The walls and barriers that line the Monaco circuit rarely forgive errors. But Lewis Hamilton recovered from a brush with the barriers and went on to win.
“This has got to be the highlight of my career and I am sure it will continue to be the highlight for the rest of my life,” an ecstatic Hamilton said. “I remember on the last few laps I was just thinking that Ayrton Senna won here a lot of times, and to win here would be amazing.”
Hamilton’s hero Senna won the prestigious race a record six times.
Hamilton’s win, the first for both him and McLaren Mercedes since the season opener in Australia, coupled with a sloppy, pointless race for Kimi Raikkonen and Ferrari, moved Hamilton into the lead of the World Championship.
It was a chaotic, incident-filled event because of the rain that left the track wet and the spray thick for more than half of the race.
Along with Hamilton’s thrill of victory came the agony of defeat for Adrian Sutil, who had done a fantastic job to get his Force India up to fourth place, but got knocked out of the race by Raikkonen.
“My brakes were a bit too cold and I locked the rear,” Raikkonen said. “I nearly lost the car and unfortunately I hit him.”
With a steady drizzle falling, all the drivers were on Bridgestone wet- weather tires at the start. Pole-winner Felipe Massa took the lead in his Ferrari while Hamilton, who had qualified third, slipped by Raikkonen who had gridded second.
Jenson Button wrenched the nose off his Honda when he tagged Nick Heidfeld’s BMW Sauber on lap one. That was the first of a plethora of spins, crashes, barrier swipes and slides that happened throughout the race.
On lap six, Hamilton skimmed the barriers in the swimming pool turns.
His right-rear tire was flat, but he got back to the pits with no drama.
The McLaren crew put on fresh tires and packed the tank with enough fuel to get him to lap 54 [of the scheduled 78] before he had made his one and only additional pit stop.
By this time, Raikkonen had served a drive-through-the-pits penalty because the Ferrari mechanics had fitted his tires within the three-minute mark of the start of the final warm-up lap.
Massa led until the start of lap 15 when he slid off at the end of the pit straight and handed first place to Robert Kubica who had been trailing closely behind the Ferrari in his BMW Sauber.
When Kubica stopped on lap 27, Massa retook the lead until pitting on lap 33. Hamilton took over first place and held on to it for the rest of the race.
McLaren’s strategy of going as long as possible on intermediate wet- weather tires — effectively a one stop plan — and then switching to dry- weather tires worked out perfectly.
Kubica ended up second, while Massa rounded out the top three.