Daniel Ricciardo collected a win from the pole position around the narrow streets of Monaco, but it was far from a straight forward victory due to power unit issues for much of the race. Sebastian Vettel was able to close the gap in the World Drivers’ Championship title race, finishing a step above Lewis Hamilton on the podium.
The start of the race was quite orderly, with Daniel Ricciardo maintaining his race lead and the rest of the top five maintaining their respective positions. Ricciardo kept the gap at around 1.5 seconds while managing his tyres.
Sergey Sirotkin was handed a 10 second stop and go penalty which he served on lap 8. The penalty was a result of the team failing to fit the tyres three minutes before the race started. Reportedly, there was an issue with the wheel nut that forced the team to use a tool that needed to be grabbed from the garage. There was further drama for the Williams team when Lance Stroll suffered a tyre puncture after contact with a Sauber.
Lewis Hamilton was the first of the leading cars to pit for fresh tyres on lap 10. He changed to the ultrasoft tyre compound to make it to the end of the race, but he failed to get out of the pits ahead of Esteban Ocon. But after just a couple of laps on the new tyres, he was able to get around the Force India at the exit of the tunnel.
Reacting to the Mercedes pit stop, Ricciardo increased the pace, stretching the gap to around 4 seconds. Six laps after Hamilton pitted, Ferrari boxed Sebastian Vettel for new tyres. He came out of the pits ahead of Hamilton in P3.
The following lap, the remaining leading cars pitted for new tyres. Ricciardo was the first to pit, maintaining his race lead. Kimi Räikkönen also pitted, coming out behind Hamilton and claiming his P4. Valtteri Bottas pitted for the supersoft tyres, which was not the tyre of choice for the other teams, and came out behind Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon.
On lap 28, about a third of the way through the race, Ricciardo began to suffer with a lack of power. The engineers on the pit wall attempted to look into the issue, but told Ricciardo that the issue would not improve. With Ricciardo now running slower than the rest, Vettel caught up fast, but a lack of overtaking opportunities at the circuit and tyre degradation prevented him from overtaking Ricciardo and made it difficult for him to stay close.
Meanwhile further down the field, Stroll suffered another tyre puncture on lap 36, adding salt to Williams’ wound. With fresh rubber, he was the quickest car in the field at this point in the race, showing that no team really had fantastic pace.
Fernando Alonso became the first race retirement after a good battle with Pierre Gasly on lap 52. Alonso complained of power issues down the main straight and pulled into the runoff zone in the first corner to retire from the race. The car was cleared from the circuit without the need for the safety car.
There was little action on the track, aside from Max Verstappen battling it out with the two Renault drivers and making a cheeky overtake at the chicane outside of the tunnel.
In the closing stages of the race, the virtual safety car was deployed for a collision between Charles Leclerc and Brendon Hartley in the chicane at the exit of the tunnel. The Sauber driver got into the rear of the Toro Rosso because of a brake failure. With just five laps remaining in the race, none of the leading teams decided to pit for tyres.
However, Stoffel Vandoorne did pit for tyres late in the VSC period, coming out between Vettel and Ricciardo as the race resumed. But Vettel lost a lot of pace at the restart of the race, falling five seconds behind Ricciardo due to a lack of tyre temperature and grip.
With that struggle for Vettel, Ricciardo was easily able to cruise across the line to take the race victory around the narrow streets of the principality of Monaco. Vettel and Hamilton concluded the podium.
Above results table does not include any post-race penalties
