An eventful Monaco Grand Prix sorted the men from the boys this weekend and threw up a result which put Lewis Hamilton firmly back into the title race—giving him serious momentum going into the Canadian race, where he excelled last year.
The Brit was one of few drivers to keep his head in a frantic wet-dry race, which almost promised to produce an unexpected result reminiscent of the 1996 race.
The rain fell building up to the start and continued into the early stages of the race, and people questioned whether there should have been a formation start behind the safety car.
However, the race started in normal conditions and each car negotiated the opening lap without incident. In fact, it took a few laps for drivers to start making mistakes.
Five laps in, as Felipe Massa had opened up a nice lead from the start, Ferrari fans would have been rubbing their hands together at the sight of Lewis Hamilton getting it wrong at the Tabac corner and nudging the barrier, giving him a right-rear puncture.
The deflated Brit crawled to the pits, and at this point, it looked almost impossible to recover and gain a result from this position—especially around the difficult street circuit.
As the track dried out, and with most cars using the intermediate tires, you could see drivers struggling to keep their cars away from the barriers.
David Coulthard continued his run of poor results and topped off a calamitous weekend by losing control of his Red Bull at the top of the hill on the entrance to the Casino right-hander.
To add comedy to the incident, Sebastien Bourdais' Toro Rosso had the same accident just seconds later and rammed into Coulthard's already heavily damaged car. Only pride was hurt and they could only be thankful they didn't have absolute stinking weekends—like Nelson Piquet and, most notably, reigning champion Kimi Raikkonen.
The Finn would have been cursing his team after they failed to fit his tires before the three minute cut-off before the formation lap, landing him with a drive-through penalty.
The "Ice Man" disappointed his team and fans by makin several mistakes and failing to recover when he decided he wanted to try.
As Massa traded fastest laps with second place man Robert Kubica, Lewis Hamilton, with little to lose, started a charge to get back on the podium.
The safety car for the Coulthard/Bourdais incident allowed him to regain ground lost with his earlier mistake. And, his pit strategies—for which the Brit must heavily thank his team—saw him ease past Kubica and set his sights on Massa, who would be stopping at different times after Hamilton's early refuelling.
The Brazilian didn't do enough on his in-lap as he got held up by lapped cars and missed the chance to prove his critics wrong. He exited the pits after his scheduled stop to find himself behind the MacLaren and eventually behind Kubica.
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