Originally Posted by
SS454
If it wasn't for the rain, this race would have been dreadfully boring.
Red Bull Racing has the best car with the best driver. Max even excels in wet or changing conditions, so it is really no surprise he won the race. Perez on the other hand looked like a rookie on his first day. Hitting the wall, crashing into other drivers, cutting the chicane, and never takes any accountability for any of it. It shows how bad Monaco is for racing when the best car doesn't even attempt a pass on the slowest cars.
Aston Martin have a serious dilemma. Fernando Alonso drove another brilliant race. Was an absolutely monster going through traffic. Doubtful to ever have a legit shot at the win, but the very slight opportunity of pitting at the perfect time for inters, and the team puts on mediums. What a disaster. I cannot help think that this decision was aided from the feedback from Lance Stroll, who was completely useless for the team today. He had a couple laps to explore on the inters, and instead he screwed it up, barely staying on the track just as if he was on slicks. After failing in quali, he was ultra aggressive in the race relative to everyone else, and only found himself being a bumper car. With Lance Stroll as the second driver, Aston Martin very possibly will not finish 2nd in the WCC.
Alpine showed up. Great weekend. Ocon had a stunning lap in quali, and even though was well off the leaders pace in the race, drove perfect in terms of defense and strategic and earned the podium. Gasly brought home solid points in 7th. A great day for the team.
Mercedes introduce their B spec upgrade. Can't judge the performance on the slow Monaco track, but the team did get a good result. Both drivers just lapping at their own pace, not challenging anyone, not really defending either. Russell backing into the track and collecting Perez was pretty awful. Backing up in an F1 car is pretty blind, so the driver must rely on the team to let him know it's clear to back onto the track. 5 second penalty made no difference to his race.
Ferrari continue to fail over and over and over again. A track that should suit the car, both drivers looked extremely quick at times during the weekend. Race pace was super slow for everyone to preserve tires. Ferrari also had a faster car than Alpine, and no Perez in sight. A podium was a lock. Instead Ferrari pit Sainz to cover Hamilton, making an overtake on Ocon impossible and ruining their Hard tire strategy. Sainz messing up his own race by damaging his front win and a late, costly spin. Leclerc even in clean air didn't have much pace. Ferrari leaving both drivers out way too late and were the last to switch to Inters. Radio from Ferrari is always "we're looking into it". It's like they huddled around their strategy computer, waiting for it to tell them what to do it. Bunch of clowns.
McLaren must be very pleased with their race. Most of the season they hardly have pace to fight for points. Today they drove excellent and got points all on merit. Piastri often has been well off the pace of Lando, but today was in sight of his gearbox all day. Great job by the whole team.
Alfa Romeo had Bottas give one of his better drives of the season. Unfortunately it was only good for 11th. Odd call to start Zhou on soft tires. I guess they were hoping to jump a couple spots and then hold position. Or they planned to pit on lap 1, similar to Red Bull's strat. Hard to say. Zhou was a fighter though and seemed to do pretty well in the tricky changing conditions.
Alpha Tauri almost had points with Yuki. To be fair, it did appear he was having brake trouble and it wasn't just driver error. Nyck was still a long way off his teammate even though he finished ahead in 12th.
Williams had moments of looking to be dead last, and moments where they might have pace for points. They ended up being somewhere in the middle, at least with Albon. Logan Sargeant got passed easy by a lot of cars, in a track that is extremely easy to defend and hold position. Probably his worst performance of the season.
Haas had a tough one and and probably a big repair bill. They got hit by more than a few drivers, but made more than their share of mistakes. Leaving Magnussen out on Hard used slicks on a completely wet track. Come on guys. He was performing better than Hulkenberg too. Not that it mattered in the end.
Driver of the Day: Esteban Ocon. Mid field car, one of the best laps in quali which is critical to the race. Had a few iffy defensive moves, but otherwise didn't put a foot wrong even while being under pressure the entire race. Drove pretty much the perfect race to get a podium.
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