[Race] The GROAT - Round 1 - 1996 Monaco vs 2018 CotA vs 2005 Indianapolis

[crmalcolm]

1996 Monaco
The race started at 14:30. During the warm-up session, Montermini crashed his Forti coming out of the tunnel, and the team's lack of a spare car meant the Italian was unable to start, leaving 21 cars on the grid. Hill overtook Schumacher into Sainte-Dévote, while further back, Jos Verstappen, who had opted to start the race on slicks, slid straight into the wall. The two Minardis were then eliminated when they tangled coming out of the first corner. Hill began to pull away while polesitter Schumacher lost control coming out of Lower Mirabeau and hit the wall. Coming into the Rascasse, Barrichello spun and retired. After five laps, there were only 13 cars remaining as Ukyo Katayama (accident), Ricardo Rosset (accident) and Diniz (transmission) retired. A significant gap began to open between the leaders and Eddie Irvine in fourth. A queue of eight cars formed behind the slow Ferrari. Berger retired from third place on the 10th lap with gearbox trouble leaving 12 cars, while Heinz-Harald Frentzen damaged his front wing trying to pass Irvine, dropping to second last, ahead of Luca Badoer.

On lap 31, Martin Brundle spun off, which left only 11 cars in the race. Three laps later, Irvine was passed when Panis forced his way through at the Loews hairpin. Irvine lost control, became stuck and had undone his seatbelts before he restarted his car with the assistance of the marshals. Hill, meanwhile, had briefly lost the lead to Alesi when he made a pit stop on lap 30 to change to slicks as the track began to dry, but regained it a lap later when he overtook the Frenchman (who was still on wet tyres) on the track. Alesi made his pit stop shortly afterwards, allowing Hill to extend his lead to nearly 30 seconds and continue untroubled at the front until the 40th lap, when a failed oil pump caused his engine to blow coming out of the tunnel, his first retirement of the season. Alesi then led for 20 laps, before his suspension failed, handing the lead to Panis. Luca Badoer was running six laps down in the Forti when he collided with Villeneuve at Mirabeau on lap 66, retiring both drivers.

The race did not run its full distance as the two-hour time limit came into effect. Panis was leading David Coulthard by a small margin with only five other cars behind them. Irvine spun at the same point that his teammate Schumacher had crashed, and as he tried to rejoin, he was hit by Mika Salo, who was in turn hit by Häkkinen. All three cars retired, leaving only four cars circulating, with Frentzen running last. The German decided to pull into the pits on the final lap as he was running last anyway, and everyone else had already took the checkered flag. Panis thus won his one and only Grand Prix, taking Ligier's first win in 15 seasons. Frentzen, Salo and Häkkinen were classified in the final points positions with Irvine credited with seventh place.


2018 CotA
Sunny but gusty in Austin as the red-sidewalled Hamilton sat on pole alongside the purple-sidewalled Räikkönen. The grippier tyres on the Ferrari were a big concern for Hamilton – one that proved fully justified as the lights went out.

From the right-hand side, Hamilton moved hard left more or less immediately, but it was too late: Räikkönen’s front wheels were already ahead of the back of the Mercedes. Räikkönen prevailed, Hamilton tucked in behind. Bottas got his elbows out through Turns 2-3 to keep Ricciardo behind, with Vettel next from the two Renaults, Hülkenberg ahead, Sainz working hard to fend off Ocon, with Grosjean, Leclerc, Pérez and Magnussen following on. The latter would soon be picked off by the charging Verstappen, with Pérez his next victim.

Through the Esses the midfield got mighty lairy, but amid the locked wheels Leclerc emerged ahead of Grosjean. Just behind, Alonso was the meat in a Williams sandwich, Sirotkin to his left squeezing him into Stroll on his right. The two made hard contact and Alonso was out. Stroll spun to the back and would be awarded a 5sec penalty.

Leclerc was aggressively on it and having elbowed past Grosjean was all over Ocon down the hill to the hairpin, then the following back straight, with Grosjean watching on trying to slipstream them both.

Vettel slipstreamed by Ricciardo at the end of that straight but it was marginal under braking into the 90-degree left of Turn 12, the Ferrari getting a big twitch, allowing Ricciardo to counter-attack into 13, swooping for the outside of the right-hander. Just behind, Hülkenberg and Sainz were side-by-side too, but just managed to keep out of each others’ way.

As this was happening, Leclerc was hit hard into 12 by Grosjean who had simply left his braking too late, locked up and hit the Sauber amidships. Both cars took on repairs but would later be retired.

Through Turn 13, Vettel hung on side-by-side until the Red Bull right-rear hit the Ferrari left-front. There seems no end to Vettel’s run of errors this year. Just like at Monza, the Ferrari spun, restarting near the back behind Vandoorne and the Toro Rossos, ahead only of Ericsson. Ricciardo continued unharmed and was pressuring Bottas’ third place by the end of the lap. Räikkönen had just flashed by the start/finish line already almost 2sec ahead of Hamilton.

So the foundation of the first stint was set, Räikkönen and Hamilton pulling clear of Bottas, while Verstappen and Vettel were into their recovery drives.

Whether this was a one or a two-stop race, no one was quite sure.

The raining-out of Friday meant very little data anyway, but in addition to that Pirelli had imposed an extra 1.5psi minimum pressure (up to 21.5 psi) for the rear tyres on Saturday evening after examination suggested a safety concern. This was almost 5psi above the optimum and promised to increase the degradation rates. Furthermore, the track temperature was around 8deg C higher than on Saturday.

The supersoft chosen for the first stint by the Mercedes, Vettel and Ricciardo in theory had a stint length around five laps longer than the ultrasoft being used by Räikkönen and the rest of the top 10. Theoretically, that meant those on supers had a better chance of having the range to make a one-stop feasible. But with nowhere near enough information for anyone, all bets were off. It was going to be a case of suck it and see. Verstappen, anticipating a long first stint getting through traffic, had chosen the soft (i.e. the hardest of the three compounds), a choice shared with Ericsson. The remainder began on supersofts.

“The car was really hard work right from the start,” said Hamilton afterwards. It wasn’t flowing as well as the day before, its rear tyre temperatures were constantly on the verge of running too high. Bottas was finding much the same with his. It may have had something to do with an issue in the garage earlier that morning. Both cars had been disassembled after parc fermé in order to replace their gearbox cooling water pumps, which were found to be leaking. As they were re-assembled, it seems the cars were not set up square, meaning the corner weights were out. This may have been key to the difficult day Mercedes was about to endure, although at the time of writing this was not certain.

There was no particular concern on the Mercedes pitwall in the early stages. The assumption was that as Räikkönen’s ultras inevitably began to degrade, Hamilton on his more durable supers would be able to pass him and get on with his own programme. That isn’t how it panned out. Partly this was an under-estimation of the difficulty in overtaking on-track. Historically, this has always been a great track for passing. But the additional downforce and marginal tyres on the increased pressures made it a whole lot more difficult this year. “You’d get to within about 1.5sec and that would be it,” said Hamilton. “Even when you’re 5sec behind you begin the feel the effect of the wake – and you begin to lose your tyres.”

On the fourth lap Räikkönen complained of ‘massive oversteer’ and it looked for a couple of laps as if the ultras were giving up prematurely. He lost 0.6sec to Hamilton on that lap, but on the next the problem somehow magically cured itself. The suspicion is that he’d picked up some debris from one of the first lap crashes and that it had lodged in an aerodynamically sensitive place before then dislodging again. At around the same time Hamilton picked up floor damage from debris, reckoned afterwards to have been costing him around 0.1sec per lap. As Kimi picked up the pace once more, Hamilton remained around 2sec behind, not wanting to get closer, just trying to keep the tyres in shape, but wrestling with the car more than he might have expected.

Verstappen was predictably scything through the field from his lowly grid position, Vettel doing a similar job from his early spin. Max picked off the ‘Class B’ leader Hülkenberg on the seventh lap to be running fifth, around 7sec behind team-mate Ricciardo. It would take Vettel a few more laps to find a way by the battling Force Indias and Renaults but he’d be there soon enough.

As Ricciardo went onto the throttle at the hairpin on the ninth lap, he got that sinking feeling. No response, no power. He pulled off to the side, his frustration very obvious. “Everything just switched off and it seemed pretty much identical to the issue I had in Bahrain at the beginning of the year. I couldn’t even communicate with anyone on the radio so it looks like a battery failure.”

After a lap or so, with the marshals still trying to move the Red Bull to a safe place, the Virtual Safety Car was put in place. Räikkönen, Hamilton and Bottas had just passed the pit entry. Would anyone be tempted? It was a little too early in the race for most as it would essentially mean committing to a two-stop. But on the Mercedes pitwall, they began to think about it for Hamilton.

Mercedes got enough of a gap over the rest of the field that it would only lose position to their own man Bottas, who would pull aside. It would get Hamilton onto fresh tyres with which he could then attack Räikkönen, with a better chance of overtaking him than when on equally old tyres. With the field reduced to VSC pace, to pit would lose you only 10sec rather than the usual 19.5sec. It would be a very cheap stop. Hamilton was instructed to do the opposite of whatever Räikkönen did. Räikkönen did a late little dummy, pretending to come in, then straightening up and continuing. Hamilton pitted – and was fitted with a new set of softs. He exited third, behind Bottas, who duly pulled aside once the VSC was rescinded on the 13th lap. Hamilton quickly closed down what had been an 8sec gap to Räikkönen and was right with the Ferrari again within a further four laps.

On his 20-lap old ultras, Kimi was slow and ever-slower. Hamilton engaged him in a dice and this only slowed them further for the next few laps.

“We think he’s on a two-stop,” Räikkönen was informed, the implication being to not delay himself fighting and to let the Mercedes by if need be. “Yeah, but let’s not do anything stupid,” replied Räikkönen, cautioning against that assumption. He continued to defend hard.

This had the effect of allowing Bottas, Verstappen and Vettel to close up. Verstappen and Vettel were the fastest two cars on track at this stage – as Hamilton’s new tyre grip was being wasted, trying to find a way by Räikkönen. On the 20th lap, he got DRS on him down the pitstraight. Räikkönen went to full attack engine mode in defence, with a tell-tale trail of oil smoke (something the Mercedes also does in its most extreme setting). On the following lap he was all over the Ferrari through the Esses, then trying for the outside of Turn 13. But Räikkönen remained cool, placing the car perfectly. He then peeled off into the pitlane for his new softs.

So the laps ticked by with blisters beginning to form around Hamilton’s rear left as Räikkönen and Verstappen chased him down…
Once free of Räikkönen, Hamilton was lapping at a pace that suggested he’d lost between 8-9sec behind the Ferrari – and this would have major repercussions.

Räikkönen rejoined a few seconds behind Vettel, who would be instructed to move aside for his fresh-tyred team-mate before making his own stop a few laps later. Verstappen was by now within undercut range of Bottas and Red Bull brought him in on the 22nd lap. Bottas was instructed to pit the following lap but his tyres had very little left to give, meaning his in-lap wasn’t quick enough to prevent him losing position to the Red Bull upon rejoining. Furthermore, because he’d started on the softs, Verstappen was now onto the supersofts at just the phase that the other front-runners were obliged to switch to the slower soft.

Vettel pitted on the 26th lap, had his softs fitted, and rejoined around 20sec behind Bottas. Up front, the earlier hare/tortoise scenario had been transposed, with Hamilton now leading on much older tyres and being chased down by the fresh-tyred Räikkönen, who was pulling along Verstappen in his wake. Bottas had faded somewhat and his job was now to hold off Vettel – which was crucial in championship terms. If Vettel remained fifth, Hamilton needed at least second to secure the title. On the Mercedes pitwall they were going for the win, which in hindsight was a mistake – Hamilton was about to be trapped, without enough pace or tyre life to pull that off.

He was not going to get the set of softs he’d had on since lap 11 to finish the 56-lap race. Räikkönen’s tyres were 10 laps newer, comfortably enough to get to the end. Vettel’s were newer even than that. Mercedes had reckoned Verstappen must be going to pit again as they couldn’t see that he’d be able to make a set of supersofts last 34 laps. However, the Red Bull is remarkably easy on its tyres and Verstappen had quickly sussed that the supersoft was a much better race tyre than the soft – which isn’t normally the case.

Knowing that it was going to have to stop again, and never having got a pitstop’s worth of gap over Räikkönen, the plan was to run Hamilton for long enough to maximise the pace advantage he’d have on his new tyres after his second stop – to maximise his chances of overtaking Räikkönen on track after stopping. Which meant letting Räikkönen get ever-closer. But in so doing, it allowed Verstappen to get within a pitstop’s worth of gap to Hamilton too. By the time it was realised Verstappen wasn’t going to stop again, it was too late. In stretching itself for the win against Räikkönen, Mercedes would end up losing a place to Verstappen instead. Had it been prioritising clinching the championship rather than winning the race, it’d have made a different decision.

With a pitstop taking around 19-20sec, the gap over Verstappen was perilously close to that as early as lap 25. It remained stable for a few laps as Verstappen concentrated on eking out his tyres. After a time, he was let off the leash. “You can brake 15 metres later for the corners now Max,” came the message.

With Hamilton now dropping into the 1min 40sec as his blisters worsened, Verstappen was in the low 1min 39sec. The last possible opportunity for Mercedes to pit Hamilton and emerge still clear of the Red Bull was lap 32 – and that came and went. Hamilton then caught traffic and dropped still further, emerging out the other side of it with his tyres now losing temperature. Mercedes realised it had miscalculated this one. Now there was nothing to lose in leaving him out yet-longer in order to maximise that tyre grip offset – and he finally made that second stop on lap 37, rejoining 12sec behind the new leader Räikkönen, with Verstappen just a couple of seconds behind the Ferrari.

Hamilton was immediately lapping 1sec or more faster than them. But when he asked what the gap was, he was dismayed to hear the answer. “How did it get to that? It’s too much.” He knew he’d use up all his extra tyre grip just in making up that gap – and that once he arrived on their tail a) his rubber would have given its best and b) he’d be repelled by their wake as if hitting a forcefield. Just as Verstappen had found when arriving on Räikkönen’s tail. Mercedes just didn’t have the pace or tyre usage to match its ambition on Sunday.

Meantime Vettel was biding his time in planning an attack on Bottas’ fourth place and, almost a lap behind, Hülkenberg held sway in ‘Class B’ from team-mate Sainz, who’d taken a 5sec penalty at his stop for gaining an advantage by leaving the track at Turn One on the first lap when defending from Grosjean. The Renaults were always just out of the reach of Ocon’s Force India. Pérez had been overcut for ninth by the Haas of Magnussen, who used the advantage of being on the supersoft rather than Pérez’s ultra on account of not having made the top 10 qualifiers.

Post-race, Ocon and Magnussen were each disqualified, the former for having exceeded the fuel flow limit on lap one, the latter for having used more than the permitted 105kg during the race.

With three laps to go, it appeared on the outside that any one of Räikkönen, Verstappen or Hamilton might take the win. But inside the cars, there was a more realistic realisation that this order was likely how it was going to stay. Hamilton had arrived on Verstappen’s tail by now and on the 54th lap took a look around the Red Bull’s outside through Turn 13. This move lasted all the way through the following sequence, with Hamilton briefly getting ahead only to run wide onto the marbles as they exited the long loop of Turns 17-18.

At just this time Vettel was able to launch a successful attack on Bottas whose tyres were finished, the Ferrari slicing down the inside into Turn 12 with two laps to go. Given that Vettel had ended lap one 13 places behind Bottas, it supported Hamilton’s contention that the Ferrari was significantly faster than the compromised Mercedes on Sunday.

The Verstappen/Hamilton dice just played further into Räikkönen’s 39-year-old hands and as he gunned the Ferrari out the final turn he saw the chequer one more time. Maybe the last? “Oh, I dunno,” he said. “Maybe I win the next one too.”


2005 Indianapolis
At the start of the race, all the cars lined up on the grid per FIA race procedure. As Charlie Whiting signalled the green light to start the formation lap, a full field of twenty cars set off as normal for a single lap before forming the starting grid. At the banked Turn 13, the entrance to the pit lane (and the turn that was the centre of the controversy), all teams that ran Michelin tyres returned to their pit box areas, leaving just six cars from the three Bridgestone teams (Ferrari, Jordan, and Minardi) to start the race.

The move by the teams, to come to the grid and then pull out after the formation lap into the pit lane, infuriated the fans, who did not know about the plan. BBC Radio broadcaster Maurice Hamilton said of the event, "Without question, it was the strangest race I commentated on in F1." Because of the retirement of the drivers who qualified ahead of them, Michael Schumacher and his Ferrari teammate, Barrichello, were the foremost starters, though using the grid positions they had qualified in; the pair were followed by Tiago Monteiro and Narain Karthikeyan, both driving for Jordan. Rounding out the remaining field of six were Christijan Albers and Patrick Friesacher of Minardi. Schumacher retained the lead when the race started, and the only changes in positioning came when Albers overtook Karthikeyan but lost the position again later on in the race. The two Ferrari drivers quickly built a significant lead over their rivals. By lap 10, many of the estimated 100,000 to 130,000 attendees had begun to leave the grandstands. Thousands of fans were reported to have gone to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway ticket office to demand refunds, and police were called to keep the peace. Boos were heard throughout the race, and some upset fans threw beer cans and water bottles on the track.

The race was a story of pit strategy, as the only passing on the circuit was of lapped traffic. Albers was the only car to run a three pit stop race, as all other drivers chose to stop only twice. The only lead changes came on lap 26, as Schumacher's 32-second stop gave Barrichello the lead, and on lap 51, as Schumacher turned in the quickest pit stop at 23.615 seconds, giving him enough time to exit pit lane at the same time as Barrichello, with the result of forcing Barrichello into the grass of Turn One. After this incident, which was not investigated by race officials, both Ferrari drivers were reminded over their radios not to crash out of the race, and they both settled into a slower pace, comfortably ahead of the rest of the field. Schumacher ended up with the victory his 84th career win and 4th win overall in the US Grand Prix and the 3rd consecutive win in this event. He finished ahead of Barrichello who was 2nd 1.522 seconds behind. Monteiro and Karthikeyan finished 3rd and 4th respectively, more than a lap down. The Minardis of Albers and Friesacher were fifth and sixth, two laps behind the race winner. All four of the drivers for Jordan and Minardi scored their first points in Formula One at this race. Karthikeyan's points were the first for an Indian driver in Formula One. This was also the final race at which the Minardi team tallied points.

At the podium ceremony, at which none of the scheduled dignitaries were present, all Ferrari team members quietly accepted their awards, and quickly exited. Monteiro stayed behind to celebrate his first and only podium finish, and the first for a Portuguese driver.

[S griffin]

Easy for me. Monaco 96. Easily the most dramatic race I've seen in my lifetime, with a surprise winner to top it off

[Gerard C]

With only four cars finishing, a good opportunity for a French to see the Princely Family so closely…