Mercedes fell on their three-pointed star here as they took responsibility for the pit stop misjudgment that cost Lewis Hamilton a straightforward victory in the Monaco Grand Prix. “We got the math wrong – we got the calculations wrong,” their head of motorsport, Toto Wolff said. “There is nothing else to do than apologise to Lewis. It was a misjudgment in the heat of the moment.”
The forlorn-looking Formula One world champion muttered: “I can’t really express the way I’m feeling at the moment so I won’t attempt to. To be honest it happened so fast I don’t remember. You rely on your team.”
The blunder allowed Nico Rosberg to complete a straight hat-trick of wins at the famous street circuit, the fourth man to do so after Graham Hill, Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost. The German also halved Hamilton’s world championship lead from 20 points to 10, because the British driver ended up third behind Sebastian Vettel.
Monaco Grand Prix: F1 – as it happened
Rolling report: An ill-judged pit-stop by Mercedes allowed Nico Rosberg to overtake Lewis Hamilton and win his third straight Monaco Grand Prix
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It looked like yet another Monotony Grand Prix as Hamilton sprinted away from his pole position to build up what looked like an impregnable advantage. For 63 of the 78 laps there seemed only one winner. Hamilton was poised to make it four victories out of six this year and extend his advantage over Rosberg from 20 points to 27.
But then Toro Rosso’s Max Verstappen, who had been the most eye-catching driver at Formula One’s biggest weekend of the year, crashed into the back of Romain Grosjean’s Lotus at Sainte Dévote, on the 64th lap, and the race would never be the same. The virtual safety car was implemented for the first time in F1, as yellow flags were waved to slow down the cars, and then the real safety car came out. At this point Hamilton had a lead of 25.4 seconds. He was called into the pits by the team, to change his soft tyres to the super-soft compound.
But his entry to the pit lane was held up and when he did take on new rubber the operation took four seconds, hardly the quickest. When he returned to the track he found himself behind not only Rosberg but also Vettel.
Immediately, he knew he had lost the race. Even with fresh tyres overtaking is heart-achingly difficult here and he had only eight laps to get past the other two; in the end he settled for the consolation of 15 points. “It’s the luckiest victory I’ve had, I feel for Lewis,” Rosberg said.
Wolff added: “We thought we had a gap which we didn’t have, when the safety car came out and Lewis was behind the safety car. The calculation was simply wrong. That’s what happened.
“This was the team’s decision. We are all in this together. We make decisions together. There is not one person to blame. We win and we lose together.”
But why did Mercedes take the gamble? Hamilton had the race won. Track position is everything at Monaco and there is always the chance that a pit stop can go awfully wrong. Wolff explained: “There was a potential risk that Sebastian could have switched to soft tyres behind us, coming up behind Nico. We have to follow the data. This is how the sport works. But the simple answer is the numbers were wrong.”
Hamilton received the message to come in when he was 50 metres away from the pit entrance. “The decision was made jointly with a lot of information at the same time within a fraction of seconds,” Wolff said.
“You need to make a call and you try to get as much input as possible from the engineers, from the management, from the driver and then take a decision. The algorithm was wrong.”
Although the team must take the ultimate responsibility – and they did – Hamilton also had a say in the decision-making process, because he had a dialogue with them.
Later, Hamilton said: “I saw a screen and it looked like the team was out [in the pits]. It looked like Nico had pitted. I thought the guys behind were pitting, so when the team said stay out, I said the tyres were dropping temperature, and I was assuming that these guys would be on options and I would be on the harder tyre, so they said to pit. I did that and came in thinking with full confidence the others had done the same.”
Hamilton was looking for his first win here since his championship-winning year of 2008. He was desperate for success on a circuit only a few hundred yards away from where he lives.
He said: “This race has been close to my heart for many years. It was a great feeling in the race, I had so much pace. I didn’t have to push too much. I could have doubled the lead if I needed. I’m grateful for that pace and I’ll come back to fight another day – at the moment I can’t think of anything else.”
Hamilton got off to a good start, which was more than matched by Rosberg but not by enough to get past. Vettel also hung on to third and Daniil Kvyat’s pass on his Red Bull colleague only to take fourth was the only change among the leaders on the opening lap.
Hamilton had a lead of 1.5 seconds after two laps and after 10 laps it was 3.5 seconds. It was all over. But that was before Mercedes inflicted grievous wounds on themselves.
Full results from Monte Carlo
1. Nico Rosberg (Ger) Mercedes 1:49:18.420 2; Sebastian Vettel (Ger) Ferrari +00:04.486; 3. Lewis Hamilton (GB) Mercedes 00:06.053; 4. Daniil Kvyat (Rus) RedBull 00:11.965; 5. Daniel Ricciardo (Aus) RedBull 00:13.608; 6. Kimi Raikkonen (Fin) Ferrari 00:14.345; 7. Sergio Pérez (Mex) Force India 00:15.013; 8. Jenson Button (GB) McLaren 00:16.063; 9. Felipe Nasr (Br) Sauber 00:23.626; 10. Carlos Sainz Jr (Sp) Toro Rosso 00:25.056 11. Nico Hülkenberg (Ger) Force India 00:26.232; 12. Romain Grosjean (Fr) Lotus 00:28.415; 13. Marcus Ericsson (Swe) Sauber 00:31.159; 14. Valtteri Bottas (Fin) Williams 00:45.789; 15. Felipe Massa (Br) Williams 1 lap; 16. Roberto Merhi (Sp) Manor 2 laps; 17. Will Stevens (GB) Manor 2 laps; Max Verstappen (Neth) Toro Rosso 15 laps ret; Fernando Alonso (Sp) McLaren 36 laps ret; Pastor Maldonado (Ven) Lotus 70 laps ret
source: via guardian
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