This was the question posed by Edd Straw, Scott Mitchell and Stuart Coddling in the latest autosport.com podcast ‘Ricciardo’s Monaco redemption‘
They argue that Max Verstappen’s crash in FP3, before qualifying, squashed any chance of a Red Bull 1-2 finish at the 2018 Monaco Grand Prix. The crash put Verstappen out of qualifying meaning he had to start from the rear of the grid while Red Bull team mate Daniel Ricciardo was quickest in qualifying and went on to win the Grand Prix.
If Verstappen hadn’t crashed, he was highly likely to have been starting alongside Ricciardo and we would have seen both competing for the win, made even more entertaining as Ricciardo had a MGU-K failure (the energy recovery system connected to the turbocharger of the engine and converts heat energy from exhaust gases into electrical energy) and was down on horsepower. Were we robbed?
And was it a boring race?
Kimi Raikkonen (Ferrari) thinks so: “Today nothing really happened in the race; to be honest, it was a pretty boring one. We know that on this track, once everybody has stopped, whoever is in the front dictates the speed and no matter if he goes four second slower on a lap, there’s no way to pass unless somebody makes a big mistake or runs out of tires. We end up following each other through the whole race.”
Fernando Alonso(McLaren) agrees: “It was quite a boring race: I was cruising around in seventh position as there were barely any yellow flags or Safety Cars.”
Ironically Verstappen enjoyed the race: “I still really enjoyed myself out there today as I was able to race other cars and be competitive pretty much from start to finish. Deep down of course I am still disappointed as we could have had a much better result if I hadn’t made the mistake in practice, but on the other hand, I made the most of the race. I had fun, I was passing cars and fighting every lap which is especially rare here in Monaco, normally it is just cruising during the race.’”
Well, starting from the rear of the grid with the fastest car in the field it was always going to be a lot of fun. I thought it was a great race. Monaco always has that tension of what may happen and how it could change the outcome of the race. I’ve seen many a boring Grand Prix at the Hungaroring , but never at Monaco!
Comments