AL2 From the Cockpit: Monaco, Baby!

I would like to begin this week's column by quoting a common phrase: "Imitation is the greatest form of flattery." It therefore makes me very happy to see that this column has now been copied by drivers in AL1 and AL3. Don't worry though, fans, I will do everything to ensure that this will remain both the original and the best of them.

Thursday saw the circus land in Monte-Carlo, for the jewel in the AL2 crown, the Monaco Grand Prix. Unfortunately, the new early start of the session was a touch farcical. After goodhead01 clearly got stuck in the loo and failed to turn up, an early disconnection from Will-I-am_3001 caused the session to be red-flagged and restarted.

So we tried again. By this time goodhead had released himself from the shackles of his bog and decided to join us, but not without a ticking off from race steward tallboy, who described him as "very lucky". He was proved to have arrived in good time, however, when I suffered from a frozen PS3 and caused a second restart.

On the third time of asking though, the session finally got underway! This time, qualifying was wet. Despite this, our monitors showed a 0% chance of rain. I think the forecasts are provided by Michael Fish. Anyway, qualifying turned into a tight 4-way battle between myself, madman, barwell and S007PS.

A curve ball was thrown by Mr Fish though, when the rain stopped with a few minutes to go, just after I had taken provisional pole on inters. I therefore decided to take a gamble on slicks. Sadly, the rain stopped about 30 seconds too late for me and madman was able to go 0.6secs quicker than me on his inters, although I still managed 2nd. The next 3 drivers, S007Ps, barwell and benappleby, were all within a tenth of each other, and the race promised to be immense.

It did not disappoint.

Off the line madman lead with S007PS forcing his way past into saint devote. I was able to get back past however, although I can't remember exactly where or how, before muscling my way past madman into saint devote at the start of lap 2, in a move so dodgy that I was going to let him back past, but then I saw S007PS attacking him up the hill and thought better of it. A furious battle then ensued between myself and S007PS.

At this point it turns out that Barwell was busy knocking daveh into the barrier at the Fairmont Hairpin in the battle for 10th, knocking off his front wing. This makes what happened later all the more impressive.

Lap 11 saw reserve driver ayrtonhamilton bring the safety car out, giving the rest of us a dilemma: pit for new tyres or take track position? I took the new tyres while S007PS took track position with backmarker daveh between us and the non-stopping barwell behind. Two laps later, I was able to use my new tyres to pass S007PS, again into Saint Devote. Soon after he then managed to crash into the wall on the short straight between Nouvelle chicane and tabac, one of the easiest parts of the track. How did he manage this? Answers on a postcard, please!

This brought out another safety car, again bringing up the new tyres/track position debate. With the field closely bunched at this point, I took the track position, Will following close behind.

Yes I have written this much and haven't even reached lap 20! Could Chaz or Tallboy do that? No. But I digress...

After it all shook out after the safety car, I led from barwell and madman, and was to spend the next part of the race feverishly keeping those two behind, until I was beginning to dive on the rims and pitted on lap 41 ( about 5 laps later than I should have, in hindsight. I used the same suspension setup as in Bahrain, where I managed a mammoth stint on options at the start and my tyre wear was excellent. Strangel, though, here I really struggled with front tyre temperatures throughout the race, meaning that whenever I pushed the front end I got hideous understeer. This would then make the tyres even hotter. This meant I could not push for more than a couple of laps at a time.

For some reason I was unable to use the undercut of new tyres and when barwell pitted a lap later, he emerged ahead. It was short lived, though, as not long later he collided with madman as the latter left the pits, putting both out of contention. Madman was soon to retire. While somehow DAVE_J and B_Senna had built a commanding lead.

Looking away from the main battle, tallboys race video shows that when the leaders approached on lap 60, practice2012 decided to stop on the outside on Mirabeau and practice his parallel parking technique, in preparation for parc ferme. this is about the only piece of action that tallboy actually managed to catch though, as he missed the man part of the barwell-madman incident, S007PS' crash, ayrtonhamilton's crash and both of my overtakes for the lead.

Later that lap, practice crashed out. Again though, the race video was looking elsewhere so I can only assume that he decided to use his parallel parking tekkers to stop at the supermarket to buy the later copy of 'Countrylife' magazine, returning only to discover that his car had been torn apart by several furious weasels. this brought out a late safety car.

I believe that most people pitted under the safety car, including myself...twice. I though I had an opportunity to pit when I saw that the leader had already passed the pits, unfortunately they also passed the safety car, wiping out the advantage I may have gained. I therefore decided I may as well get slightly fresher tyres and pitted again.

On the restart I was put off by B_Senna's customary lag into the Nouvelle chicane. This mean that I accidently launched a Perez and ended up hitting the wall in avoidance of him, spinning and allowing the 'out of contention' Barwell through past us both. I soon managed to clear the flickering Senna though, and pursued barwell as Dave retired for reasons known only to himself.

This battle raged on until on lap 77, I made a mistake at the exit of the swimming pool, allowing Will through, who had sneaked up to 3rd. I found this unacceptable, and when he made a small error at Saint Devote I managed to pull off one of my best overtakes ever around the outside of Casino Square, using only willpower for adhesion.

This looked to be then end of the drama, but on the last lap my engineer told me that barwell had run our of fuel and was slowing. I trusted him and saved all my KERS for the run out of the last corner. Unfortunately he was able to drag his car, Fred Flintstone-style across the line to take the win by half a second.

This was a race at the end of which I think we were all exhausted, and I think at least 5 divers can feel genuinely gutted not to have won, including myself!. Massive congratulations to Barwell for winning an incredible race.

Interesting Stat of the day:

0.560 sec winning margin = 0.007 secs per lap!

Awards:

DOTD: Bernd Maylander
Marussia Cosworth award for being out of contention: Barwell74
ITV Sport award for missing all of the relevant action: tallboy_rocks
nonchalant arrival of the day: goodhead01
Juan Pablo Montoya awards for overtaking in a ridiculous place: RosstheIcon
Disappointment of the day: Practice2012. His Magazine cost a full 8 Euros!!!! Outrageous!!!

Monaco will be a longer column for me