How Hamilton won Ricciardo's race

Even if you do everything right you still need a bit of luck to win the Monaco Grand Prix.

Lewis Hamilton knows that better than most Formula 1 drivers. His only previous triumph around the streets of Monte Carlo came after a brush with barriers at Tabac in 2008. Daniel Ricciardo did everything he needed to do to win the 2016 Monaco GP. He qualified his Red Bull on pole position, dominated the early stages of the race on a treacherously wet track, and looked set to claim the fourth win of his burgeoning F1 career. Yet fortune was not on his side.

At the end of a captivating 78-lap contest around the Principality it was Hamilton who took pride of place in the winners' circle, finally sparking his stuttering season into life.

But this reversal of fortune was not only about luck. Hamilton drove extremely well, and a few key strategic decisions by the world champion and his Mercedes team helped put him in position to win when Red Bull threw away its own golden chance.

Such a result looked extremely unlikely after a qualifying session in which Hamilton's Mercedes was again struck by technical problems.

He started third on the grid, but heavy rain meant the first seven laps were spent behind the safety car, potentially robbing Mercedes of its best opportunity to overturn Ricciardo's pole advantage.

This decision, made of course on safety grounds, also robbed fans of the spectacle of the start, which is often the most exciting part of a Monaco GP.

As it turned out that barely mattered in the end, such was the degree of drama that unfolded.

Hamilton looked downcast after yet another Saturday disappointment, but he was fired up for race day - apparent as he joined the growing number of drivers asking race director Charlie Whiting to let the cars off their safety car leash over the radio.

"The spray is better now; let's get going!" he urged. But when the officials complied and the race finally got under way properly on lap eight of 78, Hamilton found himself unable to release his coiled spring.

His Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg was struggling in second place, dropping 12 seconds to Ricciardo's Red Bull in just eight laps - despite the fact two were spent under virtual safety car conditions following Jolyon Palmer's crash on the pit straight.

So Mercedes decided to enact team orders, telling Rosberg to let Hamilton past, which he duly did by pulling over to the left-hand side of the track on the run up the Beau Rivage on lap 16.

"The way Ricciardo was pulling away, it was clear that not reversing the situation between Nico and Lewis would definitely lose us the race," explained Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff.

"Over the weekend we have struggled to put the tyres in the right [performance] window. We looked at it for a couple of laps and hoped the tyre would switch on, but Ricciardo was 10 or 11 seconds gone.

"It was almost [like] a damaged car, and this is why we decided to make that call. We debated it for quite a long time because it's not what we've done in the past, but it was clear there was a problem.

"If I had Niki Lauda's red cap then I would take it off, because in such a difficult situation to give up the position and understand the global situation was great team play from Nico."

Once freed from the shackles of tracking his team-mate, Hamilton immediately set the race's fastest lap as he set about reeling in Ricciardo's Red Bull.

The race leader upped his own pace in response, but Hamilton took more than two seconds out of Ricciardo's lead before Red Bull decided to switch its man onto the intermediate tyre on lap 23.

Team-mate Max Verstappen had just begun lapping very quickly on this tyre as the track began to dry out - having stopped to ditch the full wet rubber on lap 12 - so Red Bull figured this was the right way to go for its lead driver now too.

"We could see it was 2-3s per lap quicker," explained Red Bull boss Christian Horner.

"And with the forecast going towards dry conditions we felt going to the intermediate before the slick was the normal way of going about business and would be the sensible thing.

"We were one of the last to stop for the inters. Lewis elected not to stop, which looked quite a brave decision."

This was the second part of Mercedes' tactical push for victory. Hamilton claimed the lead by staying out on the full wet tyre until the end of lap 31, by which point every driver other than Manor's Pascal Wehrlein had stopped at least once.

"It was my choice to stay out on the extreme [wet] tyre," Hamilton said. "I believed that I could eke it out to be able to do just one stop."

It seemed Hamilton might become a sitting duck for Ricciardo's rapidly closing RB12, but the reigning champion kept his cool under pressure from behind as he waited for track conditions to improve sufficiently for slicks.

"The only way of attempting a race win was to gamble, to stay out on the wet tyre," said Wolff.

"We had a 28s gap to Nico [in third place], and a pitstop is just short of 20s, so we knew there were 10s we could give up as a buffer.

"We never needed those 10s actually, so it was the right call to stay out - an aggressive call, but in the end the right one."

Mercedes switched Hamilton onto ultra-soft slicks at that one and only stop, while Red Bull called Ricciardo in for dry tyres on the next lap. It was at this point the race unravelled completely for the poleman.

He got the call to pit exiting the tunnel on lap 32, but when he arrived the tyres were not ready to fit to his car. Ricciardo lost 10s while the mechanics were frantically searching for the correct set - "running around like headless chooks" as Ricciardo put it.

"Daniel was extremely quick on his in-lap - he was about seven or eight seconds quicker than Lewis was on his equivalent outlap," explained Horner, who reckoned the tight confines of Monaco's pitlane played a part in his team's inability to locate the correct tyres at short notice.

"Having seen Mercedes put on the ultra-soft, which we felt was quite marginal to go to the end of the race, the call was made in plenty of time - or I certainly felt plenty of time - for us to go one step harder on compound.

"If we were to come out behind Lewis - because it wasn't clear at that point how much up or down he was going to be [on his first lap on slicks] - we felt that [super-soft] tyre had better range.

"Based on how we're set up here in Monaco, the pitwall is upstairs, the garage is downstairs, tyres are on heat both in the garage and behind the garage.

"There was a scramble, with the mechanics originally having the soft tyre ready. When that change was requested to go to the super-soft, those tyres were actually right at the back of the garage and couldn't be got in time."

When Ricciardo did finally get back under way he emerged from the pits just behind Hamilton's Mercedes, suggesting the pace of his mighty inlap was easily enough to get him back into the lead with a normal stop, and also that perhaps Red Bull should have stuck that original set of soft tyres on the car, rather than reacting to Mercedes' stop and changing its plan.

"It was gutting for the whole team to lose a victory like that," added Horner. "All we can do is apologise to Daniel that we haven't given him good enough service, having done a great job to get pole.

"Unfortunately this communication error between pitwall upstairs and the tyre management [people] let us down today. We need to do a full analysis of how this happened and ensure it doesn't happen again."

To win this race now, Ricciardo would need to do what is usually impossible in Monaco - pass for the lead on the track.

His best chance came on lap 37. He got a run on Hamilton coming out of Portier and through the tunnel. Hamilton defended the inside line but locked up and ran wide through the first part of the Nouvelle chicane.

Ricciardo got better drive coming out of the second part and moved right to pass, but lost traction on the damp part of the circuit as Hamilton moved across to block his path, causing the Australian to raise a hand in frustration as his best chance to retake the lead evaporated in a blur of wheelspin.

"What the fuck was that?!" Ricciardo fumed on the radio. The stewards looked at it, but decided no further action was warranted.

"If he was on his own and made a mistake, fair enough, but he made the mistake through defence and battle," explained Ricciardo later. "It was a chance to maybe get the lead for me, so I questioned it."

Hamilton felt he didn't really gain an advantage during the incident, but he was fortunate to not run wider than he did and that Ricciardo couldn't quite get the traction to blast past on the outside before Hamilton closed the door.

It took Ricciardo a few laps to regain his composure after that moment, with his engineer Simon Rennie telling him: "Come on, you're quicker than him, get your head together".

Hamilton extended his lead out to two seconds before Ricciardo went on the attack again and closed back to within striking distance.

He got within half a second at the end of lap 44, but then Hamilton upped his pace and they began trading times at the front - Hamilton quicker some laps, Ricciardo others, the track improving all the time.

The chase finally began to unravel on lap 64, when Ricciardo dropped over a second to Hamilton in one lap. That pushed Hamilton's lead back out to more than two seconds - for the first time since lap 41, when Ricciardo had been raging about Hamilton's defensive tactics.

Ricciardo regrouped yet again, but a lock-up at Massenet with six laps to go cost him another second and effectively called off the chase.

"Two weekends in a row now I've been screwed," fumed Ricciardo afterwards. "We were quick in the wet, we had a comfortable lead, pitted for inters, got stuck behind Lewis, and we effectively put ourselves in a race we didn't need to be into.

"I took Barcelona on the chin, but two in a row now. Massively, massively disappointed. It's not like we're Mercedes - we're not able to win a race [on merit at all circuits], so to get it wrong twice now definitely hurts.

"I'm not sure where to go from here. Obviously they [the team] have got to understand what's going on and learn from it, but this win I'll never get back. That's a fact."

Instead that win went to Hamilton, who with it moved back into second place in the world championship standings, closing to within 24 points of Rosberg, who trailed home seventh after his battles with brake and tyre temperatures and a mugging by Nico Hulkenberg at the end of the final lap.

"People have asked me if I feel relieved, if justice is done - I honestly came here thinking I've just got to go and do it," said Hamilton. "No one's going to give it to me, it's not going come out of thin air, I've got to go and earn it.

"I didn't know whether I could win the race, but knowing that it had rained opened up the window of opportunity - if it was dry there was probably no chance.

"As soon as it rained I knew, having experienced here in 2008 that anything can happen, I was going to be on it whatever the case.

"And I'm better now than I was in 2008."

And he's now a double winner of the Monaco Grand Prix to boot.

Ricciardo will have to wait for his time to come again, having seen his brilliant Monte Carlo performance go cruelly unrewarded.