Mark Webber made it a magic day for both Red Bull and Australian Motorsport by winning the Monaco Grand Prix. For the second race in just eight days Webber led from start to finish to put himself at the top of the drivers championship, equal on points with team-mate Sebastian Vettel. Earlier in the day, fellow Aussie and Red Bull reserve driver Daniel Ricciardo won the Formula Renault 3.5 championship race also leading every lap after starting from pole. (See earlier story) 

Webber celebrates on the podium

 The weekend saw Webber become the most successful Aussie at the principality having also won the F3000 race in 2001 with Sir Jack Brabham winning the GP in 1959. Ricciardo became only the third Aussie to score a win on this famous circuit. Mark utterly dominated this race and had it not been for four safety car periods he would have easily won by over thirty seconds. He was able to pull away at will after each of the safety car periods and would build up an impressive lead before having all his hard work deleted when another yellow flag was shown.

  Webber got an excellent start while team-mate Vettel showed true bravery diving up the inside of Kubica’s Renault in St Devote. The first yellow came shortly after on lap one when Nico Hulkenberg lost the Williams in the tunnel, causing a four lap safety car period. This assisted Fernando Alonso no end. Having written off his chassis in practice and starting from the pit lane, Alonso pitted immediately and ran the entire race on the one set of medium compound tyres. 

   The race then ran uninterrupted until lap 30 when Hulkenberg’s Williams team-mate, Rubens Barrichello had his left rear suspension let go approaching Massenet, causing Rubens to have what is known as “a big one.” The resulting safety car period wiped out Mark’s 15 second lead while the pieces were cleared away. These pieces included the Williams steering wheel that Rubens had hurled from the car which was then run over by the Hoon. It was very lucky that no damage was done to the McLaren and the Hoon went on to finish in fifth place. 

  On the restart Webber again pulled away at around half a second a lap until just ten laps later another safety car period was called for a loose man-hole cover.  Yet again Webber romped away at the front while Vettel held off the determined challenge from Robert Kubica’s Renault until just three laps from the end when, just to give Mark a nasty fright, Jarno Trulli tried to remove Karun Chandhok’s head with the undertray of his Lotus. Trulli made a lunge up the inside of the Indian at La Rasscasse and the two touched, causing the Lotus to ride up over the HRT Dallara and Chandhok appeared to try to keep the Lotus out of his visor with his hands. And all this right in front of the race leader who had to brake sharply to avoid being caught up in the mess.

Mark was simply untouchable in the principality

    This of course, brought out the final yellow flag and the pack cruised around the final three laps to the flag. All except the Unter-Ubermensch who attempted to nick sixth place of Alonso entering the final corner. He did succeed on the track but was then handed a 20 second penalty for passing under the yellow and this saw him relegated to 12th in the final standings. Ferrari have appealed this claiming that the teams were advised that the safety car “was coming in” and therefore that the race was not finishing under the yellow flag. The penalty has handed down as the rules state that when the race is to finish under the yellow flag, the safety car will pull into the pits on the last corner and all the cars must pass the finish line without overtaking. One way or the other it was probably not a great idea to push the rules when the Unter-Ubermensch’s old rival, Damon Hill, was one of the stewards. My guess is Damon took great delight in handing down the penalty.

    This all meant that Rosberg finished in seventh behind Massa, the Hoon and Alonso with the two Force India’s of Sutil and Liuzzi next up and Buemi taking the final point, his first of the season. Pre-race championship leader suffered an early blow when he went out on lap two with smoke billowing from the rear of the McLaren. In a very un-typical moment McLaren had forgotten to remove the side pod cover panel when Jenson went out on his warm-up lap and by the time his lap was over, so was his overly warmed up engine. Whoops. On such things championships are lost. 

   For full results go to;

 http://www.mmmsport.com.au/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=150&dir=ASC&order=name&limit=5&limitstart=10  

Sam Snape 

17/05/2010

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