Sky F1’s Karun Chandhok reflects on the 2019 Monaco Grand Prix and what Scuderia Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc must learn from his forgettable Monte Carlo homecoming:
“F1’s ‘jewel in the crown’ is sometimes criticised for producing processional racing but at the end of the day, I can’t imagine a World Championship without a race in Monaco. The whole weekend builds up to a crescendo in qualifying because track position is so important but, more often than not, we end up with some form of drama on race day.
Monaco is also a fantastic driving challenge and one of the last few steps into the past. I used to love watching the videos of Senna and Schumacher hustling their cars around the streets prior to racing here as it just gave me a massive buzz knowing that I would have the chance to drive on those same iconic parts of the principality.
Scuderia Ferrari’s weekend was once again a messy one. They were clearly behind Mercedes and in fact it did look like there was a pretty good chance that Max would be ahead of the red cars as well. The mistake with Charles Leclerc in qualifying was a bizarre miscalculation that frankly shouldn’t happen with any team at this level. Charles had made an error at Rascasse on his first run which clearly cost him a chunk of time. With five minutes to go, he was eight tenths clear of being knocked out but the midfield teams were out there lighting up the timesheets with personal bests.
When Romain Grosjean found eight tenths on his second run to jump out of the drop zone, I thought that Ferrari would immediately send the local boy out as it was way too risky to just sit in the box. Instead, they decided to make that very choice in an effort to save an extra set of tyres for later in the session. It just seemed a basic error to make where data over-ruled gut feeling – sure having one set less would hurt a bit, but not making it to Q2 was shocking. In the race, Charles’ moves were full of desperation and it became clear pretty early that there was no chance he would finish that race without incident.
As much as Ferrari took the blame for the qualifying error, I do think that he will take away two valuable lessons – (a) be more forceful with your opinions if you think you need to go again in qualifying to be safe; and (b) points mean prizes and finishing in eighth would have been better than not finishing at all.
Vettel would be relieved to go home with second place after that weekend where he too had a messy run. A crash in the final practice session put him on the back foot and in qualifying, he never really looked quick enough to challenge the top two. A fairly dull and straightforward run to second was probably more than he expected to get this morning.”
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