The post-Monaco Grand Prix blues

I watched the Monaco Grand Prix last weekend, along with the rest of the world, in open-mouthed disbelief as Mercedes snatched defeat from the jaws of victory for Lewis Hamilton.

As is often the case with these situations, my first thought wasn't so much for the superstar driver, for whom there was an instant outpouring of sympathy, but for the guys and girls in the team who'd worked so hard to put Lewis in the dominant position in which he currently finds himself.

Particularly the car crew, every bit as committed and passionate about Lewis winning this championship as he is, yet barely do they ever get as much as a mention from the television commentators and pundits when the weekend's events are analysed.

Mercedes bosses held their hands up immediately after the race © LAT

Of course it's easy for the world to criticise any decisions a team makes in the hours and days following a race - the relative calm and pressure-free environment of a TV studio or a fan's front room affords the luxury of hindsight.

But in Monaco hindsight only served to confirm the inevitable conclusions we'd all jumped to while watching events in real time.

To be fair to the Mercedes chiefs, they held their hands up straight away and admitted making a basic, but fundamental, error. Others would've come up with elaborately convoluted press releases, blaming a "predictive chronological and geographical system malfunction" for their simple mathematical cock-up.

I've been there, and when it's your own team management desperately trying to deflect the blame, I always wished they'd just been as honest as Mercedes was in Monte Carlo.

Most of the time when it comes to race strategy, it's difficult to argue against the vast computational simulation tools that most teams employ. I've sat inside pit garages watching the race play out, dressed from head to toe in fireproof gear, ready at the drop of a hat for an urgent pitstop, while the radio chatter leaves me with more questions than answers.

You can see the situation unfolding in front of you and are almost screaming at the garage TV monitor with what seems like an obvious decision to pit or not, whatever the case might be. I've sat, nudging the guy next to me, saying things like "What the hell are we doing?", imagining 'Murray Walker and Co' berating a potentially race-ruining decision by our team in their commentary boxes, only for it to turn out to be a great strategic call in the end.

Much as we all love to criticise, the computers rarely get it wrong. But like any other hi-tech, 'tomorrow's world' solution, they're only ever as good as the humans who operate them.

THE MAGIC OF MONACO

New pits have made Monaco slightly easier for those working for the teams © LAT

The mistake last weekend will have hurt everyone on Lewis's side of the garage more than normal, just because it happened in Monaco. In their current position, race wins are coming and going all the time and that winning feeling's never anything short of amazing; but one thing they haven't done yet with Lewis is win around the streets of the principality.

Having been fortunate enough to have enjoyed a Monaco victory on more than one occasion, I can assure you there's nothing else like it.

We've all heard the drivers talking about it being a special place to come and race, about how it means more to them than other grand prix and about how, for those lucky enough to win there, it's a dream-come-true and a career highlight. Well, those feelings aren't just restricted to the drivers.

The Monaco Grand Prix is special in many ways and for a race mechanic that can mean a very different week to the 'norm'.

For a start, there're a number of different, Monaco-specific parts on the car, so the week before we even head to the south of France things are already changing - high downforce aero packages, high angle steering racks and modified suspension or brake ducts to go with it. In the past we've even moved the mirror position specifically for this race, or modified the shape of the steering wheel to allow more clearance for the driver's hands on full lock.

As if the bespoke parts don't generate enough extra work ahead of this race, there is always the possibility that your marketing department will wander down to the race bays at the factory, typically just days ahead of everything needing to leave, and announce a new 'high value strategic partnership' that merits repainting the entire car and all associated equipment just for this event.

Stripping the whole car because we've found something that could make us faster at the next race is one thing. Yes, it's annoying, but we all know it's going to help us to get a better result.

Stripping it because your new VIP investor really likes the colour yellow is a lot harder to justify in the minds of the already overworked mechanics.

Then there's the fact that the track action begins a day earlier, and believe me, there's nothing more grating than when you hear people talking about Friday being a 'day off' in Monaco. I'm sure it is a lovely day off for many people to recover from the all-night partying, or to sun themselves on the back of fancy yachts, but for us it's just another day in the garages.

It always amazes me how we normally manage to get through the workload between FP2 and FP3 in a Friday evening, yet here we manage to turn it into a two-day extravaganza!

The possibility of your cars crashing is obviously higher on the tight and twisty streets of Monte Carlo, and that can ramp up the workload greatly. Modern F1 cars aren't designed to be taken apart easily or quickly and on a regular race weekend they tend to stay pretty much together in the most part these days. Watching your driver from the garage, on the limit in qualifying and kissing the barriers, is done through half-closed eyes and with crossed fingers.

Before the current garage set-up appeared in Monaco, we used to have to put up and work out of awnings attached to the side of our trucks in the paddock and push the cars through the streets up into the pitlane.

Special Monaco liveries can be a nightmare for those who build the cars © LAT

Wheeling the shiny completed car up the road to the FIA scrutineering patch on a Wednesday or Thursday evening, while hundreds of enthusiastic, and largely drunk, race fans try to clamber all over it for photos or slurringly ask how fast it goes, could easily result in bits being broken or stolen... yes, even more work.

Similarly, when it comes to Sunday and getting onto the grid, it's so tight and narrow and full of people that it's a real challenge to keep wings, bargeboards and floors in one piece and not have them trodden on and broken.

It's all just different to normal and can be a bit of a struggle to get the job done, but having said that, there are certainly a few benefits to it all too. It's not every day as a mechanic you get to pop into a cocktail party on the back of a multi-million-pound boat at the end of the evening's work, or mix with some of the world's most famous faces and have them all interested in what you do.

The place is just special for that one week of the year, and I've always felt special being part of it. I come away with 'post-Monaco blues', a condition arising from the sudden crash back to reality. The hard work and complexity that goes into the event all comes together to make the feeling of winning there as special as it is for any racing driver.

So spare a thought for Hamilton's crew after their management and strategists made that error in Monaco - it didn't just cost Lewis the chance of a very special race win.