Gambling And Luck In Mental Monaco

If there weren't hundreds of cameras filming today's Monaco GP, it wouldn't have been believable. The tight and twisty nature of Monaco with no margin for error rarely serves up anything other than a feast for the eyes, but the    bruising and unpredictable encounter this afternoon was one to remember for a whole host of reasons (unless you're Lewis 'frickin' Hamilton, calling today 'one to forget', amongst other things.)




Pretty fitting really, that a race whose qualifying showdown was upset by a crash, had the same fate befall it on Grand Prix day itself. Petrov and Alguersuari's incident down by the Swimming Pool chicane threw into disarray the plans of a closing Jenson Button and tenacious Fernando Alonso on Sebastien Vettel. Without that unintentional intervention, Vettel's degraded tyres would've most likely cost him the victory, and perhaps a podium altogether. As it was, the team's ability to refresh the tyres on the grid while the race was under fed flags gifted Red Bull the win.

Armchair pundits like us could also well argue that the race was taken away from a likely winner, Jenson Button, but his teammate Hamilton, half an hour earlier. Hamilton's tactic of hanging Massa out to dry on the marbles through the tunnel won him the place he'd been fighting for when they diced at the hairpin, but it caused a safety car most incompatible with Button's recent pit stop. Hamilton suffered as well, taking a steward's drive through penalty for the earlier contact. It wasn't the last time he'd trade paint and cause trouble either.

I happen to be a huge Lewis Hamilton fan. I believe his natural driving ability is the joint best in the current field, matched only perhaps by Fernando Alonso. However Hamilton seems to be ebbing back towards his petulant and negative aspects which he gained much criticism for in his rookie season. He may well argue that his failed passes on Massa and Maldonado were not his fault, as he had run his car up the inside, Senna style, leaving it up to his opponent has to whether they wanted contact or not, causing rubbing and damage when they refused to relent. However in the face of a similar performance by rookie Paul Di Resta, who admitted he was over-ambitious in his Force India today, Hamilton does appear a bit rash in his criticism of the FIA and fellow drivers. Monaco is no easy place to race, as Petrov and Perez have painfully discovered this weekend. Expecting your colleagues to surrender on cue is unrealistic in such conditions.

I do hope that the FIA do see Hamilton's scathing post race interview as a heat of the moment exchange, otherwise telling the BBC he believe's he's 'victimised' by the stewards 'because he is black' to quote Ali G, however sarcastic or whimsical, is not going to go down well at all. Expect one hell of a PR battle when those comments are printed out of context in tomorrow's newspapers.

Rather than posting YouTube links to all these incidents so you can relive them and make your own minds up, do instead check out the BBC report page with videos ... http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/f1_videos/default.stm... videos usually disappear off YouTube rapidly due to copyright claims, so these are likely to stick around longer.

Not sure how the Indianapolis 500 will compare, and it's not even televised here in the UK, but it'll have to go some to compare to a battle of a race on the world's most alluring circuit. The setting might be glamorous, but today's racing was not pretty. Still, who wouldn't want to be on the Red Bull floater home tonight. Might well be the hottest party ticket in the world tonight.

Best wishes to Vitaly Petrov and Sergio Perez for speedy recoveries as well.

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