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With Monaco being the hardest circuit of the year to overtake on, the
emphasis was on tyre strategy to help move drivers forward during the race.
Red Bull’s Mark Webber became the season’s sixth different winner in six
races – a new record – underlining just how closely matched the cars are
this year. Red Bull becomes the first team to win twice this year, following
Sebastian Vettel’s victory in Bahrain.
At the start, all the drivers apart from Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel,
McLaren’s Jenson Button, Force India’s Paul di Resta, Caterham’s Vitaly
Petrov and HRT’s Pedro de la Rosa started on the P Zero Red supersoft tyre.
With the possibility of rain predicted halfway through the race, the drivers
concentrated on making their first set of tyres last for as long as
possible, in order to minimise the potential number of pit stops. The timing
of the pit stops is always crucial in Monaco, in order to ensure that cars
do not feed out into traffic that is difficult to overtake. A flawless
one-stop strategy from Red Bull ensured that Webber was able to convert his
pole position into a second win at Monaco.
Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg was the first of the leaders to change from
supersoft to P Zero Yellow soft on lap 27, banking on no rain coming. Two
laps later, Webber also pitted but crucially he was able to emerge ahead of
Rosberg. The longest stint on the supersoft was carried out by Toro Rosso’s
Daniel Ricciardo, who made his original set of P Zero Reds last for 40 laps.
Vettel’s strategy meant that he was able to take the lead by the halfway
point of the race, building up a significant advantage by the time he
finally pitted for supersoft tyres on lap 46, having put in a series of
rapid laps. But it was not quite enough for him to keep the lead after his
stop: Vettel re-joined in fourth position behind Ferrari driver Fernando
Alonso, who now heads the championship standings.
Toro Rosso driver Jean-Eric Vergne also used strategy, with an early pit
stop on lap 17, to move from 17 the on the grid to a points-scoring seventh.
He then gambled on switching to intermediates with six laps to go, after
running on the soft tyre for 53 laps. Sauber driver Sergio Perez set the
fastest lap of the race on the soft tyre, having started at the back end of
the grid after going off in qualifying.
The anticipated rain finally fell lightly with just over 10 laps to go,
creating a grandstand finish in Monaco for the second year in succession.
The top six ran nose to tail to the flag, covered by just six seconds at the
finish.
Pirelli’s motorsport director Paul Hembery commented: “Congratulations to
Mark Webber and Red Bull. The team managed their race and their tyre
strategy perfectly, winning Monaco for the third year in a row and a race
for the second time this year. Once again we saw that the cars were all
extremely closely matched, equalling each other on pace throughout the race.
This was despite the fact that nobody had any proper running on the
supersoft with full tanks, due to the mixed weather conditions during free
practice on Thursday. As a result, calculating the strategy was extremely
complicated. But with the nature of the circuit, plus a tyre choice that was
certainly more conservative and hardly any tyre degradation, it was clear
that a one-stop strategy was the way forward as soon as the teams learned
more about the performance of the supersoft after the race got underway.
Obviously that led to longer stints and limited opportunities for
overtaking. Although there was some rain at the end, our slick tyres still
offered enough grip to carry the leaders through to a very close finish with
the top six finishing within six seconds of each other.” |
