How Ricciardo eclipsed a Schumacher classic

Spectacular, unexpected victories founded on dramatic passes and opportunism have become Daniel Ricciardo's Formula 1 stock in trade. So perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise that what was on course to be a dominant first Monaco Grand Prix win from pole position turned into something else entirely when he lost 161bhp worth of electrical power and was forced into a rearguard action.

The Australian executed it to perfection, leading Red Bull team principal Christian Horner to liken Ricciardo's management of the problem to Michael Schumacher's famous drive to second place in the 1994 Spanish Grand Prix while stuck in fifth gear. Hyperbole? Some thought so, but in some ways this eclipsed Schumacher's achievement.

"Managing a car issue and being able to do what he did today was one of his best ever drives," said Horner. "When you listen to the radio, how calm he is under a maximum stress scenario, it was truly impressive."

So, what exactly did Ricciardo do other than stay parked at the front of the field at a circuit where overtaking is nigh on impossible? First and foremost, he got himself into that position in the first place.

Max Verstappen's shunt during free practice on Saturday after clipping the inside wall at the apex of the second Swimming Pool chicane wiped out Ricciardo's only real qualifying rival, but pole position still needed to be nailed. Having topped all three free practice sessions, as well as the first two stages of qualifying, the Australian made sure of that with his first run in Q3.

After making a solid start, Ricciardo held his position on the inside line on the approach to Ste Devote to ensure the faster-starting Sebastian Vettel could not threaten him. He then edged away, building up a lead that stood at 4.1 seconds while taking care not to overstress the hypersoft Pirellis all of the top 10 started on, when Vettel dived into the pits at the end of lap 16 to switch to the ultrasofts that carried him to the end.

Ricciardo was justifiably wary of the front-left graining that threatened to accelerate degradation and might have left him vulnerable to a pitstop undercut. But with a handy lead, and enough tyre performance to nail a decent in-lap, Ricciardo was in the clear.

His 17th lap featured a personal best in sector one, then the fastest run from Casino Square to the exit of Tabac of the race so far, meaning he emerged from his pitstop to switch to ultrasofts still 3.1s to the good. Easy. But around 10 laps later, things started to go wrong. Ricciardo lost the MGU-K, the electric motor that deploys 161bhp.

"He reported a sudden loss of power, and the engine guys could see from the data that the MGU-K had stopped completely," said Horner. "At that point, there was talk of retiring because with the potential damage, the K can go into the engine and then there's a whole load of other problems. My position was, 'We're leading the Monaco Grand Prix, we'll run until this engine stops'."

"He's been so focused since the point he arrived here this weekend there was no way he was going to let this victory slip through his fingers" Christian Horner

It's not yet clear why, but the MGU-K was overheating and had to shut down. This followed Renault's concerns pre-weekend about some bolts potentially working lose that led to it being allowed to check all of the MGU-Ks currently active.

But the reason didn't matter much to Ricciardo, who was busy adapting to being light of power. On top of that, the problem also compromised the harvesting off the rear wheels under braking, meaning Ricciardo had to wind the brake bias forward. He was also under instruction to start lifting before braking zones to ease the load.

"I had a lot less power, but then the rear brakes got really hot so I went 6-7% forwards with the brake balance," said Ricciardo. "That's a lot. Maybe we go 1-2% change during the race, so we had to go a long way forwards and I had to lift a lot before braking to save the brakes and put less energy through them."

Now if that sounds difficult, imagine being in Ricciardo's position and having to do that while trying to come to terms with the fact you might be losing a win in F1's most famous race two years after being denied victory there by a pitstop blunder. And you are forced to adapt to the loss of power, to running without using what is effectively top gear (Ricciardo didn't use seventh or eighth, but Red Bull generally wasn't using eighth anyway so it was no great loss) and with the brake bias moved forward to a place it would never normally go.

And while going through this process, Ricciardo had Vettel on his tail - eager to capitalise on the problem and overtake the distracted Red Bull driver. But Vettel never had a sniff. This was high-class stuff.

"Had it been at any other circuit, they would have sailed straight past us," said Horner. "We saw it when Daniel won his first grand prix in Montreal [in 2014] when the same issue happened to Nico Rosberg. But here in Monaco, with the ability to position the cars sensibly, it's enormously difficult to overtake even with a pace advantage.

"It was important for him to keep his cool, keep track position, not kill the tyres, not kill the brakes and bring it home. He's been so focused since the point he arrived here this weekend there was no way he was going to let this victory slip through his fingers."

Red Bull did a good job of keeping discussion of the problem to a minimum initially, potentially delaying Ferrari realising that Ricciardo was in trouble for a few moments. But even with a problem that led to Ricciardo's pace dropping from easy 1m18s to more difficult and underpowered 1m19s and occasionally slower, Vettel couldn't get close enough.

"Obviously I saw the issue and I was told by radio and that's when I started to push," said Vettel, who suddenly closed to within 0.542s, under half the gap at the start of the lap, in the middle of lap 28. "But as soon as I got closer then I struggled to stay there and never got in range, especially at the exit of the tunnel.

"I had the DRS a couple of times, but obviously the track makes it quite difficult, which is a bonus if you are ahead but with all the problems he had, he was still quicker than us."

With Ricciardo turning the final 50 laps of the Monaco Grand Prix into a slow bicycle race up front, the leaders began to concertina together. Lewis Hamilton ran third from the start and, as he was struggling more than most with the front-left tyre graining on the hypersofts, he was the first frontrunner to make a stop at the end of lap 12.

This dropped him into a gap that had conveniently formed behind Esteban Ocon's Force India. Ocon had qualified as best of the rest in sixth place and then pulled away from Fernando Alonso's McLaren at the start, creating that space. Mercedes-powered Ocon was content to let Hamilton overtake him into the chicane on lap 14, meaning the reigning world champion had clear air.

This didn't concern Vettel a great deal, especially as Hamilton's pace on the ultrasofts wasn't anything special. This meant Vettel could run five laps longer and still emerge with track position over Hamilton.

Hamilton had Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari behind him in the early stages, and the Finn briefly looked like he could threaten Hamilton with an 'overcut', only for his tyres suddenly to drop away. On the first two laps after Hamilton pitted, Raikkonen was lapping in the 1m16s bracket, but by the fourth lap he was in the low 1m18s.

"If we take the lap that Hamilton pitted, the next lap I was very good and everything felt fine and then it was like turning a switch," said Raikkonen. "We started to struggle with the fronts and then we lost like two seconds a lap. We can't just take our time because obviously there were cars behind so were making sure that we at least got the same position."

This led to Raikkonen complaining over the radio, justifiably, but he was able to stop without losing position to Bottas thanks to the Mercedes driver stopping on the same lap even though he went a lap longer than was wise. At the point Ricciardo hit trouble, Hamilton was 8s behind, with Raikkonen 1.5s further back and Bottas 13.5s down.

The top four were on ultrasofts, while Bottas opted for the supersofts that were working more effectively. At one stage, he was told the four ahead of him might be forced to stop again, raising the possibility of an unexpected victory.

But the top four all ran to the end, with Hamilton the most vocal in struggling with the graining and consequential accelerated degradation. To him, the Monaco Grand Prix didn't feel like a race.

"It's just insane how little I was pushing - the least, probably, that I can ever remember," he said. "[I was] just trying to stop the fronts from graining - and even when I did it, when I wasn't pushing, the tyre grained.

"And then there was a point when I was 10 seconds behind and I was really conflicted, because in my heart I was, 'I still want to win this race, maybe something drastic's going to happen in the coming laps - who knows?' And the genius strategists might pull something out of the bag. But they were saying, 'Just stay 10 seconds behind and bring it home'.

"In my heart I was thinking, 'No! I've got to close the gap, because if I get close, maybe something will happen and I'll get a place'. So I was battling, but on the same side of things I've got to drive bloody slow, and make sure the tyres don't fall apart or blow up or whatever."

It was probably a good call from Mercedes, as even if Hamilton had been in a position to challenge the top two passing would have been impossible. As it was, third place in the third fastest car was a decent return, even if he was ruing the fact he didn't outqualify Vettel after setting the fastest first sector of qualifying on his final Q3 lap. Unfortunately, this had set a pace that the tyres couldn't keep up with in subsequent sectors.

"He could have been in Apollo 13. It was an incredible performance and extremely mature" Horner on Ricciardo's drive

Mercedes did briefly contemplate the possibility of bringing in Bottas in for a new set of tyres given it wouldn't have cost him a place, but the fact he didn't have another set of supersofts meant this was ruled out even before the cars behind, led by Ocon, closed up enough to have jumped him had he done so.

Ricciardo was certainly the slowest of the lead five, but his brilliance in coming to terms with the problem he had, understanding how to be quick where he needed to and switching from controlling a race to resisting serious pressure meant he made it look easy.

Late on, the virtual safety car threw in a potential curveball when it was deployed thanks to Charles Leclerc suffering a braking problem and clattering into the back of Brendon Hartley's Toro Rosso at the chicane. If anything, this eased the pressure for Ricciardo, especially when Stoffel Vandoorne's lapped and hypersoft-shod McLaren pulled out of the pits in front of Vettel and created a bigger buffer for Ricciardo. But even without that, Ricciardo had everything under control, and when the race went back to green, Vettel fell back dramatically.

That's what made what he did a little different to what Schumacher did in Spain (pictured). While Schumacher had to grapple with gear selection that was not behaving before he settled into fifth, and the resulting compromises on power and loss of engine braking, he was never under quite the same pressure Ricciardo was.

But what the two drives share is both were produced by individuals at the top of their game, able to problem-solve while never forgetting they were in a racing situation.

For those on the Red Bull pitwall, the comparison with Verstappen, who made some key passes early on and salvaged ninth from the back of the grid after squandering the best car in the field, was stark given how professional a job Ricciardo did.

"He could have been in Apollo 13," said Horner, referencing NASA's ill-fated third attempt to land on the moon that resulted in the three-man crew facing seemingly insurmountable odds but still getting home. "The way he was dealing with the issues, it was an incredible performance and just extremely mature."

Ricciardo was never going to let slip his shot at what he called "redemption" after the lost victory of 2016. The question now is whether his future lies away from Red Bull? And if it doesn't, will it be with Renault propulsion that has proved so sketchy in the turbo hybrid era or the higher-risk, potentially higher reward works Honda engines?