Formula 1 2023’s best shot at a non-Red Bull Racing victory has come and gone with a Max Verstappen pole and win. If you were looking at the result sheet alone, it’d be fair to feel a little underwhelmed.
But the classification does little to tell the story of a high-pressure final third of a stale race suddenly enlivened by surprisingly heavy rain and the struggle Verstappen had to drag his RB19 to the flag.
All his car’s forecast weaknesses around the Circuit de Monaco proved true. It had difficulty getting its tyres up to temperature quickly and shipped time to rival cars that weren’t suffering for their high levels of drag thanks to the lack of long straights.
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While qualifying was a thrilling demonstration of just how close the field was in Monte Carlo, the final 20-odd laps were a more visceral demonstration of just how hard Verstappen had to work to take the chequered flag.
The Dutchman had to slip and slide his way around the track. Several times he brushed up against the barriers in what could easily have been race-ending mistakes were he travelling just a little faster or had he made contact at a slightly different angle.
The reigning champion also wasn’t immune from big slides and lock-ups as he coaxed his machine over what in places was a treacherously slippery surface.
The difference between success and failure is finer in Monaco than anywhere else on the Formula 1 calendar, and Verstappen just about straddled it on Sunday afternoon.
“It was quite hectic towards the end,” he said. “We had really worn tyres to go through — that was not really enjoyable, clipped a few barriers, especially on my in-lap I think. It was very, very difficult.
“But even on the intermediates after that it was still very slippery through the second sector.
“The hard bit is that you have a good lead, of course you don’t want to risk too much, but you don’t want to drive too slow because then you have no temperature in your tyres.
“Just trying to find a bit the middle ground initially was a bit tough.”
Sometimes you have to win ugly, and though victory was to a degree handed to him by Aston Martin’s strategy conservatism, Verstappen did enough to defeat the conditions that tripped up so many others and take his fourth victory of the season.
And you can’t help but wonder: if Verstappen can’t be beaten on days like this, when things aren’t going his way and he’s not at his best, when will he be bested this season?
Brundle’s hilariously awkward grid walk | 00:47
THE ASTON MARTIN RACE THAT NEVER WAS
While the Red Bull Racing RB19 was the quickest car this weekend, it wasn’t so quick that it was beyond reach of Aston Martin.
It would just take some creative thinking for the green team to bridge the gap.
Contrary to most other races, the key opportunity wasn’t going to be the start of the race. The distance from the front row to the first corner is too large for a good launch to make the difference.
The chance would come in the final half of the grand prix, and the route to get there was to start on the hard tyre rather than the medium.
“I think we were brave on the strategy,” Alonso said. “It’s not normal that you start on the first row of the grid and you choose the hard tyre, trying to do the opposite of the leaders.
“That shows the commitment from the team and how aggressive everyone was in Aston Martin to try and get the win.”
The hard tyre could theoretically run the distance, but the medium tyre Verstappen started on couldn’t. Combined with the threat of rain later in the afternoon, it boxed Verstappen into a defensive drive in which he had everything to lose.
“Because of the rain in the area we couldn’t really stop,” Verstappen said. “If it would have been nice and sunny, I would have stopped, put the hard tyre on, then you catch up and wait until Fernando does his pit stop.
“But we couldn’t do that because the risk of rain was around, so I had to stay out.”
Had he pitted early and Alonso stayed out until the rain arrived — or had a safety car intervened or some other interruption occurred — the Spaniard would’ve effectively had a free stop.
Of course those conditions did materialise at around lap 54, with the rain arriving softly at first and then intensifying within around a lap. Aston Martin took its chance, but it blew it on a set of medium tyres rather than the intermediates the track required.
“I was surprised they took the medium tyre and that totally got us off the hook,” Christian Horner said. “Then it was a question of getting it to the pits and having us turn the car around.”
Alonso still secured a season-best second place reflective of his car’s pace this weekend. But one can’t help but wonder whether that really should’ve been one step higher — and whether another chance will come the team’s way this year.
Doohan retired after nasty fiery crash | 00:45
FERRARI PIT WALL DOES IT AGAIN
Aston Martin wasn’t the only team bungling calls on the pit wall of course, with Ferrari doing its best to keep its streak of dodgy Monaco strategy decisions alive by throwing away a possible podium shot.
The path to another disappointing Sunday afternoon was long. The team had already risked Carlos Sainz dropping out of Q1 by putting him in traffic and then failed to notify Charles Leclerc of the faster Lando Norris behind him in Q3, earning a three-place grid drop.
On Sunday Sainz was the lead driver, and the Spaniard was clearly faster than third-placed Ocon — who was the cork in the bottle behind the runaway leaders — despite using the hard tyre to Ocon’s theoretically faster medium.
Several times the team attempted to dummy Alpine into an early stop to allow Sainz to unleash his true pace, and on lap 32 the Frenchman dived into pit lane to cover Hamilton’s stop from further back.
Sainz assumed his job now would be to stretch his legs in the clear air ahead to overcut the Alpine, but the team responded to Ocon’s stop by calling the Spaniard in — only for him to re-emerge in exactly the same position afterwards.
“What the f***!” he shouted over team radio. “This is exactly what I talked about.”
“We had a bit of an eventful race, always chasing Ocon and on the gearbox of Ocon,” Sainz said afterwards. “I saved my tyres, we were on the hard tyres and it looked like he had a slow pitstop.
“I was flying on [what became] the in-lap … with the pace I was going, maybe we should have been a bit more patient, but it’s how it is.
“I had been doing all that management; to suddenly be pitted left me frustrated.”
Sainz was right to feel aggrieved, having shown strong pace on the hards before the stop. Maybe it wouldn’t have been enough to overcome Ocon, but doing something different is the only way to generate a different result.
It didn’t matter anyway, with the frustrated Sainz spinning off the road and losing places anyway, but it’s hard not to see this as another wasted weekend for Ferrari.
Sainz BLASTS Ferrari’s strategy | 01:08
ALPINE FINALLY TAKES BIG STEP FORWARD
Monaco is unrepresentative of the broader season and several of the frontrunners were tripping over themselves by Sunday, but Alpine at long last seized the opportunities presented to it and scored a big result — exactly the sort of thing it needed after recent weeks of criticism from CEO Laurent Rossi.
The team had been slated for dropping the ball too often, but in the frenetic conditions of Monte Carlo qualifying and the race, Esteban Ocon and the Alpine pit wall were flawless.
Ferrari’s dummy pit stop calls weren’t fallen for. Hamilton’s undercut threat was responded to at the right time. The switch to intermediates was spot on.
The only risk to the podium came with the rain, when a long-running George Russell contrastrategy dropped him into third, the Briton having not made his first pit stop by the time the intermediates were required. But Russell locked up on his out-lap and lost two places.
Ocon finished on the podium for only the third time in his career. Pierre Gasly also consolidated seventh on the grid to bring home six points, taking the team to 35 — and, crucially, 18 points ahead of the less competitive McLaren.
It’s not alone enough to answer critics who argue the team should be much further forward to begin with, but it’s at least a sign that there’s more to come from Enstone.
McLAREN BACK IN THE POINTS
After a pitiful slowest-of-all result in Miami, McLaren bounced back with its now typical unpredictable style to be a solid top-10 contender, with both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri scoring points from ninth and 10th.
True, it relied on a little bit of good fortune via Yuki Tsunoda’s brake problems, leaving him helpless to defend. Norris also got a little lucky with his positioning on track to get away with making two pits stops around the rain window without losing a place by the time flag fell.
But what can’t be taken away from the team or its drivers was clean execution. Similar to the chaos of the final laps in Melbourne, where it also collected double points, McLaren was cool under the considerable pressure of the late-race mayhem to remain in contention.
It’s to be expected of Lando Norris, who’s a Monaco podium-getter, and it’s heartening for Piastri, for whom this was his first visit to the principality in F1 machinery.
The journey back to competitiveness remains long, but results like these at least boost morale.
Sainz cops damage after sloppy error | 01:28
A FOOTNOTE ENTRY FOR A FOOTNOTE OF A RACE
Sergio Pérez failed to score at the Monaco Grand Prix, shipping the full 25 points to teammate Max Verstappen, the only other driver capable of winning the championship this year.
The gap between then is now 39 points, approaching two clear race wins after only six rounds.
Just as you could argue Verstappen’s win was set up by pole position, Pérez’s failure to score was borne from his Q1 shocker.
“We paid the price for my mistake and that’s been very costly,” he said. “I just have to apologise to my team because it is unacceptable to have this kind of mistake.
“I have to move on and learn from it. I cannot afford another zero in the championship.”
Pérez’s race was messy, required a first-lap pit stop and wasn’t sufficiently responsive to the change in conditions in the final third.
It was as far from the sort of race permissible for a title contender as possible. It may not be a matter of him not being able to afford another one; he may well have been unable to afford this one to begin with.