Monaco Grand Prix

As you may be able to tell from the picture, Red Bull had a good race.

Once again Mark Webber lead from start to finish followed by his teammate Sebastian Vettel to secure a Red Bull one-two, and further demonstrate Red Bull's dominance.

The whole story of the race started on Saturday with Free Practice 3. Fernando Alonso crashed his car and damaged it beyond repair. This caused him to sit out qualifying and he started from the pit lane. The qualifyer who looked consistantly strong was Renault's Robert Kubica, but in typical Red Bull fashion he was robbed of Pole Position in the last seconds by Mark Webber. Sebastian Vettel and Felipe Massa lined up behind them which was a bit of a downer on Massa as both Webber and Kubica have both been linked with his seat. Britain's own Lewis Hamilton and his German counterpart Nico Rosberg were on the 3rd row. Behind them were their teammates with Michael Schumacher taking 7th and Jenson Button was 8th. The top ten was finished up with Williams' Rubens Barrichello taking 9th and Force India's Vitantonio Liuzzi.

Moving onto the race. Monaco is know for it's demanding track and retirements are almost a certainty. When I say that half of the racers retired, I'm not exaggerating. 12 out of 24 drivers made it to the finish line. The most notable retiree was the defending World Champion Jenson Button. An amateur mistake by his McLaren team saw his engine overheat and stop. The big one though was Jarno Trulli crashing with Karun Chandhok. Trulli's Lotus landed on top of Chandhok's Hispania and nearly on top of Chandhok himself. Fortunatley both drivers walked away unharmed. Joining Jenson Button (Lap 2), Jarno Trulli and Karun Chandhok (both Lap 70) as retirees were Nico Hülkenberg (Lap 1), Pedro de la Rosa (Lap 21), Timo Glock (Lap 22), Lucas di Grassi (Lap 25), Kamui Kobayashi (Lap 26), Rubens Barrichello (Lap 30), Bruno Senna (Lap 58), Heikki Kovalienen (Lap 58), and Vitaly Petrov (Lap 73).

The man of the race was clearly Mark Webber. Him aside that honour goes to Fernando Alonso who started from the pit lane and finishing 6th. He kept climbing up the field using his superior Ferrari to simply pass the Hispanias, Lotuses (Loti?) and Virgins. The Monaco Grand Prix is often precessional as it is a narrow track with very few opportunities for overtaking.So the top ten finished as so: 1st place went to Mark Webber and his teammate finished behind him in 2nd. The 3rd podium spot was taken by Robert Kubica. Lewis Hamilton was in a Ferrari sandwich. Massa took 4th, Hamilton 5th and Alonso 6th. Nico Rosberg, Adrian Sutil, Vitantonio Liuzzi and Sebastien Buemi finished off the top ten.

The story of the race was actually an incident which happened on the last lap. The race ended under the safety car and on the last lap, the safety car went into the pits, as it does. When the safety car pulled in Michael Schumacher took advantage of a mistake from Alonso and overtook him. This raised debate as many were under the assumption that the race was finished because the safety car was out on the final lap. After a long debate the move was deemed illegal and Michael Schumacher was given a 12 second penalty. This demoted him to 12th place. The FIA has since revised its safety car rule.

So that is the story of the Monaco Grand Prix. I should also add that Mark Webber is now performing better than his Seriously Uncool teammate and has won the Monaco Grand Prix. This has made him jump from Uncool to Sub-Zero