REPORT MONACO gp - Mundo Motorizado

PICS: DUNBAR, FERRARO, TEE/LAT
Grosjean scatters rivals
after his Ste Devote spin…
26C
RACE CONDITIONS
The weather kept everyone guessing
during the race, with very light rain
falling with a dozen or so laps remaining.
F
ormula 1
cars around
Monaco’s tight
streets, close-up
at 120mph,
cannot fail but
look insanely
fast between
the barriers, a wonderfully mad
and unfeasible spectacle apparently
unconnected with the modern,
safe world. Ironically it’s F1’s
slowest circuit, but from close
quarters it absolutely looks the
fastest. There was extra paradox
this time: six cars nose-to-tail
up front into the last few laps, it
looked like flat-out racing. But it
wasn’t. This was the ultimate in
tyre-preservation contests, extreme
even by the standards of 2012.
Mark Webber, Nico Rosberg,
Fernando Alonso, Sebastian Vettel,
Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa
were glued together for the last 10
laps, Red Bull-Mercedes-Ferrari-
Red Bull-McLaren-Ferrari almost
touching through the hairpin, a
great snaking articulation of colour
seen through the filter of the light
rain that had been falling for the
last 15 minutes. It felt like anything
could happen – but in the lead Red
Bull cockpit Webber was in full
control. Just as he had been from
the moment he converted his pole
into the lead at Ste Devote.
One stop or two, Webber could
have won this race – and what he
decided dominated everyone else’s
race. He and Red Bull had gone
into the day open-minded about
strategy. It was perfectly feasible
that the supersoft Pirelli on which
the top eight started would be
good for 25 laps. But it was not
confirmed, as the rained-out
session of Thursday meant no-one
had done long runs on them. Wear
of the rears – and not the usual
heat degradation – was the
limitation for everyone but, so
long as you drove within its limits,
did not under any circumstance
wheelspin it or overstress it in
the early laps, it was fine.
The soft tyre should then have
been good for 50 laps – and
therefore feasible for a one-stopper.
Two stops was theoretically quicker
– by around 5s over the distance
– but only with the unfeasible
assumption of no traffic delay.
The decision would depend upon
whether the supersoft really could
do 25 laps. Every team was rather
hoping it would, because of the
added complication of predicted
rain. If you needed to pit for
fresh slicks early, and the rain
then arrived in time for others
to pit straight from slicks to
inters or wets, then your race
was surely scuppered.
So the early pace of the race
was gentle, no-one keen to hustle
anyone else, those in front
confident that Monte Carlo’s layout
would make it easy to defend.
But as it became clear that the
supersofts were indeed holding up,
there was still a potential dilemma
for the strategists, because the rain
prediction had moved back now to
way beyond 25 laps – more like 35.
RepoRt
monaco gP
…as Kobayashi trips over Button
So now the supersoft runners
would no longer be able to go
straight from the dry tyre to the
wet, whereas those who’d started
on the harder tyre – Vettel, Jenson
Button, Paul di Resta – could
potentially do so with ease and save
themselves a pitstop. So for that
reason the pace was gentle in the
mid-part of the race too, as the
second-guessing of the rain had
effectively committed everyone to a
one-stop. But then that moment
passed too, the harder-tyred guys
made their stops for fresh slicks
and, with all now committed to
one-stop races and a long final
May 31 2012 autosport.com 33