World champion Sebastian Vettel won his first Monaco Formula One Grand Prix on Sunday when he was awarded for a Red Bull tyre gamble and got some late help from a 20—minute suspension.
The runaway season leader Vettel managed to keep Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button at bay with 56 laps on one set of tyres before the suspension after a crash from Vitali Petrov allowed him to change rubbers for the final six of 78 laps.
Alonso got Ferrari’s best season result in second place with two stops and Button salvaged pride for McLaren in third place with three stops as team—mate Lewis Hamilton completed a weekend to forget in sixth place.
Vettel further increased his championship lead with 143 points from five victories and a second place as he received the trophy from Prince Albert. Hamilton has 85 points, Webber 79, Button 76 and Alonso 69.
Vettel handily won the start from Button while Alonso stole third place from Webber and Michael Schumacher dropped from fifth to ninth after brief contact with a wall.
Vettel pulled away quickly while his main title rival Lewis Hamilton was stranded in 10th place and held up badly by Schumacher’s inferior Mercedes whose rear tyres started graining early on.
Hamilton finally managed to get past the record champion in the 10th lap on the inside but by then was already 24 seconds behind the flying Vettel.
Button opened the pit stop frenzy and found himself in the lead as Vettel’s stop was marred by a sticky tyre blanket. Webber’s stop was even worse for similar reasons and Hamilton’s frustration grew when the McLaren crew were also not at their best.
In the 34th, Hamilton and Massa touched in the Loews hairpin as the Briton squeezed past the Brazlian on the inside. They then raced through the tunnel side by side, but Massa lost control on the dirty side, slid into the barriers which damaged the car beyond repair and brought out the safety car.
A few meters ahead of Massa, Schumacher’s Mercedes stalled which ended the Germans’s race, and Hamilton’s hopes were over for good when race stewards deemed he had caused the collision with Massa and imposed a drive—through penalty after the safety car phase ended in the 38th lap.
Button and Alonso, meanwhile, quickly pitted for the second time when the safety car came out, while Red Bull decided to stay out in order not to relinquish the lead.
Vettel won the restart but was soon under pressure from Alonso with Button also closing in after a third tyre change in the 48th.
Ferrari and Mclaren were left wondering whether Vettel would attempt to finish the race with the hard tyres applied in the 16th lap, but the German and his team seemed to have exactly that in mind in search of victory.
But just as the leaders were about to lap a whole bunch of cars, things went wrong ahead of them in an accident involving several drivers including Jaime Alguersari, Adrian Sutil and Petrov.
Petrov had to be rescued by medical staff and was taken to hospital for which the race was halted.
“Vitaly is OK. He’s just complaining about leg injuries, but the doctors say nothing is broken. They are taking him to hospital for observation, but it seems to be just bruising to the legs,” Renault team principal Eric Boullier said.
The suspension allowed teams to change tyres and while that allowed Vettel to cruise home from Alonso and Button in 2 hours 9 minutes 38.373 seconds for 260.520 kilometres.
But the drama was not quite over as Hamilton smacked into the Williams of Pastor Maldonado which ended Maldonado’s race and placed Hamilton under a second investigation.
