JENSON CONQUERS MONACO
The Moaco Grand Prix. Well that's all that really needs to be said. History and glamour...if you can afford it. Thing is, most of the team yauchts were still playing host to meeting deciding who would or would not be competiting in 2010 and on what terms. Best anyone could tell, Max was willing to budge slightly on how big the salary cap would be but not by much. In the mean time, most teams were planning to step up their game. Lewis in particular was feeling optimisticThey still had a job to catch the Brawns though, particularly Jenson. No matter what happened here, Jenson would be the championship leader coming away from this race even if he went into the barriers at the first corner.
Lewis didn't do so well in qualifying though, crashing early on in Q1, he was forced to start P16. Jenson on the other hand, survived both Q1 and Q2, though both Force India's who had overacheived by reaching Q2, didn't do so well. Vettel delivered the opener but was soon beaten by Rosberg only for the Red Bull driver to retake provosional pole. Things were unchanged till the last few minutes when Raikonen looked to grab pole only for Jenson to beat him in the dying seconds after again seemingly being out of the picture. It was his second pole in a row! Further bad luck befell Lewis later on. A gearbox change forced him to start P20 though Glock starting in the pitlane pushed him up to P19.
Well if you start at the back in Monaco then you are not going to get very far. Lewis overtook a couple of guys early on but for whatever reason, McLaren had him on a two stop strategy. That did not help him. Neither did a clash with Heidfeld that forced him to change noses. This race was effectively a writeoff from the start and in the end, the only thing that Lewis can be happy about was that he stayed on the track. Others couldn't claim the same and in the end he finished 12th. Not the worst finish of his career, I was there for that one! However it certainly put paid to his pre-race optimism. One day, we will see him winning races again.
If you start on pole in Monaco on the other hand, then you don't need much luck. OK, he had to deal with some tyre graining issues at one point but even that didn't prove to be a serious issue. Other than that, apart from some brief spells immediately after pitstops, the world championship leader was never under any serious threat. All he needed to do in the last few laps was just make sure that he didn't come off the racetrack. Mission accomplished, he collected his third win in a row, the first Brit to pull that off in F1 since Damon Hill in the early stages of '96! Barrichello finished 2nd to complete Brawn's second 1-2 in a row.This is getting unreal.
So, Jenson continues to lead the championship with 51 points, and extends his lead to 16 points. Further down, Lewis drops to 9th in the championship with 9 points(but no official top three finishes).
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