A Fine Balance

For the first five Grands Prix of the 2008 season, the weather gods produced dry and grippy conditions, delaying the answer to one of the pre-season's burning questions: just how would the loss of traction control affect the field in wet weather racing?

The wet streets of Monaco not only answered that question, but also injected spectacle and unpredictability into a race that is routinely high in glamour and low in racing action.

For the drivers, the prospect of two solid hours' racing on a slippery circuit with no margin for error (even in dry conditions) would be a supreme test of patience and car control, and a fine balance between exhilarating triumph and embarrassing failure.

Just a few years ago, there were certain standout names that you could bank on to succeed in such conditions. Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello were acknowledged rain masters, while Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button presented their credentials with superb wet drives at Hungary 2006.

Even with Schumacher's retirement and Barrichello's switch from Ferrari to the much less competitive Honda, a wet Monaco would usually see punters backing the drivers with greater experience - Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen, Nick Heidfeld, along with stalwarts like Barrichello, Button and Giancarlo Fisichella.

It is perhaps a measure of how much Formula One has changed that Sunday's race produced top drives from three of the least likely candidates in the field - Ferrari's Felipe Massa, BMW's Robert Kubica and Force India's Adrian Sutil.

Massa surely does not lack top-flight experience. However, by his own admission, Monaco is a circuit that he dislikes and one where team-mate and reigning champion Raikkonen would be expected to beat him handily. Yet, for the first 15 laps of an incident-filled race, Massa not only outpaced Raikkonen but looked the class of the field.

That early lead flowed from another excellent qualifying lap by the Brazilian, a performance that is now becoming regular enough for him to at least challenge Jarno Trulli's reputation as the field's one-lap specialist.

Massa eventually lost the lead (and the all-important momentum) by running straight on at Ste. Devote. It was a mistake by the Massa, but not a terminal error. For despite the well-earned reputation for wildness and silly mistakes earlier in his career, Massa has shown lately that he can be relied upon to get the car to the finish in wet conditions.

Surprisingly, he was the only driver in the field to score points in all three of the wet races during 2007 - Europe, China and Japan.

BMW's Robert Kubica was the benefactor of Massa's slip at Ste. Devote. Even though he was unable to resist the charging Lewis Hamilton or the recovering Massa, eventual second was deserved reward for Kubica. What had been a chink of daylight between himself and team-mate Nick Heidfeld coming into Monaco has now widened into a veritable chasm.

The result was all the more surprising because Kubica had never excelled in the wet. Three seventh-place finishes at Hungary 2006 (before disqualification), Europe and Japan 2007 had been his previous best results in Formula One wet weather driving. The Monaco podium lays down another marker of his growing confidence and versatility.

Adrian Sutil leads Kazuki Nakajima and Jarno Trulli around Ste Devote © XPB/LAT

Even Massa and Kubica would probably concede that the drive of the day belonged to Force India's Sutil. At the same event last year, Sutil gave a glimpse of his potential by recording the fastest time in a wet practice session. On Sunday, he went one better, applying that pace to almost the full race and, at times, trading fastest laps with the vastly superior machinery around him.

Sutil's sterling effort all came to naught as he was shunted from behind by Raikkonen's fishtailing Ferrari, literally within a few minutes of what would have been a lucrative fourth place finish for Force India.

It hasn't been a promising sophomore year for Sutil. Paired with the renowned rookie destroyer in any underperforming car, Giancarlo Fisichella, the 25-year-old German has fared little better than any of Fisichella's other team-mates over the years. With Fisichella sidelined by gearbox problems, Monaco was Sutil's chance to restore parity.

While it is impossible not to empathise with Sutil's crushing disappointment, he did not leave Monaco empty-handed. While the championship points were the primary consideration for the Force India team, the major benefit for Sutil lay in securing his Formula One tenure by grabbing the attention of prospective employers.

He had already accomplished that by the time Raikkonen crashed into him. That won't make either of the two drivers feel any better about it, although there can be no recriminations against Raikkonen. His job at Monaco was to defend his championship lead, not to be considerate and charitable towards a junior driver heading for unexpected points.

Racing as hard as he could with brakes and tyres that weren't at optimal temperatures, Raikkonen lost the rear end under braking for the chicane. It was the epitome of the 'racing incident'.

Raikkonen was quick to apologise publicly to Sutil, but he owes himself a private apology as well. May was always going to be a tough month for the Finn, but he looked calm and confident enough to retain at least a reduced championship lead as the teams head across the Atlantic to Canada.

Instead, he has meekly surrendered what was a very healthy nine point lead, and given team-mate and championship rival Felipe Massa a timely confidence boost.

The conventional wisdom suggests that Raikkonen will be the stronger driver when the teams return to Europe for the second half of the season. But that same conventional wisdom also suggested that Raikkonen would be faster at Monaco. Massa's capacity to surprise could well turn out to be the deciding factor in this year's championship.

The two Ferrari drivers taking points off each other will suit Lewis Hamilton just fine. In his brief Formula One career, Hamilton's wet weather performances have been marked not by consistent success or failure, but rather by the invariable high drama.

His first wet Grand Prix at Europe last year, memorable for the infamous crane incident, also resulted in his first non-points finish in Formula One. He made amends by winning a perfectly controlled race in the wet at Fuji, only to fail again a week later in China by spinning into the world's smallest gravel trap.

Lewis Hamilton returns to the pits after clipping the barrier © XPB/LAT

So which Hamilton would arrive in Monaco, the spectacular loser from Europe and China or the dominant victor from Japan? Ultimately it was the latter, although it took an extravagant slice of luck to turn the race in Hamilton's favour.

The brush with the barriers at Tabac on lap six should have been enough to end Hamilton's race. But the old saying that drivers make their own luck applies just as much to Hamilton as to anybody else. In stark contrast to his failure in China, Hamilton showed remarkable poise to recover from the brink of disaster.

Hamilton will relish the comparisons with his boyhood hero Ayrton Senna's achievements around Monaco, although Sunday's win was more typical of Michael Schumacher than Senna. The driver error and recovery, the need to switch strategy on the fly and the focus to churn out the laps to make the new strategy work were all typical of Schumacher's most memorable wins.

More importantly, the win will have erased Hamilton's bitter memories of Monaco 2007. And, thanks to a stall and another sub-par points haul for team-mate Heikki Kovalainen, Hamilton heads to Canada as the clear McLaren frontrunner.

It's a situation that four-time champion Alain Prost understands all too well. As the lone McLaren championship hopeful, he was in exactly the same position against the Williams pairing of Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet in 1986.

Prost concludes that this year's championship is finely balanced, and closer than most people reckon. It remains to be seen whether the 2008 championship will go down to the final quarter of the last race, as it did in 1986. But, on current form, it would take a brave man to bet against it.