This year’s most glamorous race of the calendar is in the books, and the fastest car on the grid took the honours, much as everyone expected. Mark Webber from Sebastian Vettel was the result, Red Bull’s second 1-2 of the season and another spanner in the works of the potential of this season. The landscape has changed yet again in F1, from Alonso vs. Massa, to Hamilton vs. Button, and now Webber vs. Vettel is the key battle at the front of the grid. This week’s TGTB&TB covers all the Monaco fallout and the stories catching the eye.

 The Good

 What can I say about Mark Webber’s form that hasn’t been covered in every other outlet of press? Greatest week of his career? Greatest week of any F1 driver? Maybe so. The thing about Webber, to me, is that he’s one of those drivers that seem to have a narrow margin of operation when driving a car. Jenson Button is a driver along these lines too. When the car is good, Webber is awesome, but how many times a season can you achieve perfection? The real test is when the car isn’t as good as he wants it, just like Jenson had to on the way to the title last year when he was scrapping for 4th, 5th and 6th. We saw last year Mark coming off the boil heading into the final races of last season and is going to have to work hard to keep himself at the sharp end. All this considered it was a fantastic result that wasn’t truly recorded properly, as without the four safety car periods Mark would’ve been more than a minute down the road. Now that is impressive.

Robert Kubica’s qualifying lap on Saturday afternoon was a spectacle to grace the Monte Carlo harbour. Topping the sheets halfway through Q3 is impressive, but to the take half a second off that time a lap later? Breathtaking. Kubica was probably marginally behind Webber on form driver of the weekend as he was fast throughout Thursday practice, while Webber held back until it mattered on Saturday. Only the start cost him one step on the podium, but hanging on the back of a Red Bull is no mean feat. Renault performed extremely well in the engine stakes too, taking a 1-2-3 to match Mercedes in China. Not bad at all.

Felipe Massa got a stroke of good luck in not only finishing fourth, but also that the stewards saw his blatant block on Jenson Button but chose to do nothing. Finally, a little bit of luck for the plucky Brazilian.

The Bad 

I’ve never been a big fan of the Monaco race, at least the dry ones. But this one threw up some interesting stories. Just quickly, how irresponsible was Rubens Barrichello for throwing his steering wheel into oncoming traffic? Surely someone of his experience would understand the consequences of an action like that. He was lucky the Hispania that drove over it didn’t take any serious damage. Luckily for him, the stewards were apparently too busy with other matters to hand out any serious punishment.

Before I get stuck into the Michael Schumacher penalty, I’m going to let regular readers know I’m heading into this with a clear head, and not let the fact that Hill vs. Schumacher has reared its head again after 15 years. Even though Hill was robbed…

Put simply, the stewards will always take the position of the FIA in a conflict. Schumacher was optimistic to take the chance with Alonso, but it wasn’t a fair overtake as most of the top ten were under the impression that the race would be a procession until the chequered flag. Don’t forget, the last time a race finished under a safety car, at Oz ’09, the safety car came in, but there were no overtakes. The new rule for the safety car line is causing all the controversy, but the press would have any excuse to drag up a feud that generated so much interest. It’s a non-entity of a story at its heart, Schumacher is nowhere near the title so the points won’t matter, and Hill was merely overseeing the stewards, not making all the decisions. Case closed, move on.

Memo to Lewis Hamilton; don’t shoot the messenger. If your engineer says your brakes are cooked, deal with it. The world was listening.

Fernando Alonso is slowly becoming mistake prone this season, although each and every recovery just adds to his aura. His accident on Saturday ruined any hopes of a good starting position for the race, and the resulting 6th place, although fortunate due to safety car periods, was impressive none the less (although, he only really battled with the Virgins and Hispanias before the pit-stops). I just can’t see Alonso as a serious title contender as a large portion of his points have been from clawing back a deficit of his own making. Oz was a spin on the first corner, Malaysia was a poor qualifying call, and China was a jump start. Add in a crash in Saturday practice at Monaco to the list and that’s four major mistakes in six rounds. If it wasn’t for other people’s misfortunes, would he really be a major title contender? I think not.

The Backmarkers 

So, the big debate over the new teams in qualifying was fully unjustified, with no slower cars getting in the way of any top teams. In fact, the top teams did a better job tripping over one other if anything!

Sauber had yet another weekend to forget. Making into Q2 was ok for them, but no pace and then two DNFs just prove that this team is far off the pace. They will really need to keep an eye on the rapidly improving pace of Lotus or this season will be the worst in the teams rich history; not the return Peter Sauber was hoping for.

Hispania and Lotus will definitely have their work cut out repairing their cars after the race ending shunt at Rascasse for Jarno Trulli and Karun Chandhok. Brave move by Trulli by the way. Another strong showing by both teams, Hispania for now being ahead of the other teams in classifications, and Lotus for closing the gap between them and an established new team to under three seconds. Both are incredibly impressive for differing reasons, but these two are developing in the right ways as the season progresses.

Heikki Kovalainen apparently donated £300,000 to charity at Monaco as well. Just how much are Lotus paying him?!

Last, but not least, there’s Virgin. If anyone thought Hispania were going to be the joke team, aren’t they very much mistaken. The teams updates don’t work, that’s obvious in lack of difference in performance between Timo Glock in the updated car and Lucas Di Grassi in the old spec one. While the other new teams are focusing on developing upgrades and finishing regularly, Virgin are still working out gremlins in hydraulics, suspension, fuel tanks, etc. The two mitigating factors are Branson’s wallet and Wirth’s design ethic, both which are restricting the team from reaching the potential it keeps taking about.

Another edition of TGTB&TB in the books, what did you think? As always, let me know! Don’t forget the forums to post any thoughts you may have, and see you in 7 days.

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