Ricciardo claims first FR3.5 victory

From the outside of the front row, Carlin's Mikhail Aleshin ran alongside the Australian Tech 1 driver into Sainte Devote, but the championship leader dropped away from Ricciardo over the opening laps as his tyres took time to reach their optimum pressure.

From mid-race, Aleshin gathered pace to reel in the British Formula 3 champion, but would finish one second adrift at the chequered flag.

"It was such a tough race, even though I led from the start and didn't really have a fight with anyone, it was so exhausting," said Ricciardo. "Pushing for 45 minutes on a street circuit is something that I haven't really done before.

"At the start I was really comfortable and the tyres were there straight away. In the middle of the race there were some incidents and yellow flags, and I was perhaps over-cautious not to receive any penalties. That allowed Aleshin to get a sniff. I probably over-killed the tyres a bit in the beginning, too."

Cheered on by new fan, and world number two tennis player, Novak Djokovic, Formula Renault 2.0 graduate Albert Costa drove a mature and relatively lonely race to third place, slowed in the closing laps by pain from a hand injury sustained in pre-season testing accident.

"It's a really nice result with Formula 1 and GP2 teams here," said Costa. "At the beginning of the race I was faster than Aleshin, but although the car was good all through the race, I had a lot of problems with my hand. I could only put a little bit of pressure on the right hand and I was slow. Honestly, when I saw that Aleshin and Ricciardo were so far gone I thought let's just finish the race."

Fourth place Brendon Hartley was arguably the star of the race. After brushing the wall in qualifying, the Kiwi was forced to start from eighth. However, the Tech 1 man made a mockery of the notion that overtaking is impossible in the principality to fight his way up the order.

Hartley's frustration grew over the opening laps as he remained trapped behind Filip Salaquarda's ISR car. Light contact was made on the approach to the chicane, but Hartley would have to wait until lap 12 before squeezing through in an unorthodox move at Mirabeau. After a series of fastest laps, Hartley closed in on Sten Pentus in sixth, and made a repeat manoeuvre at Mirabeau on lap 21.

Impressive debutant Alexander Rossi was the next target, and the rear of the American's ISR car was tapped on several occasions by Hartley exiting the Rascasse hairpin. Just three laps from home, and under severe pressure, the GP3 winner lost control and found the barriers at Massanet, scene of his accident in qualifying on Saturday.

Monegasque Stefano Coletti was then relieved of fourth place by Hartley's battle-scarred machine at Mirabeau on the penultimate lap.

"I touched the wall early on in qualifying, which in all honestly was my mistake," said a drained Hartley. "I was very disappointed in qualifying, as I knew that I had the pace and didn't really show everyone. I guess I showed everyone now.

"Salaquarda was hard to pass, moving about in the braking and making it very hard. [When I passed him] I said, 'alright this is the place where I am going to make my passes.' I had a couple of goes at other corners, but Salaquarda kept closing the door and would have crashed."

Pentus ended the race in sixth to maintain his third place in the drivers' standings, while Jon Lancaster progressed four places on his grid position to finish in seventh.

Pos  Driver             Team                Time/Gap
 1.  Daniel Ricciardo   Tech 1            45m40.072s
 2.  Mikhail Aleshin    Carlin              + 1.093s
 3.  Albert Costa       Epsilon Euskadi    + 21.103s
 4.  Brendon Hartley    Tech 1             + 26.985s
 5.  Stefano Coletti    Comtec             + 28.280s
 6.  Sten Pentus        Fortec             + 31.229s
 7.  Jon Lancaster      Fortec             + 32.041s
 8.  Filip Salaquarda   ISR                + 52.615s
 9.  Nelson Panciatici  Junior Lotus       + 53.520s
10.  Daniil Move        Junior Lotus       + 54.344s
11.  Walter Grubmuller  P1                 + 55.068s
12.  Victor Garcia      KMP                + 55.997s
13.  Jake Rosenzweig    Carlin             + 56.992s
14.  Jan Charouz        P1                 + 57.858s
15.  Greg Mansell       Comtec           + 1m02.694s
16.  Julian Leal        Draco            + 1m04.799s
17.  Anton Nebylitskiy  KMP              + 1m13.162s
18.  Keisuke Kunimoto   Epsilon Euskadi  + 1m24.022s
19.  Sergio Canamasas   FHV Interwetten      + 1 lap

Retirements:

     Alexander Rossi    ISR              28 laps
     Federico Leo       Pons             19 laps
     Daniel Zampieri    Pons             13 laps
     Nathanael Berthon  Draco            3 laps
     Bruno Mendez       FHV Interwetten  0 laps