The Monaco Grand Prix is presented as a race lost due to the demerits of the Ferrari wall and at the same time won for the merits of Red Bull. The strategists of the Milton Keynes team made the most of the unpredictability introduced by the rain, subverting the verdict of a track on which the F1-75s appeared superior for the entire weekend. The Anglo-Austrian team took the right risks with strategies in an attempt to overtake the cars of Maranello, putting itself in a position to benefit from the poor strategic reactivity of the Italian team. The winner is Sergio Perez’s RB18, with the Mexican reaping the benefits of a closed qualification in front of his teammate for the second time since the start of the championship. Traditionally, the Mexican has often been more effective over the long distance than on the flying lap, favoring set-ups aimed at protecting the tires, but the pole position conquered in Jeddah and the third place on the grid in Monaco behind the two Ferraris testify to Checo’s important speed progress. .
The first part of the race in the wet saw Charles Leclerc build a five-second lead over the first of the chasing RB18s, a manageable safety margin even in the event of an early stop by the rival cars. It is therefore right for the Scuderia di Maranello to wait for the first move by Red Bull, thus avoiding the risk that the opponents could take advantage of a subsequent neutralization of the race to make the pit stop and also avoiding returning to the track behind Lando Norris and then getting stuck for several laps, resulting in a waste of time. For its part, the Red Bull wall, with little to lose and so much to gain, drew Sergio Perez to the sixteenth lap for the transition to the intermediates, with the Mexican who, when he came out of the pit lane, saw himself pull out of Norris’ McLaren. The “luck” for Milton Keynes’s team was the return to the pits of the Englishman on the next lap, a passage however in which Ferrari still had time to stop with Charles Leclerc and to keep the lead. The Monegasque’s stop, on the other hand, took place with a further lap of delay, during which Perez gained over a second in each sector of the track, thus filling the delay accused in the first stint. In the next lap of the pit stop the Mexican once again made the most of the extra lap with intermediate tires, gaining the position on Sainz during the transition to slicks, with the Spaniard also heavily hampered by a Williams lapped on the exit lap. On the other hand, it is difficult to establish whether Leclerc’s loss of third place over Verstappen is mainly due to the extra lap of the Dutchman with an intermediate compound or to the time lost by the Monegasque in the pits due to the lay-by occupied by his team-mate’s Ferrari.
Red Bull thus extends in both world classifications of a World Championship which highlights the importance of effectiveness on every single front, going beyond the mere design goodness of the cars, the rapidity of development and the consistency of the drivers. In Monte Carlo, for example, Milton Keynes’s team managed to take a victory on a track more similar to the Reds, denoting a lower car-set-up package but superiority on the strategic front. Another discriminating element risks becoming reliability: the RB18s have collected three retirements this season, suffering technical problems which appear, however, to be linked to youth problems in the management of the newly created Red Bull Powertrain. Max Verstappen, however, managed to complete the process of the first seven races by resorting to a single power unit, which in a calendar of 22 appointments thus opens up the possibility for the Dutchman not to exceed the ceiling of the three seasonal units. Mattia Binotto, on the other hand, has already expressed his intention to use four or more engines over the course of the championship, already planning penalties on the grid in the second half of the season that Red Bull may be able to avoid.
In general, the F1-75 proved to be a very fast car on the flying lap, but with five pole positions out of seven rounds, the tally of victories stands at two, against the five scored by Red Bull. Great concreteness therefore for the Anglo-Austrian faction, while Ferrari, while continuing to note the great competitiveness of the car, needs to start capitalizing on the potential expressed. The answer could already come in Baku, a track that many see in Red Bull’s favor due to the long straight, but whose ninety-degree curves place great emphasis on traction, an area in which the Reds have already proved to be very competitive. The 2021 edition is a reminder of this aspect, given that Ferrari, even with a car in severe pain on the straight, managed to conquer pole position by leveraging the goodness of the rear of the SF21.
Outside the track, in Monte Carlo there was a lot of talk about the budget cap, with a paddock split between the top stables that push towards an increase in the spending ceiling to tackle inflation and the front instead inclined to implement what has already been written in the Financial Regulation. Another topic at the center of the conversations is the future of the Monaco Grand Prix. Herman Tilke was seen wandering around in the Principality paddock, whose presence was associated with the hypothesis of an extension of the track through a new residential area under construction on the sea. Regardless of the problems of the track, however, the Monegasque event highlighted the inadequacy of the local organization in the reception reserved for spectators and professionals. Rail connections with neighboring cities continue to be insufficient without any expansion plan in conjunction with the event, while road trips appear prohibitive, often clashing with the lack of friendliness and communication of local law enforcement agencies and accompanying other critical issues. logistics. It is hoped that the Principality’s permanence in the calendar will go hand in hand with better organizational efforts, also considering the experience and resources available.
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