McLaren Looks After Number One

Alonso won, on a day when team-mate Hamilton suggested that he is stuck with back-up status. By MARK HUGHES

This is not a race report. It is an account of the 'facilitation of the McLaren-Mercedes result appropriate to their performance advantage'.

Don't take our word for it; here's how Ron Dennis described it: "There is an equal opportunity for [our] drivers to race for the vast majority of the time. Monaco is not one of [those opportunities]."

Or: "This race is nothing about the drivers other than the necessity for them to drive really quickly and give us the opportunity to determine the outcome of the race. And that's my job."

So Dennis deemed that Lewis Hamilton should not be given the opportunity of trying to win the race from Fernando Alonso. A potentially great sporting contest was therefore denied the watching world, and in its place we got a demonstration vaguely disguised as a race.

Hamilton could have been the one benefiting from this approach only if he'd succeeded in getting into Ste Devote before Alonso at the start - and for that he really needed to have been on the pole denied him on Saturday by traffic on his final qualifying run.

McLaren made it a complex, cold-war sort of a race, fighting an invisible enemy - a safety car that never came. But it was only complex beneath the surface. What transpired out on the track was the two silver cars in formation, albeit each being driven magnificently, with Felipe Massa's Ferrari an ever-more-distant third.

Alonso became a consecutive Monaco winner and Hamilton again finished second - but this time he was far from delighted at the result. He was downright angry that he'd been denied the chance to convert his blistering speed - he was faster than Alonso all weekend - into a tilt at his first victory.

"It says number 2 on my car," he said, barely containing his emotions. "So I guess I'm the number-two driver."

The Ron Dennis perspective

Ron Dennis is at the helm of a team that is responsible for giving Lewis Hamilton - an employee - the opportunity of racing at the front of grands prix in his first season of Formula 1. Ron Dennis has financially backed Hamilton's career for the past decade, when no-one else did - apart from Lewis's father.

So Ron Dennis was probably a little irritated when Hamilton publicly gave the game away at the press conference that he had been called into his pitstops early and thereby denied the chance of fighting Alonso for the win.

It is Dennis's ball and bat, and if he decided he wanted to control the Monaco Grand Prix to cover the risk of a safety car allowing a one-stopping car to beat them, then he was entitled to do so. The safety car had been triggered at four of the previous five Monaco GPs.

There is always a window in a grand prix - between the stops of the short and long-fuelled guys - where the short-fuellers are vulnerable to the long-fuellers getting their stop for free if there's a safety car.

Without a safety car, and running from the front, two-stopping is faster at Monaco than one-stopping, to the tune of 11sec (according to the team's computer simulations). But had both McLarens been fuelled for the optimum two stops, and had the safety car been deployed at any time between about lap 23 and 48 of the 78-lap race (ie between their first stops and those of any one-stoppers less than 30sec behind), then they might have been leapfrogged.

Accordingly, Alonso was fuelled for a standard two-stopper (opening stint around 23 laps), Hamilton for a significantly longer stint (around 28 laps), thereby reducing McLaren's vulnerability window by five laps.

Had a safety car come out after Alonso's first stop but before Hamilton's, Lewis would have won. He could have been fuelled to get to the end, whereas Alonso would have needed another stop after having been slowed to safety-car pace while Hamilton pitted.

"He [Hamilton] would not have been frustrated or disappointed if a safety car had been deployed and [the strategy we gave him] won him the race," answered Dennis to questions about Hamilton's very obvious disappointment.

"All the drivers who have driven for McLaren - and all those who will drive for us in the future - are basically members of this team and they have to behave and perform as part of this team."

It was difficult to avoid the mental image of a stern father and a naughty boy. It's equally difficult to imagine Lewis Hamilton - maybe the fastest driver in F1 at the moment and coming into this race as leader of the world championship - being prepared to accept the latter role.

Had Hamilton set the pole that a baulking from Mark Webber prevented, then all of this would have been irrelevant. Lewis would have been first into Ste Devote and on a heavier fuel load, and therefore on his way to victory.

As it was, although forced to follow Alonso into the first corner, his longer opening stint should still have bought him the victory. As long as he could stay within 5sec of Alonso by the time of Fernando's first stop, he should have taken the lead at the first stops and never lost it.

But from the ninth lap onwards - and for about eight laps thereafter - he fell back, his deficit ballooning to more than 8sec. It was going Alonso's way. An awkward gaggle of backmarkers then hurt Fernando more than Lewis, getting the gap back down to 4.2sec on the eve on Alonso's stop.

But Lewis no longer had his extra five laps over Fernando, for the latter had saved himself two laps of fuel with canny economy driving on the out-lap, formation lap and in the early stages of the race.

For Dennis, there was no decision to make: Alonso had bought himself the win. He watched them continue to battle after Hamilton's stop. But, with a marginally soft brake material that needed nursing, it was time to step in and issue the 'cool it' instructions.

There was no future in letting the fight continue up to the second stops, not at Monaco - as he explained: "This is a place where one driver pushing another driver - if it's from a rival team - is a way to induce a mistake. Everybody in the pit lane and the media would be saying, 'What an idiot the team principal from McLaren is for allowing his cars to compete, when one of them is in the barrier.'"

The Lewis Hamilton perspective

Hamilton had been irritated by the lost opportunity of his first pole on Saturday: "On my last run I caught Webber at Casino Square. He should have got out of the way down the hill, but I was stuck behind him until the beginning of the tunnel.

"I'd been 0.35sec up as I caught him. That lap would've been 0.5sec quicker." Which would have been pole by 0.3sec, and with a heavier fuel lead than Alonso. At Monaco, with less overtaking opportunity than ever, that would have made Lewis a near cert for the race win.

In his defence, Webber points out: "With these mirrors and the dips and twists of this place, the furthest back you're going to see in your mirrors is about 60 metres. I didn't see him until Loews. I asked on the radio if this guy was on a fast lap, they told me he was, and the first place after that I could get out of the way I did.

"Maybe he was being slowed from Casino, but it must've been from a long way back - these cars are affected by the car ahead from a long way back - and no way could I see him."

Hamilton went into the race consoled by his strategy advantage. The team had mentioned covering its bases in case there was a safety car, but for him the crucial thing was the chance the extra five laps would give him to leapfrog ahead. So there was no attempt made to pass off the line.

The run to Ste Devote is too short for it to have been feasible, especially from the dirty side of the grid. Instead, he aimed his car sharply over to the right, to prevent Massa's Ferrari from getting inside, and tucked in behind Fernando - though he'd been surprised at how slow his team-mate had been off the line. Next: terrible buffeting when running close behind.

"Even when you're 4sec behind, you still lose downforce," he explained. His target: to be 5sec or less behind by the time Fernando stopped. Shouldn't be a problem. Wrong. Alonso was setting a hot pace, and soon the combination of Hamilton's car's greater weight and running in the turbulence caused his front-left tyre to begin graining. From lap nine, and for the next eight laps, he was losing whole chunks of time and fell badly off schedule. For a time, it was all he could do to stay clear of Massa's Ferrari.

Just as Hamilton's graining was finally clearing itself, Alonso began lapping people - or, rather, he didn't. He was being badly baulked, allowing Lewis to get back on schedule.

Except... Alonso came in at the end of lap 25, and so Hamilton assumed he'd have until lap 30, giving him the five laps of low-fuel hot laps. But he was called in at the end of 28.

"I was quite surprised because I was fuelled to do five, maybe even six, laps longer than Fernando, but they stopped me after just three laps more. I wasn't given much time to pull out a gap before my stop. That was unfortunate."

Alonso later said he'd been able to save fuel - on the installation and formation laps and also when Lewis was falling back with his graining problems - and that had enabled him to stop two laps later than originally planned. Hence he'd negated a significant chunk of Hamilton's strategy advantage.

It was enough to ensure that Alonso was still ahead after they'd each stopped, but this was further ensured by the team fuelling Hamilton much longer. Stationary for 8.9sec (compared to Alonso's 7.5sec), it meant the fuel rig was attached for around 6.9sec, long enough to give him more than 60kg of fuel - enough to last him until around lap 62. Alonso was fuelled long enough to go to lap 52 at the most.

So, on the race to the second stops, Hamilton - just 4.5sec behind after they'd both rejoined from the first stops - should easily have been able to leapfrog Alonso. Lewis's advantage would in theory be further enhanced by Alonso having to use the slower supersoft tyres while Hamilton still had 10 laps of running on the faster softs.

But that was to discount McLaren's continuing paranoia about the safety-car scenario. A second vulnerability window opens after the one-stoppers have completed their stops but before you have yet to make your second stop. This was made potentially more damaging by the new-for-'07 safety-car procedure, whereby everyone has to get into line behind it, with lapped cars at the back, before the pit lane is declared open.

This procedure would take at least a lap to play out, and therefore any one-stopper still on the same lap as you would comfortably pass you when you made your stop. Robert Kubica's fifth-placed BMW - which didn't pit until the end of lap 45 - was the threat here and, even though Kimi Raikkonen was a lap down at this point, he too might just have leapfrogged the McLarens had there been a safety car. So as soon as Raikkonen pitted at the end of lap 48, McLaren called in Alonso a couple of laps early.

But, unbeknown to the watching public, the race had already long been called off. Five laps into the second stint, Dennis issued instructions to both drivers to back off, stop racing each other and save the brakes. This was lap 34. Hamilton reluctantly did as he was told, immediately dropping his pace by 0.6sec.

Alonso - a tough-minded, shrewd cookie still feeling his way into trusting his new team - stayed on it for another four laps before being satisfied that Hamilton no longer seemed to be pushing. Only then did Fernando comply. And even then it was only for four laps, before he got back on it again, setting the race's fastest lap on lap 44.

At this point, sensing something unfair, Hamilton decided to respond - and set a time just 0.2sec slower, despite carrying 10 laps more fuel (around 0.5sec-worth). Contrary to instructions, they were racing again, each wracked with paranoia and under huge psychological strain. Again they were given the 'cool it' message; again they reluctantly complied.

Yet this could still have been Hamilton's race. With Alonso called in at the end of lap 50, Lewis still had fuel for another 12 laps and was less than 10sec behind. Had he been allowed to use those 12 laps of low-fuel running, he might have got ahead.

His lighter fuel load would have bought him a theoretical 0.8sec per lap, his faster tyres another 0.2sec - and all the evidence of the weekend suggested Lewis himself had as much as 0.3sec over Alonso in the driving department.

It would have been marginal, and would have required him to be absolutely on the limit for all of those 12 laps. It would have been fantastic to have seen him try. Instead, Lewis got the 'pit now' instruction just two laps after Alonso's stop. To cover the safety car - and to prevent him trying to race his team-mate on a circuit where pressure tends to induce crashes, especially when the brake material is a little marginal.

Certain now he'd been 'contained' by the team, Hamilton didn't take too much notice when they instructed him to back everything off and cruise home. "I don't like giving in, so I didn't take too much notice of that," said Lewis. And he proceeded to sit himself right on the cruising Alonso's gearbox in the final stages. He wanted the world to know he could have won this and had been prevented from doing so.

The Fernando Alonso perspective

Right from the moment practice began, Fernando could see Lewis was significantly faster. Hamilton's oversteer style just seemed much better suited to this place; he wasn't going to be beaten on pace. Alonso was relieved, therefore, when the team elected to give him a more aggressive strategy.

He'd been deeply worried in the initial supersoft-tyre runs of Q3 when, despite being 10kg lighter than Hamilton, he was 0.2sec slower. He'd been very relieved when Hamilton's final run was baulked more than his own, and he'd taken pole. Against the run of play. That was the first building block to beating this guy who was faster - pole at Monaco is invaluable.

The next part of the strategy was to ensure he got into Ste Devote first. They'd talked and it had already been decided they weren't going to fight the corner out - there's too little distance from the front row of the grid down to there.

Waiting for the start, as he looked in his mirrors he could see Hamilton's front wheels were pointing to the right, ready to tuck in behind him and block Massa. Good. So the second brick was about to slot into place.

All that remained would be what to do about Hamilton's better strategy. Fernando had already been extremely careful on his out and formation laps to conserve as much fuel as possible, to try to reduce that strategy disadvantage.

But it wouldn't be enough on its own if Hamilton could just follow closely behind. What he really needed was for Massa to beat Hamilton into Ste Devote. So, although he afterwards played it: "I didn't react as fast to the lights as I usually do," you could take that to mean: 'Knowing he was going to tuck in behind I wanted to make a slow start, knowing that would slow him, and maybe allow Massa to pass him.' But it didn't work. Massa wasn't up for any first-turn heroics. The third brick hadn't worked.

All there was for it now was to run a hard pace, try to make Lewis overwork his tyres. It didn't seem to be working. He was still just 3sec behind after eight laps. Then, magically, it happened: Hamilton suddenly began to fade in his mirrors. At this point, Alonso concentrated on backing off a little earlier, using the throttle a little more carefully while still maintaining momentum, trying to eke out a couple of extra laps. It was working.

Oh no, what's this? A great train of backmarkers. Trulli was the worst of them. "I was stuck behind him for three laps, losing two seconds per lap," he complained. Hamilton didn't lose as much - and suddenly that 7sec gap was down to 4.2sec on the eve of Alonso's stop.

It was a relief when he emerged from the stops still in front. Now the team was saying 'back off'. Was this a ploy? To help their boy Hamilton? Probably not, but he needed to reassure himself. Eventually the paranoia faded, he came out in front after the second stops - and then it was all routine. It had been a great performance of guile, experience and mental strength. But this new kid is so fast.

"A fantastic feeling. Pole, win and fastest lap. Half a minute clear of the guy in third. One of the easiest and nicest of my victories so far." Said with Lewis sitting next to him and knowing that the bit about 'easy' wasn't really true. At which point, Lewis began pointing out a few things to anyone who asked. Like a very naughty boy. Like a champion unwilling to take second billing to anyone.

It was a truly fascinating contest. But it wasn't really a race.