Theissen: Alonso Deserved a Penalty

Alonso, struggling badly with his tyres in the later part of the race, was embroiled in a battle for third place with Australian Mark Webber. The Williams driver tried hard to pass Alonso at the exit of the tunnel, but on his first attempt the Spaniard cut the chicane and kept his position.

Webber, who finished behind teammate Nick Heidfeld, was successful on his second try, although Alonso cut the chicane again.

"I think both [Heidfeld and Webber] did the same job, but in the case of Mark, Fernando cut the chicane and from my view he should have got a penalty anyway, even if Mark wouldn't have been able to pass him, because he was past already and Alonso got ahead of Mark by cutting the chicane," said Theissen.

The Williams duo did not seem to have the tyre problems Alonso and several other drivers had, and Theissen admitted he was surprised to see Alonso struggling so badly.

"We knew that we expected some teams to struggle with their tyres but we didn't expect it to be so bad, because normally if a car is two or three seconds slower and you don't have a chance to overtake it here in Monaco," Theissen added.

"But in this case it was about five to six seconds slower and we took the chance, we gave both drivers 19,000rpm to allow them to overtake and that contributed to them being in a position to catch Fernando at the end.

"Some cars were really slow, and today it was a tyre race, except Kimi [Raikkonen], he was great and untouchable today."