held me up in qual­i­fi­ca­tion, I got the penalty. He turned in to me, I got the penalty.

“But you get done try­ing to put on a show, try­ing to make a move. Fair play, if I feel I’ve gone too late I’d hold my hand up to admit I’ve caused an incident.

“It’s not too late [to win the world cham­pi­onship] but it’s not looking great.”

Schu­macher, a five time Monaco win­ner, con­jured up mem­o­ries of for­mer glo­ries in the open­ing stages of the race when he bril­liantly passed Hamil­ton at the hairpin.

“That’s some­thing I thought you’d never see,” said BBC F1 co-commentator David Coulthard. “Hamil­ton, one of the best rac­ers in the world, caught nap­ping by Schu­macher — an inspired move.”

But Schu­macher fell back as his tyres quickly dete­ri­o­rated, a prob­lem with which his Mer­cedes team-mate Nico Ros­berg also strug­gled, before Schu­macher even­tu­ally retired with a fire in his air­box. Ros­berg went on to finish 11th.

There was some much-needed pos­i­tive news for Sauber as Kamui Kobayashi fin­ished fifth on a one-stop strat­egy. It was very nearly fourth, the Japan­ese dri­ver only being passed by the charg­ing Web­ber on the penultimate lap.

Kobayashi called it a “great achieve­ment” after a dif­fi­cult week­end with his team-mate Perez still recov­er­ing in hos­pi­tal after a qual­i­fy­ing crash which left him with con­cus­sion and a bruised thigh.

Adrian Sutil col­lected sixth for Force India, but his team-mate Paul di Resta was 15th after receiv­ing a drive-through penalty for a mis-timed pass on Alguersuari.

Related Posts:

• Hamil­ton Chal­lenges Red Bull Pace
• Web­ber Beats Vet­tel to Spain Pole
• But­ton Hopes to Match Red Bulls
• But­ton Hopes to Match Red Bulls
• Hamil­ton Angered by Toro Rosso

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