Ricciardo pitted a lap after Hamilton finally made a stop to switch from his “extreme” wet tyres, which he had used from the start of the race, and had built enough of a margin on that tour to reclaim the lead. It will be a great relief for them.
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Nico Hulkenberg finished sixth, ahead of a frustrated Nico Rosberg who could do no better than seventh, seeing his 43-point title advantage cut down to 24. Hamilton had to defend brilliantly from the Australian, including on lap 37 when he squeezed the Red Bull driver almost into the wall, provoking very rude hand gestures from Ricciardo.
The race started when the safety auto came in seven laps in, and it took just a lap for Joylon Palmer to become the first retirement of the race after going off in his Renault.
You always need a huge amount of luck in order to win Monaco Grand Prix, but Hamilton must have had a four leaf clover in his vehicle on lap 33.
If anything, the recent success by Red Bull is something that Ricciardo should be happy about-the victory by 18-year-old Max Verstappen at the Spanish Grand Prix earlier in May was the first for the team since 2014, and Ricciardo’s pole in Monaco was Red Bull’s first since 2013. While most leaders stopped to swap their full-wet tires for intermediate tires on a drying track, Hamilton elected to stay out on his wets, gaining the lead from Ricciardo.
The long pit stop meant Ricciardo lost out on track position to Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton, and he was unable to get past the Brit in the second half of the race, going on to finish in second.
“It was pretty simple, I was very far off the pace and Lewis still had a chance to win the race, quite clearly, as he did”, he said.
But in an astonishing oversight, Red Bull’s crew was not ready and this cost him valuable time as he came out behind Hamilton.
“They gave me a warning to try and up my pace, but I wasn’t able to, so the next step was to let Lewis by”.
Ricciardo’s loss was Hamilton’s gain.
“I didn’t expect the points to shift in the way they have”, said Hamilton.
“There was a discussion on the pitwall, how long we thought the tyre would last”, Wolff said in a statement, via the Motorsport. Force India’s Sergio Perez had a fine drive to finish third. Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo is now on third spot with 66 points to his name. The next incident came in the penultimate hairpin, where the recently demoted Daniil Kvyat caught Kevin Magnussen, resulting in Kvyat’s retirement and the beginning of a series of headaches for Magnussen.
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The Mercedes-GP driver’s season has been beset by setbacks, some self-inflicted, others mechanical and out of his control, and for a brief period it looked as if he would not set a lap time and start from 10th on a street track where overtaking is nigh on impossible.
