Lewis Hamilton scored the 44th win of his career and his second victory at the Monaco Grand Prix in a dramatic race.
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Rosberg struggled visibly and Hamilton was right behind him for many laps, even as Ricciardo was scampering off into the distance.
Because of poor visibility and a drenched circuit, the first few laps were a procession behind a safety vehicle.
While one Red Bull driver’s race was coming to a dramatic end on-track, leader Daniel Ricciardo would suffer his own misfortune at the same time as he stopped for a scheduled tire change as instructed only to find his team completely unprepared, with no tires laid out for the generally quick change.
“So that got the team the win in Monaco and therefore fully understandable and simple at the time”.
“I didn’t make the call”.
However, Rosberg then let Hamilton through to give Mercedes a chance at the win, and the German driver eventually ended up P6 after the stops played out and the changeover from wet to intermediate and then to dry tyres.
Rosberg, victor of seven of the past eight races, including the first four this season, had a bad day as he finished seventh his misery compounded when he was overtaken at the line by Nico Hulkenberg.
If the start of the race was slightly anticlimactic, with a safety vehicle escorting the cars around the track due to heavy rain, then what ensued was anything but.
This time, there were no such glitches for Hamilton, whose other win in Monaco was back in 2008 when he was driving for McLaren.
He finally changed to ultra-soft slicks lap 31, but Ricciardo’s corresponding pit stop proved a disaster as his team failed to have the tyres ready. Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo was out in front after a brilliant performance during qualifying, and once the skies cleared up the Australian dropped the hammer and looked set to notch up his first Monaco title. “Nope, no idea. I was called into the box, I didn’t make the call, so they should have been ready and, yeah, it hurts, it hurts. All we can do is apologize to him”.
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner and motorsport chief Helmut Marko both regretted the mistake that virtually presented Lewis Hamilton with victory.
“We have that kind of agreement but I didn’t know until you just told me here so I just said thanks for being a gentleman”.
And later he added: “Two weeks in a row I’ve been screwed, it sucks”.
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“Obviously Ricciardo’s pit-stop didn’t go well to say the least – and I feel sorry for them because you don’t want for that to happen to anybody in the garage – but that was just what we needed and Lewis came out and drove a superb race in the conditions”. Force India’s Sergio Perez had a fine drive to finish third. In the Constructors’ Championship, Mercedes leads with 188 points and is followed by Ferrari with 121 points and Red Bull with 112 points.
