Merc wouldn't have boxed Hamilton if a 1.5 second delay in the pits would drop him from first to third.
They must have though he had a much bigger gap, and that the pit stop would still put him several seconds out in the lead afterwards.

Why they ever wanted to box him is another story, he was on fresher tires than both Rosberg and Vettel, so he would be in good shape.
Besides, track position would be far more important - as the Vettel/Hamilton "duel" showed us.

Even if Hamilton said his tires were worn, the Merc crew should have made him continue.
Doesn't make sense that they were afraid of Ferrari possibly changing tires. Merc would still have track position and several cars between Hamilton and Vettel.

Congrats to Nico though, he had a good weekend and was a good sport (again) on the podium.
Once Hamilton was fu*ked I was hoping Vettel would take the win, bringing the top 3 even closer together in the championship standings.

I'm actually starting to like Vettel, now that he has to earn his points.
Seems to be a different guy than before, a little more likable. Or maybe I just had my anti-Vettel glasses on during the RedBull-years.

 

Heard them say on the radio that their GPS tracking isn't as accurate as usual due to the buildings and of course tunnel. If that means they guessed, then they did it badly ...

 

They were only about 2 seconds out, granted in F1 2 seconds can be a lifetime, I should imagine there are many a close call mistake that we never get to see ordinarily and so we think these people behind the scenes are infallible, obviously today showed they are not ... for a change. It was great to see Lewis recognise this, my estimation of him grows at every setback, a proper motivator, a leader of men, he will have a little extra steeliness to him for the remainder of the season.

 

How far does an F1 car go in 3.5 seconds?

I guess if they were certain Hamilton was safe than a pit stop may have been a sensible precaution. Obviously they couldn't have done the same for Rosberg as he'd have lost the place to Vettel, unless Vettel also went for the pit stop.

FWIW I've always thought they should close the pit lane when the safety car comes out as at the moment people get an unfair advantage from somebody's accident, and that doesn't seem quite right. It's often pot luck depending on exactly when the car comes out, and if the team's second car is close to the first that driver either has to wait a lap or queue up.

You've got to say even though Monaco is often boring, and most of today was, when things happen they certainly are dramatic. Who else jumped out of their seat when we went on board with Verstappen into the tech-pro?

 

So how was the race in person??

 

I would say it is one of Lewis' weaknesses is he doesn't 'command' his garage.

If you look at his time with Button as his team mate he was generally a better driver than Button. Where Button tended to take him apart was the marginal calls. A race with changeable conditions where he had a feel what was going on. He would often be the one making the call about tyre changes. More often than not he got it right and he took responsibility for the result. Hamilton would defer the decision to the team and it often made him slow to respond to the conditions.

I think it was the same here. The team would have been looking at data but he is the driver that can feel what the tyres are doing, can see if he is getting held up by catching the safety car sooner than expected. Yes you take advice from the team but ultimately you are the one with the wheel in your hand. He could easily have decided that given it was Monaco he would stick with it knowing that a car can be virtually undrivable and still hold position.

Part of that is a history. With mclaren he was brought up to trust the team and the team is all best
I think it needs him making those calls more himself, staking that out so his engineers realise he is in command of his race. That way when he makes a gut call on a moments notice they have learned to trust him beforehand

 

He'll never do that because if he get's it wrong he won't be able to hide behind anyone and then he'll be forced to apologise to the team and have all that media pressure on him asking him why he didn't pit when it's clear that the team said he should and now he's blown the championship with 10 races still to go.

All boll0cks, but Hammy doesn't like it. He'll never be a leader as he hasn't got the guts to fall on his own sword.

Having said that he has at least accepted partial blame:
http://www1.skysports.com/f1/news/24...he-call-to-pit

So fair play at how he reacted today - I was impressed as his resolve. Definitely more than I'd have done. Now, can he step forward, after things have cooled down, and put his hands up to say he was genuinely involved. If he does, he'll have gone up in my estimations a lot and it's something that a leader would do.

Let's see shall we.

 

Superb, thank you. As an immersive spectacle, the proximity/compactness of the track and buildings make for a great day. Given that we didn't have a radio, we only had our eyes and a screen to rely on, so it didn't seem like a boring race, as we were constantly timing gaps and working our where everyone (particularly Jenson and Lewis) was doing.

Even if I say so myself, my seat choice was brilliant! We were in the 1st few seats in the 2nd block of Tabac, so we could seat right back to the braking zone of the chicane, through to the first half of swimming pool, plus we could peer round the back and see bits of Saint Devote (usually once wed heard a big bang!). We could see them going up the hill too.

Quali was good too, we were opposite the pits on the far end near near Rascasse and saw a few drivers coming to/from the pits, and the action in the pits, although (as expected), we couldn't see too much actual on track action.

The noise from the F1 cars was perfectly interesting, but as soon as the GP2 cars went past, it was clear how much less 'wow' factor the f1 cars had in terms of noise.

Gutted for Lewis Hamilton, and there was a lot of cheering for him round us, with polite applause for Nico.

Lots of waffle, but I could write all day about it! We had a great time.

 

Really? So how do you propose Hamilton knows how far behind someone is so he can call the pitstops? Maybe his intuition, or his crappy rear view mirrors. F1 is a team sport, the drivers have a lot of people working for them, Hamilton like any other racing driver relies on his team as all drivers have to. Hamilton is no pushover in the car, when the team told him to let nico past last season he didn't simply comply, he said 'I am not slowing down for Nico' in other words, you are the team, I trust your judgement but there is no way I am conceding my place to my team mate because you tell me to. You (and Ron) are obviously not a fan of Hamilton, and I obviously am so perhaps we can never agree on this but I just wanted to counter your accusations, your points about Button are ridiculous too, JB has many times said that 'you think you have a chance against Hamilton then he just turns up the wick and is so much faster than you can be'. JB says it like it is, and in my opinion Hamilton is the best and fastest driver in F1 at this moment in time.

 

Actually no, I am a pretty big Hamilton fan. I like his exuberant and dramatic driving style and he seems to genuinely be a fan of racing and be into the fans too. A few years ago at the British Grand Prix he was taking course cars out drifting when there were a few delays here and there and doing donuts in front of the crowd in his f1 car after the race to show appreciation. I think he can out drive pretty much anyone else on the track in a car that underperforms.

He is not a cerebral driver though. That isn't to say he's stupid but listen to the radio calls he makes compared to nico/Jensen.
There's much more discussion about race events with those two tyre choices/pressures/wing settings
He still has them but the rate seems far lower at least based on what gets put out to the public.

My point is that within this framework he defers a lot of decision making to the team allowing him to concentrate on racing. 95% of the time that works successfully but I believe it also puts a lag or filter into the decision making that doesn't suit rapidly changing conditions or events.

All drivers will have strengths and weaknesses and understanding and managing these is the important bit. I just believe this is his.