Grand Prix 2012 Monaco Grand Prix Practice, Qualifying & Race Discussion

For the first time in 3 decades there have been 5 different winners in 5 races and it's not exactly been the status quo winning races as not many people would have had Rosberg and Maldanado winning this early in the season and after Australia not many people would have bet on Alonso winning before the start of the European season. This is also when drivers like Hamilton, Webber, Raikkonnen and Schumacher havent won this season and the way things are going there could be 8 winners after 8 races which could almost be unprecedented.

Indeed, one thing that 2012 has shown is that no one team has been consistently fighting for the win at all five 5 races, while Lotus have possibly had the most consistent pace of the top teams, problems in the first two races meant they were unable to be competing for the win while Kimi might have been unlucky to not come away with at least one win in Bahrain and Barcelona where strategy troubles robbed him the top step but two podiums have shown that he still has the pace despite being away from the sport for 2 years.

The big surprise of the weekend was a first victory for Maldonado and a first victory for Williams since the 2004 Brazilian Grand Prix, a win which was merited with no outside help apart from the disqualification of Hamilton from qualifying and the effect of this is unknown as to how the race would have been different but in the race Pastor drove the wheels off the car and did extremely well to keep a rejuvenated Fernando Alonso behind in an updated Ferrari on home soil. Considering Ferrari's early season struggles, for Alonso to be joint leading the Championship with Vettel is no mean feat at all.

The field is very tightly packed as well with the top 7 drivers being separated by 20 points, this time last year it was nearly 100 with Vettel claiming 4 of the first 5 races. This year that is not the case and for once Barcelona served up a classic which in my opinion was the best race of the season, finally there was close racing from 1st down to last with the outcome not being decided until the last few laps.

Going into Monaco there is no point prediction what the running order will be as the likelihood is it'll change again, for all we know the Force India's could suddenly be at the front and Lotus might only be fighting for points, it certainly makes for extremely fascinating viewing as no-one is dominating the Championship, in the city of the high rollers and casinos, it remains who will strike lucky in Monte Carlo and claim the big win, it will certainly not be boring, after all, if even Barcelona can provide an entertaining race, surely most places can (with the exception of Valencia!)
 
Maldonado, dreadful!! He got away with it against lewis..in fact got lewis a warning:rolleyes:. Now a ten place grid drop. So deliberately crashing into someone in temper is not as bad as your team under fuelling you.I despair.
 
Kimi's car being "fettled" for Q1

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O .h dear. Button out. I hope they dont make massa move over for Alonso...or give him a penalty or something.I didnt see waved yellows when he did that overtake
 
Well done Schumacher. Shame about your mistake in Spain hurting you here. Just goes to show that you need to keep your head at all times.

A good quali all around. Very fun to watch. Can't wait for the race.
 
They've had a lot of problems with the timings on FOM this season. In the race the GPS timings keep getting stuck, which is understandable, but I don't understand how they can struggle with lap times? Surely they have a backup? I had the live timings up on my laptop, but decided not to follow them as they were 20 seconds ahead of the racing on my other screen. It's a shame, but managed to have a decent idea where everyone was
 
As for Quali, another shock grid. In Q2 it was surprising we didn't have more surprises. Grosjean, Kimi, Jenson and Seb were all struggling, yet Button who seemed least likely of them to go out, went out. Interesting to see Schumacher using his experience to better everyone. Would be nice to see him on the podium tomorrow.

Webber must be so happy with that result. With Seb not even running (at Monaco?), Mark goes and sticks it onto pole position.
 
You would say the top 4 all have a chance of victory but Webber is in the pound seat because if Rosberg is slower than him then he'll get a gap to Hamilton and Grosjean. I honestly think Hamilton flattered the car as it didn't look that competitive at any point during practice or qualifying. I guess this circuit doesn't suit it so well, as it appears good in the mid - high speed stuff.

Will be interesting to see if anyone does a 1 stop. I'm sure Grosjean will, which means the others will effectively have to, so you could get a situation similar to last year.
 
Maldonado's penalty was for causing a collision and nothing else - they cannot or have chosen not to look at the 'weapon' angle therefore the punishment is actually quite severe for this type of incident.
I'm interested to hear from Sauber as to whether the 'collision' was the reason for Perez's track rod failure.
 
The stewards have a variety of sanctions and they chose one for each incident (not saying either was wrong or right). I just get bored to the back teeth that EVERY thread on here comes back to Lewis Hamilton. There are 23 other drivers on the grid and the lack of perspective is just so dull.
I reckon that some people think that whenever Lewis gets a penalty it is completely unfair and he should never ever get a penalty for anything under any circumstances...

Nice try at getting the subject away from the penalty thing though.
 
Can anyone honestly say it wouldn't be a better race if Schumacher was starting from pole? Once again over zealous stewarding of an incident that punished itself contrives results.

I have a feeling I'm against the grain with my views on the Pasotr incident, but having seen it, it was nothing. 10 places for a scrape? Massa turned in on Hamilton far more intentionally at Monaco last year, that time it was the guy on the inside who got the blame. If Maldonado was using the car as a weapon then cars aren't very effective weapons.
 
Maldonado - seriously brain failure and probably caused the damage to his car on the next lap which they somehow managed to repair to get him into Q3 running

Button and Vettel - both are really struggling

We know with Button if the car is not to his liking the gap between him and Hamilton gets bigger...unfortunately 0.5 seconds per lap can cost him about 10 places now where as previously might be 3 or 4

This is where his gentle style in warming up the tyres don't really work in quali because he takes longer to get up to speed

Vettel

I am surprised this is one of the biggest gaps between him and Webber and he just does not seem to have it in unlike last year

Schumacher

Great lap shame about the penalty but this is Monaco

Raikkonen

A bit messy having been close to being eliminated and relying too much on his speed


Well done - Hamilton, Webber, Rosberg and Grosjean

Webber might be happy from where he is compared to his nearest championship challengers
 
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