The champion was involved in first lap collisions in Australia and Bahrain, with the Mercedes drivers crashing into each other in Spain and ending their race at the third corner.
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Hamilton’s miserable season has been littered with technical faults and crashes but he began to claw his way back towards the top of the pile with a near-faultless drive around the French province. Hamilton though was in control of the race from there on in, and secured a quite remarkable victory to get his 2016 campaign back on track.
The Brit was forced to battle it out with Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo for the majority of the race, but the Australian was hit by a pit-stop error on lap 32. Yet as Ricciardo entered his pit box, the team weren’t ready with tyres, costing him around ten seconds.
“Without swearing it’s hard”, a despondent Ricciardo said. “I was on the ultra-soft and the rubber was finished at the end”.
Mercedes-AMG’s strategy paid off as Hamilton held on to the wet tyres for longer despite the initial struggle.
“I prayed for a day like this so I feel truly blessed”.
Where everyone else transitioned via the intermediate Pirelli to bridge the gap between wet and dry, Hamilton stretched his wet-weather rubber nearly to half distance, before bolting on a set of the new ultrasoft slicks for a near 40-lap run to the chequered flag.
“I don’t know, I don’t want to comment on the race to be honest”, said the dejected Aussie. This mean that when Ricciardo arrived for tires, they weren’t ready.
“I was hoping it was just a hiccup”.
While Red Bull team principal Christian Horner apologised to Ricciardo for the faux-pas, he claimed the unique pit-wall and garage layout of this most historic of venues contributed to the embarrassing mix-up. But the Briton afforded him little room.
Ricciardo stood watching, glum-faced, but did shake Hamilton’s hand.
“We will investigate and find out [what happened], but it was a human mistake”.
Nico Rosberg on the sidelines of Monaco GP on Sunday.
If the start of the race was slightly anticlimactic, with a safety auto escorting the cars around the track due to heavy rain, then what ensued was anything but. Daniil Kvyat launched an ill-judged move on Kevin Magnussen at Rascasse, before Magnussen crashed all by himself at Mirabeau on lap 33.
The Dutchman must look to get one over on Ricciardo in Montreal to prove that he is a match for him. Rosberg later explained that he was abiding by an existing team rule in letting Hamilton past, but when the race victor learned the full story of what happened he thanked him in front of a packed room of journalists.
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He was told to move out of Hamilton’s way by his Mercedes team and eventually slipped to sixth in the order. Hulkenberg passed Rosberg after the last corner to finish P6 and give Force India a basketful of points.
