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After showing tremendous qualifying pace, Mercedes came to Monaco GP as favourites and they did not disappoint. The Mercedes cars had the perfect qualifying session, finishing 1-2, with Rosberg just 9/100th of a second faster than his teammate, and locking up the front row of the grid for what is regarded as one of the most glamorous races of the season.
The major problem for Mercedes team this year has been managing tyre wear during the race, resulting in a series of disappointing race finishes. Having dropped from pole position to ninth and sixth places in Bahrain and then Spain, Rosberg would’ve feared the same might happen this time as well. But on the roads of the principality, where overtaking is difficult, the Pole-sitter was expected to have a huge advantage and it showed.
Rosberg started off poorly, but managed to hold off Hamilton into Sainte Devote. Hamilton came under immense pressure from World champion Sebastien Vettel, Rosberg steadily increased his lead and by Lap 3, he was leading Hamilton by a second. Rosberg controlled the race nicely with 1m 22s laps.
With Nico extending his lead at the top, rival teams were pondering if they could undercut the Mercedes with an earlier stop but with minimal overtaking opportunities available at the race track, that strategy proved to be an extremely difficult one to pull off.
Massa’s crash brought the safety car out on lap 31 and seemed to have spoilt the day for the Mercedes cars. Both Mercedes cars went in for their pit stop; Hamilton lost out after slowing down too much under the safety car and had to rejoin at 4th, behind the two Red Bulls whereas Rosberg rejoined at the front. A coming together between Chilton and Maldonado resulted in the latter crashing at Tabac which resulted in a Red flag and the race restarted behind the safety car again. But this didn’t affect the positions up front as the top four remained the same.
The German led every single lap of the race and finished 3.8 seconds ahead of his compatriot Vettel. Hamilton had to settle for the 4th spot.
As the race restarted, Rosberg led comfortably. Hamilton tried a series of manoeuvres on Webber but did not succeed and Webber held on.
But the story which has been making the headlines this weekend has been the Brackley-based team’s ‘secret’ tyre-testing with Pirelli at the Circuit de Catalunya. Red Bull and Ferrari have launched protests at the Monaco Grand Prix after it emerged that Mercedes conducted a secret tyre test after the Spanish GP. Rival teams believe the 1000km three-day test gave Mercedes an unfair advantage. Team boss Ross Brawn believes they have done nothing wrong and the tyre test was well within the rules but others believe that it gave an unfair advantage and could have improved the performance by a second.
Though Rosberg’s victory was upheld by the FIA, investigations have begun and both Mercedes and Pirelli could be hauled in front of the FIA International Tribunal.
