The Monaco Grand Prix, the most exuberant party in Formula One, has a habit of delivering anticlimax. In purely racing terms this was another – the front three on the grid finished in that order, with little chance of change. And yet nothing will be quite the same this season. The rest of the 2014 season will be all about Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, one of whom will be crowned world champion, but not any time soon.
Mercedes, 141 points ahead of Red Bull in the constructors’ race, have got that title sewn up too. But there is so much to play for, and the growing intensity of the rivalry between the two leading protagonists has brought to life what might have been another mundane contest.
Even before the weekend there was no real pretence that Hamilton and Rosberg were friends, even though they have been, even though they live beside each other in Monaco. We now know that they are the most committed of racing foes, even though there were signs of a professional reconciliation before night fell here.
There was more anticipation at the start of Sunday’s race than there has been in F1 for a while. Hamilton’s promise to take a page out of his idol Ayrton Senna’s book – he later described this as “a joke” but it was no such thing at the time – lent a frisson to the first corner.
That is one of the best places to overtake on a narrow street circuit where passing is notoriously difficult and Rosberg’s sluggish starts this season made him look particularly vulnerable. But Rosberg got off to a flyer and never had to look back. Hamilton was increasingly frustrated and thought he should have been brought in earlier after an accident for Adrian Sutil that led to the emergence of the second safety car on the 25th lap.
He never looked likely to pass Rosberg and towards the end of he race he suffered a vision problem in his left eye as Daniel Ricciardo closed to challenge him for second place. “What’s up, Lewis?” his team asked him. Hamilton replied: “I can’t see out of my left eye.”
A short time after that Hamilton was told how close the Australian’s challenging Red Bull was. He replied: “I don’t care about Ricciardo – how close am I to Nico?” But by that time Hamilton was a hopeless 5.9 seconds behind the leader.
For the first time this season Ricciardo went past his team-mate Sebastian Vettel in the championship table. He has been the better driver all year and leads the German 5-1 in qualifying, and was hardly hit by being disqualified in the opening race in Australia. Vettel retired with engine problems on Sunday.
Kimi Raikkonen looked set for better things after passing his Ferrari team-mate Fernando Alonso at the start, but a clash with Max Chilton in the second safety car period ruined his race. Once again it was the dogged Alonso, who was fourth, who finished the stronger of the Ferrari drivers.
Nico Hülkenberg added to his burgeoning CV with a fifth-place finish, while Jenson Button, in the doldrums for much of the race, was sixth.
But the race was not all about the competition between the two leading drivers. The happiest story of the day was Jules Bianchi finishing ninth – helped by the eight non-finishers – to give Marussia, the smallest team in the paddock, their first points in Formula One.
It pushed them up to ninth in the constructors’ table, ahead of Caterham and Sauber. If they finish in the top 10 – that is, ahead of Caterham – it will be worth £30m to the team. Marussia’s president and sporting director, Graeme Lowdon, said: “Formula One is difficult, that’s for sure. What we’re really pleased about is it’s a sign of progress. It is a sign of progress with very limited resource but with a very small team of people. We’ve got 197 people. The reason why you see a lot of happy faces at the moment is that everybody knows that they contributed. We’ve got no padding, no extra people, nobody that can hide. This is direct feedback to everyone that has worked so hard.
“We got the entry in 2009 and we knew this was going to be an incredible challenge. If we look along the way our first major commercial partner was Virgin and it was the fact it was a challenge that attracted them. We came in with our eyes wide open. Certainly the goalposts moved quite a bit since then, that’s absolutely sure.”
Did this mean that Marussia were financially secure, he was asked. “The money within the sport is based on positions at the end of the season. We know from Brazil 2012 [when Marussia missed out to Caterham] that everything can change in the last few laps. That difference alone was potentially tens of millions.”
So were Marussia going to have a big party? “Unfortunately we seem to have done this in one of the more expensive places to go out, and we have the smallest budget in Formula One. But I’m pretty sure me and John [Booth, the team principal] will buy everyone a pint.”
