No excuse for Red Bull blunder

There's one certainty in Formula 1: There will be winners and there will be losers. Those winners will be smiling ecstatically and the losers will be dejected, especially those, like Daniel Ricciardo in Monaco, who lose through no fault of their own.

Last year, Lewis Hamilton was the dejected one after the Mercedes team made a poor pit call and he pitted from the lead, handing victory to Nico Rosberg. This year, the tables were turned and Hamilton benefited from Ricciardo's misfortune. There was also an inspired call to stay on wets until it was dry enough for slicks - one that Hamilton took plenty of the responsibility for post-race. But was it really so inspired?

Many other drivers made an early switch to intermediates and I'm sure while Hamilton was declaring himself happy with his tyres on a drying track, Mercedes kept a close eye on what the others were up to, especially Jenson Button who normally has a good feel for such conditions.

When it was apparent inters were not any faster than the wets, given track position is king in Monaco, it was clear what to do. So Hamilton stayed out there, hung on as best he could knowing that both he and the car chasing him would have to stop for slicks at the same time.

But Hamilton had to make the stop first, meaning Ricciardo was able to gain almost three seconds on his in-lap, more than enough to emerge in the lead. Confusion in the Red Bull pits meant the car was stopped for something like nine seconds waiting for his team to find the tyres. So Ricciardo could only sit there furiously revving his engine while he saw the win being taken away.

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said the pits in Monaco are different to any other venue and that's what led to the mix-up over whether to fit soft or super-soft Pirellis.

But that excuse doesn't wash. This is hardly the first time F1 has raced there and Red Bull has won the Monaco Grand Prix enough times to avoid such a simple error.

When race day dawned wet, teams would have known they needed all of their tyres - wets, intermediates and up to three slick compounds - lined up in their blankets and ready to be switched on as required.

That way, they would have a choice of how to react to the weather. As the day progressed, it would have been possible to refine and prioritise this choice. When the rain kept coming, you would keep another set of wets and intermediates in the blankets for the race start.

As the race went on, you should be keeping your crew informed on what the plan is for if the driver suddenly pitted. After all, this is Monaco in the wet and there's every chance of clipping the barrier so you always have to be on standby, especially with it being such a short lap.

The motto at Monaco is "don't lose track position" so you should always be ready to fit a set of tyres with no notice. The engineers might want to deliberate, but it would have been better to be on the track with a set of soft tyres than sit there waiting for nine seconds for a set of super-softs.

But Red Bull did not do this, treating Monaco like a 'normal' race where there will be plenty of time to make the call. This cost it dearly and left it with a frustrated driver who just saw a second consecutive win lost to a team error.

So those on the 'pitwall', which in Monaco is actually an office above the garage, should have known better than to try to change to a different tyre compound at the last second when the tyres weren't on standby in the garage.

And perhaps somebody on the crew should have been willing to over-rule that call and put the softs on knowing the time that would be lost getting the super-softs? After all, if that had happened and the track position had been maintained, Ricciardo would almost certainly have won the race.

But the Red Bull team wasn't the only mistake-maker at Monaco. Three crashes for Spanish Grand Prix winner Max Verstappen was probably three too many, and he crashed in Monaco last year too when he ran into the back of Romain Grosjean. Hopefully he's learned what not to do now, but he doesn't have a great record in the confined spaces of Monaco.

Meanwhile points leader Rosberg did not drive like a potential world champion last Sunday.

Yes, he had some brake problems - most likely what is called 'glazing' when the disc surface gets very shiny because the brakes are running too cold in wet conditions.

But as a driver, you have to find ways around these troubles. And you definitely have to avoid losing a position and two valuable points to being passed in the final seconds of the grand prix, as Rosberg was by Nico Hulkenberg's Force India.

Ferrari will be going back to Maranello with its tail between its legs. Spain and Monaco have shown it has dropped behind Red Bull and the pressure will be on to prove that it can turn that around and quickly.

If not, I can see the chopping board coming into play at Maranello. Expectations were high this year and it's not reacting well to underachievement. This is something we've also seen in the past.

But I take my hat off to Sergio Perez and to Force India for getting onto the podium. It was a great drive and great teamwork in a car that also showed well in qualifying with Hulkenberg. That will just add to the feeling at Ferrari that it has a lot of work to do.

Force India has not had a great start to the season, so it was important to get a good points haul on the board and a third podium finish in three seasons.

Where we didn't see good teamwork was at Sauber. Both drivers should be made to walk the plank after ignoring team orders and colliding. It cost Sauber money it just can't afford to throw away.

We also saw a concerning incident during Thursday morning practice when a drain cover hit Jenson Button's McLaren, thankfully with injury only to the car.

My Anson Formula 3 team competed in the Macau Grand Prix in 1984 with Tommy Byrne and Claudio Langes driving. During one of the practice sessions, Claudio was following another driver when suddenly our car, in his words, "sort of exploded".

He walked back to the pits and said the car was destroyed, but that he had no idea what happened. We said there was no problem and that we would be able to fix it, no matter what.

When the car came back, we found that the bottom of the chassis was completely ripped out and a drain cover 18" square by 1/2" thick was bent double and embedded in the front of the engine.

He was very lucky that the car had pullrod front suspension, so the rockers were just in front of his manhood and deflected the steel plate by just enough to mean that he wasn't talking in a high pitched voice. Needless to say, we were not able to fix it.

The interesting thing was that practice continued for about half-an-hour until a marshal noticed a huge hole in the middle of the road. I asked Tommy about it and he said he had seen something that looked a bit blacker than normal and thought it was just a patch of oil so straddled it!

The organisers paid us something like £3500 for the inconvenience. It would be interesting to know what McLaren gets from the Monaco organisers and the FIA...