Vettel Wins the Monaco GP by Default
by The Badger on May 29th, 2011Not to take anything away from Sebastian Vettel, but he cannot deny that the entire Monaco weekend has gone his way in a remarkable manner - he grabbed pole position after his rivals' attempts were thwarted following a red flag and then with the race, Vettel was facing 'the cliff' in terms of grip left on his tyres and had Alonso and Button chasing him down. A horrible multi-car shunt caused the safety car to come out and then the race was red flagged.
This scenario robbed fans of a proper race to the finish with the teams able to change tyres and the final handful of laps left the top three as they were with Vettel taking the victory once again in 2011.
Our race highlights will follow shortly, but for now here's the provisional race result, pending confirmation from the FIA.
 | Sebastian Vettel | |||
| Row 1 | Red Bull |  | Fernando Alonso | |
| 2:09'38.373 | Ferrari | |||
| 78.000 | ||||
 | Jenson Button | |||
| Row 2 | McLaren |  | Mark Webber | |
| 78.000 | Red Bull | |||
| 78.000 | ||||
 | Kamui Kobayashi | |||
| Row 3 | Sauber |  | Lewis Hamilton | |
| 78.000 | McLaren | |||
| 78.000 | ||||
 | Adrian Sutil | |||
| Row 4 | Force India |  | Nick Heidfeld | |
| 1 Lap | Renault | |||
| 1 Lap | ||||
 | R.Barrichello | |||
| Row 5 | Williams |  | Sebastien Buemi | |
| 1 Lap | Toro Rosso | |||
| 1 Lap | ||||
 | Nico Rosberg | |||
| Row 6 | Mercedes |  | Paul Di Resta | |
| 2 Laps | Force India | |||
| 2 Laps | ||||
 | Jarno Trulli | |||
| Row 7 | Lotus |  | H.Kovalainen | |
| 2 Laps | Lotus | |||
| 2 Laps | ||||
 | J.D'Ambrosio | |||
| Row 8 | Virgin |  | Vitantonio Liuzzi | |
| 3 Laps | HRT | |||
| 3 Laps | ||||
 | N.Karthikeyan | |||
| Row 9 | HRT |  | Pastor Maldonado | |
| 4 Laps | Williams | |||
| Collision | ||||
 | Vitaly Petrov | |||
| Row 10 | Renault |  | J.Alguersuari | |
| Collision | Toro Rosso | |||
| Collision | ||||
 | M.Schumacher | |||
| Row 11 | Mercedes |  | Felipe Massa | |
| Retirement | Ferrari | |||
| Spun off | ||||
 | Timo Glock | |||
| Row 12 | Virgin |  | Sergio Perez | |
| Retirement | Sauber | |||
| Withdrawn |
Comments and Discussion
poor Hamilton's mother
What does that mean? Hamilton had a tricky afternoon - seemed slightly rattled following a difficult weekend, no excuse for recklessness though.
So unfair to jenson he did all the work then redbull get a freebie, just what the championship needed
Thought Button was really unlucky. His stop that ultimately handed Vettel the win was ill-timed - he had so much pace.
Red Bull really lucked out this weekend, hopefully their dominance this season is coming to an end and we'll start seeing McLaren and Ferrari bringing it to them.
FOr whatever reason, mainly tyres, Ferrari and McLaren were quicker than the RB at the end, so there is hope. BUT they have to stop Vettel winning, otherwise what is turning out to be a classic season will be destroyed by a RB dominance similar to the famous McLaren "steamroller" season when they won 15 of 16 races.
are toro rosso getting looked into for the final shunt which gave the race win to their brother team ???