My reaction to the Monaco Grand Prix via, as usual, the medium of quarks.

Up

After a strangely tedious pre-race show a week ago in Spain, the BBC were right back on form – thanks to a much shorter distance to the commentary box. That meant David Coulthard stuck with Jake Humphrey and Eddie Jordan longer, and more importantly that Martin Brundle was able to do his grid walk. The tight and packed Monaco grid always has the potential for rich pickings, and it really delivered this year.

Highlights included: Brundle paying more attention to his broken sunglasses than what Christian Horner’s had to say to him; mistaking music producer Stuart Price for Adrien Brody, then pretty much dismissing him for not being famous enough, before going on to warmly greet Geri Halliwell of all people; declaring that if Michael Schumacher doesn’t want to talk to him then he doesn’t want to talk to Michael Schumacher; wondering out loud whether he’s ever spoken to Pastor Maldonado, let alone on the grid; and virtually shoving a photographer out of the way before talking to Jean Todt. It was a good one.

Down

Driving standards were very variable. Paul di Resta was penalised for a rough move on Alguersuari at the hairpin, and later had contact in the same place with d’Ambrosio.

Lewis Hamilton started the race with a scary but superb move on Schumacher, but was also responsible for another bad move at the hairpin, this time on Felipe Massa – who then crashed out on the marbles in the tunnel while continuing their fight.

Hamilton’s worst crime, though, was taking out Pastor Maldonado, who was running in a fantastic P6 after the restart. He and the Williams team really didn’t deserve to have that strong result taken away from them. Hamilton, for his part, seems to be blindly blaming anyone but himself.

Charm

Bless James Allen. He was obviously busy this weekend, having TV unilaterals to conduct for the FIA as well as a race report to write for his blog. So busy, he mustn’t have heard that the race would restart after the red flag: up went that race report declaring Vettel the winner, while the rest of us were waiting for the race to get back under way.

It didn’t get better: his correction expected Vettel to continue on the same very worn tyres, when they’d already been changed on the red flag grid.

Never mind, eh? We all make mistakes. (Especially me.)

Strange

I don’t know what was going on in the pit lane during the first round of stops, but it must have been pretty distracting, because almost no-one had a clean tyre change.

There was a sticky tyre blanket for Vettel, which had a knock-on effect when on Webber when he stopped immediately afterwards; McLaren just weren’t ready for Hamilton, having gone in and out of position; Massa’s rear jack man missed his target on the first attempt; and Petrov failed to pull away properly after his stop.

Maybe Geri Halliwell was running through the garages screaming like an irritatingly excitable child.

Top

The race was an incredibly tense strategy-fest for about thirty laps – after Button’s third stop, until the accident which caused the red flag. Incidentally, I was quite pleased to see Adrian Sutil drop to 7th after his involvement in that: he’d been running in a quite undeserved P4 before then, a massive beneficiary of the earlier safety car.

In fact, it was a great strategic race throughout: and I’d have been glad to see any of Jenson Button, Fernando Alonso or Sebastian Vettel take the spoils. It looked like Vettel’s race after he disappeared into the distance at the start, until Button seized the initiative – and lead – with an early first stop. An early second stop for Button – which looked like it was pre-empting a safety car which wasn’t needed to recover Glock’s Virgin – didn’t work so well, particularly when the safety car did come out shortly afterwards, and brought the others back into contention.

After Button had stopped for a third time, it wasn’t clear whether Alonso and Vettel in front of him would stop again. They wouldn’t, so Button had to use his tyre advantage to catch and overtake them. He managed the first part of that, but we’ll never know whether he could have eventually overtaken them, because of the aforementioned red flag.

Bottom

Everyone assumed that the race wouldn’t restart, but the anti-climax was delayed when a restart was confirmed. It was only delayed though, because the teams were able to change tyres on the red flag grid. The top three inevitably drove to the chequered flag without incident, the variations in tyre wear having been eliminated. Shame that.