Monaco Race: McLaren Dominate With 1-2 Finish

Wins For McLaren
By Sam Cooper
May 27 2007

Unlike past races in Monaco this race was largely uneventful, with only a handful of cars actually failing to finish, half of them crashing into the unforgiving barriers. McLaren must be very pleased as both of their drivers are now leading the world drivers championship, with the maximum points haul possible, the team have extended their lead over Ferrari in the constructors championship.

At the start Lewis Hamilton wisely decided not to risk both his and Fernando Alonso’s car and dropped behind the reigning world champion and failed to overtake him in the remaining seventy eight laps, however, this did not stop the Britain from trying. Lewis looked unable to challenge his team mate in the first eighth of the race. Hamilton then found his rhythm, and his race got going.

Lewis then began to challenge his team mate, the pair of them regularly exchanging fastest laps of the race, with no other team challenging them.

Rumours in the paddock had emerged that Lewis was carrying four laps more fuel than Fernando, with the believers of this speculation; expecting Lewis to pit and if Lewis’s laps were quick enough, overtake Fernando at the first round of pit stops; this would soon turn out to be untruthful, Lewis was carrying more fuel than Alonso, but not four laps, Lewis pitted a lap later than his team mate, and rejoined behind the Spaniard.

Elsewhere in the field, championship rival Kimi Räikkönen was stuck behind the earth car of Jenson Button, this would cost the fin dearly, but when he got out in clear air, Kimi showed that his car was unable to challenge for major points, never mind a win.

Closer to the McLaren’s was Felipe Massa, he managed to keep within four seconds to the faster Hamilton, until Lewis shot off and began to close in on Fernando.

Sadly for Ferrari, both their drivers were unable to get anywhere near the ultra quick McLaren MP4-22’s which proved fast and reliable, with Lewis hitting the kerbs and sometimes even the barriers on a regular basis.

Lewis’s only other opportunity to overtake his team mate was on his second pit stop, sadly for the 22 year old he was unable to do this, as his team mate proved too quick for Lewis. Nevertheless, Lewis pushed until the final lap, but you could tell by Lewis’s driving style that Ron had been on the radio, and told Lewis to save the car.

McLaren dominated the Monte-Carlo, with team boss Ron Dennis saying that his team had “cruised and controlled the race from lap 10”.

There were only four retirements today, which is a great surprise, as the great Monaco circuit has a history of claiming many driver’s races, today was one of those lucky days, where relatively few drivers fell foul to the challenging circuit. On lap 2 waved yellow flags were brought out by Vitantonio Liuzzi after he crashed on the outside of the casino square corner. 16 laps later, Mark Webber retied after his Red Bull RB3 was stuck in third gear. With Just 25 laps to go, Adrian Sutil crashed in the same place as Liuzzi did earlier on in the race. Seven laps later, Sutil’s team mate Chrsitijan Albers pulled into his garage, and ended his race, and saddened the teams spirits.

The full race result will be shown below.