Aston Martin Blunder Hands Monaco Win to Verstappen | 2023 Monaco Grand Prix
Ach! What could have been. Fernando Alonso last won the Monaco Grand Prix in 2007, two weeks after current Alpha Tauri driver Yuki Tsunoda’s seventh birthday, and would have clinched it this year but for a strategy howler. Instead Verstappen matched off to victory by half a minute and extended his championship lead over teammate Perez to thirty-nine points.
The race which attracts the rich and famous like wasps to a charity jam auction has always been about spectacle. The sea, the terraced city whose rocky cliffs stretch into the clouds, the monied solidity of the buildings, it’s a place that never changes, but can’t be seen to wear the same hat twice.
Formula One shows Monaco off at its best, and so is permitted to butcher the street plan for one weekend a year, in exchange for worldwide attention. The coolest race to look at has long been derided for its unsuitability, but that’s the point. If you want six hundred overtakes on a track as wide as an airfield there’s always NASCAR. Monaco is the supreme example of driving skill exactly because it shouldn’t really be done.
And so to the races, set up by stunning qualifying session for a podium of Verstappen, Alonso, and Ocon, which exactly what we got. In fact the finishing top ten was barley altered from qualifying, bar a Ferrari demotion. Hamilton followed Ocon in, then Russell, Leclerc, Gasly, Sainz, Norris and Piastri.
But the outcome of Scott’s Antarctic expedition was forgone, it’s the means that’s makes an event, and when the rain began twenty laps from the end chaos rippled through the field. Suddenly cars were trundling around, bouncing off the walls with no idea how long it would last.
Even Verstappen grazed the wall wrestling his car around Portier, Perez doing the same at the Swimming Pool, and Russell and Sainz both suffering spins. Rain had been predicted by several teams and many more observers, the latter admittedly more out of desperation, but its arrival added extra spice to an intriguing set strategic battles running all down the grid.
Having pulled away at the start Verstappen was in a standoff with Alonso, who had started on the hard tyres and pushed the championship leader to very visible depths of trye degradation. Verstappen needed Alonso to pit first to keep track position, but with each lap he waited he was losing grip, and each lap the Aston Martin was stealing back slithers of time.
Far, far behind Ocon was backing up an excellent qualifying performance, soaking up pressure first pressure from Sainz, whose botched attempt at an overtake into the Nouvelle chicane cost him his front wing, and then from Hamilton who tried the undercut. Then came a string of overcut attempts. Sainz at first stayed out, but was called in by the team to cover off Hamilton, the result being that both of them came out once more stuck behind Ocon. The Spaniard nearly evaporated with rage.
Next came Leclerc and Gasly, who each failed to gain enough time on inheriting the clear air, the former even being jumped by Hamilton. Meanwhile Sergio Perez, having started last, pitted on the first lap to find clear air, and unleashed sufficient pace to put himself in undercut range of Ocon.
Soon however, field spread and his own inability to overtake did for his chances. By lap twenty-seven he had lost so much time that a top ten finish looked a moonshot, and on running into the back of Magnussen mid-Nouvelle his race was all but done.
But then the rain came. The first whisperings reaching Lando Norris as Perez was sinking into irrelevance. For while it was like nuclear fission. Twenty laps after Norris’ warning rain was fifteen laps away. On lap forty-six it was a few kilometres away, and then suddenly it was here. Drops of rain at the hotel hairpin turned to spitting rain at turn three, then drizzle at Portier. Each driver phoning in the gradually worsening conditions over the radio while haring around the streets at 130 miles an hour.
Soon to remain pointing in the correct direction was a remarkable achievement. Bottas, Stroll, Zhou, Albon and Sargent, all running in the bottom five, were the early adopters of intermediate wet weather tyres, before finally, on lap fifty-six Alonso came in. Only to leaving on slicks.
It was a baffling error. Especially so given the deteriorating conditions, and that the previous lap Russell, Ocon, Hamilton, and Gasly, who all opted for intermediates. Yes Verstappen led by twenty-six seconds, but he and the two Ferraris, who also chose to stay out, lost twenty seconds to Ocon over the course of the lap fifty-five, during which Sainz aquaplaned into the escape road at Mirabeau. Russell was chasing him down until he did exactly the same thing, rejoining the track in the path of Perez, whose correct tyre choice was then made irrelevant by front wing damage.
Had Alonso pitted for Inters with backmarker pioneers, or even with Russell and Ocon he would surely have had a good chance of undercutting Verstappen, who came in a lap later. The slicks were a bananas option, even if the shower was brief the time lost to the wet tyre runners before conditions came back to him would have been enormous.
It’s a marker of just how wrong he was that even after pitting again for intermediates he retained second place. He had more than enough room to gamble, perhaps that was factored in initially, but by the end of lap fifty-six not a single driver was running slicks.
Even this wasn’t enough to save some drivers from the Monaco armco, this year caked in the logos of corporate sponsors. Having tested the durability of the other Aston Martin in a serios of low impact bumps throughout the afternoon, Lance Stroll’s luck finally ran out at the hotel hairpin. After understeering into the outside wall the front right suspension packed in, and on attempting to trickle his way into portier the car gently floated into the wall, with the braking performance of an air hockey puck.
Magnussen too had his fair share of incidents during the race, but fatally decided to stick to slicks, ending up in the wall at Rascasse.
In the antiverse Haas endless shenanigans, Verstappen’s mastery of wet conditions and the brilliance of his machinery enabled him to rebuilt his twenty-seven second lead by the flag. It was a long wait for Alonso, and another one for Ocon, whose desperate defence from Hamilton saw him finish a further twenty seconds behind.
Perez didn’t even get the satisfaction of being wated for. After five pit stops, and being twice lapped by his team mate and championship rival, he’ll be skunking around the Red Bull Floater-home in a foul mood while the party in the Verstappen Suite goes on long into the night.
Final order: Verstappen, Alonso, Ocon, Hamilton, Russel, Leclerc, Gasly, Sainz, Norris, Piastri, Bottas, De Vries, Zhou, Albon, Tsunoda, Perez, Hulkenberg, Sargent. DNF: Magnussen, Stroll.
