A few surprises in free practice have given us an intriguing picture heading into qualifying for the Monaco Grand Prix. It appears that the Ferraris of Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen have the speed to be a threat to both Mercedes and Red Bull heading into qualifying, which is the most important part of the Monaco weekend.
One-lap pace – Red Bull is the one to watch
Mercedes and Red Bull were both quick in Monaco GP free practice 2 which was held on a drying track but it was Fernando Alonso who stole the show by putting in some very quick laps (which was absolutely astounding to watch) to take top spot. Although Kimi Raikkonen missed out on the dry part due to a gearbox problem, he was just 2 one-hundredths behind his teammate in practice 3. They were both a bit behind Red Bull and Mercedes, but they certainly can still challenge for a second-row slot should either of the four faster cars encounter trouble.
Red Bull is considerably closer to Mercedes on one-lap pace compared to race pace. So getting that qualifying lap spot on will be absolutely vital if they want any shot at winning this. It is possible to make a pass on the first lap, as Mitch Evans boldly done in the GP2 race on Friday, albeit on the softer Pirelli tyre (GP2 run the same tyres as F1).
Slightly further down the order the McLarens of Jenson Button and Kevin Magnussen both looked very quick on the softer of the two tyres over a race stint, but the Force India drivers were best of the rest with Sergio Perez marginally ahead of teammate Nico Hulkenberg.
Also worth noting is Jules Bianchi being consistently ahead of both the Sauber of Esteban Gutierrez and Pastor Maldonado, so we could maybe see Bianchi sneak into Q2 in the unfancied Marussia car.
With the tyres taking long to come up to temperature, the first lap is not the quickest lap on a set of tyres, it’s the third or fourth lap, but more on this later.
Race pace – Mercedes look invincible
On the yellow-marked softer tyre, Mercedes looked half a second ahead of Red Bull, which will make it very difficult for the purple cars to overtake the Silver Arrows. One very important aspect is tyre strategy. The usual strategy of pitting early and getting the ‘undercut’ goes out the window here as the tyres, which are much harder than last year are taking up to three laps to get up to temperature before dishing out some quicker lap times.
Behind Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari look evenly matched, although the Ferrari looks a bit trickier to drive, the Williams of Bottas was also quick throughout all of Thursday too, but dropped off a bit on the Saturday morning.
Chaos could well be upon us in both qualifying and the race, with the tyres being harder, the probability of a safety car is even higher than usual here (there was three and a red flag in the GP2 race), so pitting at the right time will be vital.
If we have a similar situation to the GP2 race, the softer tyre will drastically drop in pace after about a dozen laps, while the harder tyre will take half a dozen laps simply to warm up. Should we have a non-chaotic race, we should have cars either doing one or two stops, but with a safety car, we could see many different variations in strategy.
Predictions for pole and win
For pole position I can see it be any one of four drivers: the two Mercedes and the two Red Bull drivers. Hamilton and Rosberg look very close with Ricciardo splitting them in the final session but Vettel was unable to get a clean lap in so he still has a realistic shot.
As for who will win, I don’t know. It will either be the polesitter or anybody else. This race can simply be a lottery sometimes.
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