29 May, 2017
Button's crash with Wehrlein was the major talking point of a largely processional affair here at the principality, which ended with Vettel moving 25 points - the equivalent of a race victory - clear of Hamilton in the championship race. "It's still second place but it doesn't count a lot in my books at least". 'Because the underdog is the one that people want to see win.
Sebastian Vettel held off Ferrari teammate Kimi Raikkonen on Sunday to win the 2017 Monaco Grand Prix, the premier event of the season for Formula One auto racing.
"Not only a victory, but a one-two finish at a Grand Prix with a tradition as glorious as Monaco, where Ferrari last won with another one-two, delivered on that occasion by Schumacher and (Rubens) Barrichello".
Given that history, it was perhaps unsurprising that there was a hint of team tactics once again rearing its head in Ferrari taking the top two spots on the podium in Monte Carlo as world championship leader Sebastian Vettel finished ahead of teammate Kimi Raikkonen.
Valtteri Bottas was still stuck in fourth behind Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo.
The tyres started to slide in the first stint and the pack were catching up a bit but then I had a second attempt and had a couple of laps where the auto was really, really good.
"The vehicle was in a really different place then we ever really had it before and it was definitely unexpected for the engineers, they corrected it and it was worse".
Instead, Hamilton and his team used strategy as they opted to be the last vehicle to pit during the race.
The first round of pit stops at the Indy 500 left Indianapolis native Ed Carpenter in the front, followed by defending race victor Alexander Rossi and Formula One star Fernando Alonso.
After Raikkonen and Bottas had both come in for a tire change a few laps earlier, Vettel timed his change to perfection 39 laps into the 78-lap race.
Though the German insists there were no team orders at play in Monaco, quite contrary to what Raikkonen's post-race demeanour was telling us, Lewis Hamilton believes the Italian team has already made its decision.
"It's clear to me that Ferrari have chosen their No. 1 driver so they will be pushing everything to make sure Sebastian will maximize all of his weekends", Hamilton said.
In 2015, Ferrari was 275 points behind Mercedes and 2014 was so dismal for the Italian manufacturer that it finished fourth and almost 500 behind Mercedes. Although he stopped short of directly criticizing Ferrari, "The Ice Man" clearly had a point to make. "After that I was able to control the gap behind", said Vettel. "Today it was a really exciting race".
The crash left Wehrlein's vehicle on its side at Portier, but he was unhurt in the crash, which required a Safety auto intervention for six laps in the closing stages.
Attention was soon refocused on the track when, on lap 60, the Safety Car was deployed after Wehrlein was tipped into the barrier at Portier.
After a few minutes, the German driver jumped out of the vehicle.
Sauber teammate Marcus Ericsson managed to crash under the subsequent safety auto, while Stoffel Vandoorne smashed into the wall late on, on another day to forget for troubled McLaren.
British driver Jenson Button got a surprise message on the radio just as he was preparing to start the Monaco Grand Prix.
Hamilton's season has been blighted by an on-going struggle to get this year's new Pirelli tyres in the optimum operating window, and thus extracting the maximum performance from his Mercedes vehicle. Marcus Ericsson crashed his Sauber and McLaren's Stoffel Vandoorne followed suit moments later.