Looking back at Monaco
By Matt Jones May 31 2006
Despite a good points haul, the Monaco Grand Prix was a disappointing event for Honda Racing F1. RealHondaF1.com reader Matt Jones gives us his view of the race, from front to back.
Despite a good points haul, the Monaco Grand Prix was a disappointing event for Honda Racing F1. RealHondaF1.com reader Matt Jones gives us his view of the race, from front to back.
Honda Racing F1 went to Monaco at the weekend, probably the most challenging circuit on the calendar, with the narrow roads meaning any minor mistake could put you out of the race. It’s one of the more unpredictable races of the season, and qualifying this year had been tipped to throw up many surprises, with traffic expected to prove a very difficult problem for all drivers.
The troubling qualifying did arrive, as there was indeed an incident in the first session with Felipe Massa’s Ferrari hitting the wall and putting him at the back of the grid for the race. That’s another disappointing qualifying for Massa and, once again, he has it all to do to salvage anything from the race.
Apart from Massa, the first session didn’t throw out any other high profile drivers, so it was onto the second session, and two unexpected drivers were left out of the shoot out; Jenson Button and Ralf Schumacher. It was very disappointing for Button who, once again, suffered from the masses of oversteer on new tyres that plagued him at the Spanish Grand Prix. His display in qualifying meant he was 14th fastest.
The third session was going along very well, with all the drivers trading fastest times. Finally, Michael Schumacher took provisional pole but then went on to run wide into Rascasse, which, quite usually, left his car parked out wide on the track.
My view on the incident is that it was done intentionally. Looking from the onboard footage, Schumacher could have easily of made the corner, despite a minor lock up. Perhaps it was not intentionally planned but, once he had made the mistake in the corner, he made no effort to try and make the corner whatsoever.
Unfortunately the fans were made to suffer, as the stewards deemed Schumacher’s actions as intentional, ruining other drivers qualifying laps, and he was made to start from the back row. The fans were deprived of Schumacher vs. Alonso in the streets of Monte Carlo. It was the right decision, in my opinion, but it was still extremely disappointing that the seven times world champion did what he did.
Schumacher was not the only driver to suffer a tumble down the grid, as Giancarlo Fisichella was also deemed to have blocked David Coulthard’s flying lap - his penalty meant he was to start from 10th on the grid. I found this quite amusing after we saw a very animated Fisichella storm down to Jacques Villeneuve’s garage just a few weeks ago acting like a spoilt child…
Race day came and our hopes were firmly on Rubens Barrichello’s shoulders, with Button starting down in 13th. With abnormal amounts of understeer on fresh tyres making the car a pig to drive, it was always going to be difficult to salvage any sort of points. Thankfully for us, Rubens came home with the goods - a very solid third place was in the bag in the closing stages, only for Rubens to be handed a drive through penalty that took away his chance of a maiden podium for the team.
However he came back with fourth place and kept Honda’s 100% scoring record firmly on track, even if the pace was well off the leaders. Button, as expected, came home a lowly 11th and, I expect, extremely demoralised from his whole Monaco experience.
The pace of both of our drivers was extremely disappointing; hopefully they will deal with the issue before Silverstone. Our run of points is continuing though, and we are starting to pull a nice gap between ourselves and fifth place BMW-Sauber in the constructor’s championship.
It was turning out to be a very interesting race with Kimi Raikkonen and Alonso very close in terms of performance, with Mark Webber close behind keeping them both honest. However, the threat to Alonso’s first Monaco win was short lived by both of these threats as both retired within a handful of laps of each other. Nico Rosberg completed William’s torrid run of reliability issues with a crash into the wall when his throttle stuck open.
It was certainly a race for the one-stoppers, with Rubens holding up everyone from P5 down. Anybody on a two-stop strategy found themselves very much compromised as they got backed up for over half the race. Coulthard was able to reap the rewards after switching to a one stopper, and eventually ended up on the podium for Red Bull Racing’s maiden podium - a very surprising result for the team who have struggled to score any points whatsoever all season. However, I’m sure they will be slightly disappointed that Christian Klien suffered from reliability issues when on target for a strong points finish.
Schumacher was another to gain advantage from the two stoppers being held up and was able to finish in a fantastic fifth place, with some beautiful overtaking in the opening couple of laps. He certainly looked as if he was taking no prisoners out there, and was a man who is still extremely hungry for success. Fifth place was good damage limitation, though Alonso now has a 21-point gap and time is slowly running out for Schumacher.
Ferrari are now at the point where they are waiting for a mistake from Alonso or Renault to put them back in the frame. At the moment Alonso is just absolutely supreme, and has not finished any lower than second in a race. At the moment it’s looking extremely good for the Spaniard to retain his title.
His teammate, Fisichella, was solid enough, though a one-stopping Rubens ruined his strategy. Sixth was not a bad result considering, although it’s disappointing that he is not delivering consistently for whatever reasons.
McLaren were disappointing, as it looked like Kimi’s heavy second stint would pay off and hand him the race win. Unfortunately retirements plague his season once again and he will surely be looking at his options for next season. Juan Pablo Montoya was solid enough, but was handed his second place from retirements up ahead. The more aggressive qualifying paid off for the team and hopefully from now on we will continue to see more than two drivers challenging for the race wins.
Toyota’s B-spec chassis got its maiden race but didn’t look particularly special. Jarno Trulli was running in third before his retirement, but this position was very much handed to him by retirements and strategy rather than raw pace. Ralf Schumacher managed to salvage a lucky point but was off the pace all weekend and, for once, Trulli both out-qualified and out raced him by a large margin.
BMW-Sauber did well and are proving to be very consistent points scorers. Quietly going about their business, they are ahead of some very big names in the constructor’s championship. Nick Heidfeld was another of the drivers to benefit from one stopping and ended up finishing seventh, with a couple more points for the team. Jacques Villeneuve was very quiet all race, and things just happened at the wrong time in the race for him.
Midland had a bit of an incident off the start, with their drivers getting into a tangle. Both managed to finish though, and Christijan Albers was able to finish ahead of other cars apart from the Super Aguri’s, which I’m sure the team will be happy about.
Toro Rosso’s V10 engines didn’t really offer any advantage. Vitantonio Liuzzi managed to finish ahead of Button, but didn’t threaten the points scoring positions, despite the engine advantage they were supposed to have around the streets of Monte Carlo. Scott Speed finished very lowly indeed.
Super Aguri saw Frank Montagny finish his first Formula One race, whilst Takuma Sato was left with more reliability issues, but did manage to run a few laps ahead of the Honda RA106 of Button. Not a bad effort at all, considering the comparison in machinery.
Monaco will certainly be remembered this year, with controversy, close racing, and a shock result from Red Bull. Whether Schumacher did what he did in qualifying intentionally will never be known, but it was extremely disappointing that we did not get the chance to see a four way fight for the race win.
Thankfully the championship race didn’t take too much of a severe knock, and we’re now looking forward to Silverstone. Hopefully we can sort out the understeer issues with the car before then, and can genuinely challenge for some really strong race results for both drivers!
The troubling qualifying did arrive, as there was indeed an incident in the first session with Felipe Massa’s Ferrari hitting the wall and putting him at the back of the grid for the race. That’s another disappointing qualifying for Massa and, once again, he has it all to do to salvage anything from the race.
Apart from Massa, the first session didn’t throw out any other high profile drivers, so it was onto the second session, and two unexpected drivers were left out of the shoot out; Jenson Button and Ralf Schumacher. It was very disappointing for Button who, once again, suffered from the masses of oversteer on new tyres that plagued him at the Spanish Grand Prix. His display in qualifying meant he was 14th fastest.
The third session was going along very well, with all the drivers trading fastest times. Finally, Michael Schumacher took provisional pole but then went on to run wide into Rascasse, which, quite usually, left his car parked out wide on the track.
My view on the incident is that it was done intentionally. Looking from the onboard footage, Schumacher could have easily of made the corner, despite a minor lock up. Perhaps it was not intentionally planned but, once he had made the mistake in the corner, he made no effort to try and make the corner whatsoever.
Unfortunately the fans were made to suffer, as the stewards deemed Schumacher’s actions as intentional, ruining other drivers qualifying laps, and he was made to start from the back row. The fans were deprived of Schumacher vs. Alonso in the streets of Monte Carlo. It was the right decision, in my opinion, but it was still extremely disappointing that the seven times world champion did what he did.
Schumacher was not the only driver to suffer a tumble down the grid, as Giancarlo Fisichella was also deemed to have blocked David Coulthard’s flying lap - his penalty meant he was to start from 10th on the grid. I found this quite amusing after we saw a very animated Fisichella storm down to Jacques Villeneuve’s garage just a few weeks ago acting like a spoilt child…
Race day came and our hopes were firmly on Rubens Barrichello’s shoulders, with Button starting down in 13th. With abnormal amounts of understeer on fresh tyres making the car a pig to drive, it was always going to be difficult to salvage any sort of points. Thankfully for us, Rubens came home with the goods - a very solid third place was in the bag in the closing stages, only for Rubens to be handed a drive through penalty that took away his chance of a maiden podium for the team.
However he came back with fourth place and kept Honda’s 100% scoring record firmly on track, even if the pace was well off the leaders. Button, as expected, came home a lowly 11th and, I expect, extremely demoralised from his whole Monaco experience.
The pace of both of our drivers was extremely disappointing; hopefully they will deal with the issue before Silverstone. Our run of points is continuing though, and we are starting to pull a nice gap between ourselves and fifth place BMW-Sauber in the constructor’s championship.
It was turning out to be a very interesting race with Kimi Raikkonen and Alonso very close in terms of performance, with Mark Webber close behind keeping them both honest. However, the threat to Alonso’s first Monaco win was short lived by both of these threats as both retired within a handful of laps of each other. Nico Rosberg completed William’s torrid run of reliability issues with a crash into the wall when his throttle stuck open.
It was certainly a race for the one-stoppers, with Rubens holding up everyone from P5 down. Anybody on a two-stop strategy found themselves very much compromised as they got backed up for over half the race. Coulthard was able to reap the rewards after switching to a one stopper, and eventually ended up on the podium for Red Bull Racing’s maiden podium - a very surprising result for the team who have struggled to score any points whatsoever all season. However, I’m sure they will be slightly disappointed that Christian Klien suffered from reliability issues when on target for a strong points finish.
Schumacher was another to gain advantage from the two stoppers being held up and was able to finish in a fantastic fifth place, with some beautiful overtaking in the opening couple of laps. He certainly looked as if he was taking no prisoners out there, and was a man who is still extremely hungry for success. Fifth place was good damage limitation, though Alonso now has a 21-point gap and time is slowly running out for Schumacher.
Ferrari are now at the point where they are waiting for a mistake from Alonso or Renault to put them back in the frame. At the moment Alonso is just absolutely supreme, and has not finished any lower than second in a race. At the moment it’s looking extremely good for the Spaniard to retain his title.
His teammate, Fisichella, was solid enough, though a one-stopping Rubens ruined his strategy. Sixth was not a bad result considering, although it’s disappointing that he is not delivering consistently for whatever reasons.
McLaren were disappointing, as it looked like Kimi’s heavy second stint would pay off and hand him the race win. Unfortunately retirements plague his season once again and he will surely be looking at his options for next season. Juan Pablo Montoya was solid enough, but was handed his second place from retirements up ahead. The more aggressive qualifying paid off for the team and hopefully from now on we will continue to see more than two drivers challenging for the race wins.
Toyota’s B-spec chassis got its maiden race but didn’t look particularly special. Jarno Trulli was running in third before his retirement, but this position was very much handed to him by retirements and strategy rather than raw pace. Ralf Schumacher managed to salvage a lucky point but was off the pace all weekend and, for once, Trulli both out-qualified and out raced him by a large margin.
BMW-Sauber did well and are proving to be very consistent points scorers. Quietly going about their business, they are ahead of some very big names in the constructor’s championship. Nick Heidfeld was another of the drivers to benefit from one stopping and ended up finishing seventh, with a couple more points for the team. Jacques Villeneuve was very quiet all race, and things just happened at the wrong time in the race for him.
Midland had a bit of an incident off the start, with their drivers getting into a tangle. Both managed to finish though, and Christijan Albers was able to finish ahead of other cars apart from the Super Aguri’s, which I’m sure the team will be happy about.
Toro Rosso’s V10 engines didn’t really offer any advantage. Vitantonio Liuzzi managed to finish ahead of Button, but didn’t threaten the points scoring positions, despite the engine advantage they were supposed to have around the streets of Monte Carlo. Scott Speed finished very lowly indeed.
Super Aguri saw Frank Montagny finish his first Formula One race, whilst Takuma Sato was left with more reliability issues, but did manage to run a few laps ahead of the Honda RA106 of Button. Not a bad effort at all, considering the comparison in machinery.
Monaco will certainly be remembered this year, with controversy, close racing, and a shock result from Red Bull. Whether Schumacher did what he did in qualifying intentionally will never be known, but it was extremely disappointing that we did not get the chance to see a four way fight for the race win.
Thankfully the championship race didn’t take too much of a severe knock, and we’re now looking forward to Silverstone. Hopefully we can sort out the understeer issues with the car before then, and can genuinely challenge for some really strong race results for both drivers!
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