Sky Sports F1's Martin Brundle reviews the Monaco GP weekend as Max Verstappen masters the wet conditions to extend his championship lead to 39 points and Saturday delivers one of the greatest F1 qualifying sessions of all time
Wednesday 31 May 2023 08:33, UK
Sky Sports F1's Martin Brundle delivers his expert verdict on the Monaco GP weekend as the streets of Monte Carlo delivered a sensational qualifying and Max Verstappen was a master of the rain again...
That was the best Monaco Grand Prix I've attended for a good while. Monte Carlo was really buzzing with people and activity and the track action was great. Formula 1 did the TV feed for the first time and it energised the spectacle.
I walked around the track with a Sky F1 camera during Practice Two as usual and was blown away by the speed, commitment and accuracy of the cars and drivers. The track surface becomes ever more like a race circuit than a road in terms of smoothness, cambers, and general lack of street furniture, along with level run-off areas in places where there used to be unyielding barriers.
Where we would spend most of our time simply trying to avoid a crash with a wildly moving car and a manual gear shift, the drivers have translated today's challenge into raw speed and pinpoint precision at barely believable speeds.
It is still easy enough to crash of course and the driver who suffered most was last year's winner and street circuit specialist Sergio Perez. Early into the first part of qualifying he simply arrived too quickly into Saint Devote Turn One and smashed into the outside barrier. He'd likely been a little distracted by an Alpine getting out of his way by diving into the long pit-lane exit, but whatever the reason it put a huge dent in his Red Bull car and his championship battle with team-mate Max Verstappen.
He would start 20th and last and meanwhile, just as we had seen earlier when Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes was craned away remarkably high into the sky, the world of F1 got a great and no doubt well-photographed view of all aerodynamic channels and elements of the super fast Red Bull's all important under-floor.
The aerodynamics work as one with the upper surfaces of course, and I'm not suggesting for one moment that any team can suddenly create the speed and downforce of the Red Bull, but it will be very useful information to them all, and easy to scale and measure from the images.
Qualifying was simply sensational and a true test for both the 25-year-old reigning world champion Verstappen and the 41-year-old Fernando Alonso. Aston Martin fancied their chances of spoiling Red Bull's winning streak around Monaco and Alonso was giving it everything.
As were Charles Leclerc for Ferrari and Esteban Ocon for Alpine on the second row of the grid. In many ways, Ocon's qualifying lap was every bit as impressive as Verstappen's and Alonso's and he would end up starting and indeed finishing third.
This was because Leclerc and his Ferrari engineer were busy discussing lap times and positions when he cruised into the tunnel and he hadn't been warned about Lando Norris arriving behind him on a hot lap. A three-place grid drop for impeding was inevitable and perhaps even lenient, you can't cruise through the Monaco tunnel on the racing line.
Verstappen's final lap to take pole position was simply electric. Alonso and the Aston Martin were plain faster all weekend through a handful of corners and he had to throw caution to the wind and just send the Red Bull, skimming walls and barriers along the way. His final sector of that lap was outrageous and that qualifying hour will be referred to for some time to come in F1 circles.
And so the grid was set and they duly lined up in the sunshine attended by ever-growing numbers of people such that as usual you couldn't actually see any cars. It looks more like Tokyo Central Station at rush hour than a motor racing grid but there's lots of energy and atmosphere. The drivers sensibly leave it and head to the garages for some serenity.
Pre-race there was talk of rain but not with total conviction that it would arrive in any significant quantity during the race. Aston Martin decided to play the long game by putting hard tyres on Alonso, which meant that he was much more focused on keeping Ocon behind him than out-dragging Verstappen on the 150-metre run to the Turn One braking zone. Red Bull could relax with Verstappen on new medium compound tyres in that respect but wary that Alonso had a wider window of options as the race unfolded.
It's a risky strategy though because if there's a reasonably early Safety Car then Alonso wouldn't have wanted to take medium compound tyres all the way home from that point.
Alpine and Ocon decided to pace themselves in third place and go into tyre preservation which quickly made it a two-horse race out front. It annoys me when that happens because when Ocon pitted on lap 32 of 78 he clearly had a lot of grip left in the tyres but had dropped so far behind he would never be able to benefit if the front two had some temporary issues on track or in the pits.
A submissive strategy based only on what people in the queue behind him were doing but they were rightly satisfied with a podium place for the jubilant Frenchman.
In the rest of the field, there was action aplenty, some of it pretty clumsy not least for Carlos Sainz in the Ferrari frustratedly tucked up behind Ocon, and Lance Stroll and Perez trying to make up for lowly grid positions compared to their car's pace.
These two-metre-wide cars make overtaking ever more difficult but that was always the case here even with much lighter and smaller cars, and a freshly tyred and recovering Nigel Mansell trying to pass Ayrton Senna here 31 years ago is a good example of that.
Verstappen had Alonso covered in terms of pace but the Spaniard kept his Aston Martin close enough through the traffic to compromise Red Bull's decisions on strategy. And the threat of light rain before the end of the race had become more real meaning stretching out the opening stint. Both Verstappen and Alonso were masters at keeping up the pace while managing worn-out tyres and not planting the car in the barrier.
Then the rain came at a couple of corners on the far side of the circuit and Alonso pitted, to the surprise of some and the relief of Red Bull, for fresh dry tyres. Speaking with both teams and hearing Alonso after the race it is unlikely he would have won had he gone straight to intermediates tyres, for which he had to pit just a lap later at the same time as Verstappen, but it would have given Red Bull a major fright and he would have been so close for track position in the lead.
I know that Alonso said to his team afterwards that given the same circumstances, they would and should make the same decision because during his lap to the pits, the track was largely dry apart from a couple of slippery corners. And Fernando doesn't usually hold back if he thinks somebody has screwed up, especially for a Monaco victory.
That still left 24 laps to go on a surprisingly wet track, so much so that Perez was now on full wets as Red Bull used him as a guinea pig given that he was way out of the points.
I didn't clock it in commentary other than recognising that Mercedes were making some timely calls for both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, but having fitted intermediate tyres on the optimum lap 53 Russell could have stolen third place from Ocon if he didn't have a lock-up down into the Mirabeau escape road.
He would then take a five-second penalty for dangerously rejoining the track and taking a sizable hit from the lapped Perez, but actually, there's nothing else a driver can do other than join, accelerate and hope, unless you want to patiently sit there to see if a marshal will wave you back into a space.
The drivers can't see out of the side of the raised cockpits and with the HANS safety device connected to the crash helmet and very limited space they can't turn their heads anyway. And mirrors are no good if your car is not on the racing line.
In trying to find the right pace for the conditions out front Verstappen had a couple of decent runs down the barrier but the suspensions, steering track rods, and wheels are made of stern stuff these days.
And so Verstappen would brilliantly win his second Monaco Grand Prix and continue his run of never finishing outside the top two this year. He now leads team-mate Perez by 39 points which is approaching the equivalent of a win and a third place in hand.
What I learned when I was in direct competition with Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher and Mika Hakkinen and I simply couldn't match their raw speed and gifted talents was to maximise everything that was in my control such as car race set-up, starts, in laps, out laps, traffic management and so on. Sergio would be better off making sure he finishes second and accepting the genius of Verstappen, and then maximise the days when he delivers his own special magic such as Singapore last year and Baku this season.
After an hour and 49 minutes of concentration in extreme conditions, the famous Royal podium took place and the curtain came down on a fine weekend. Now we move a few hours down the road to an altogether different challenge in Barcelona.
MB
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