Lewis Hamilton won the Monaco Grand Prix with a perfectly measured drive – but was it really the “miracle” he talked about on the radio?
Hamilton was clearly struggling with his medium-compound tyres, particularly his left front, as he held on against Max Verstappen’s Red Bull in a race that had us all on the edge of our seats until the very end.
Inside the car, it must have been hugely uncomfortable for Hamilton. Of all the drivers he could have been holding on against, Verstappen was probably the one he wanted behind him the least.
The Dutchman is always so aggressive, and the fact he had a five-second penalty for an unsafe release put an extra element into the mix. Verstappen knew he had to pass Hamilton or he wouldn’t even finish on the podium.
That meant the risk-versus-reward balance of passing in Monaco was edging more towards risk for him.
Hearing Hamilton’s team radio undoubtedly made the race more exciting. He was frequently in discussion with his engineers, saying how difficult his job was and how he would never be able to do it.
No matter what they came back with, Hamilton was insistent for a long time that this was a race he couldn’t win.
There are two ways to look at this.
On the one hand, Hamilton was clearly uncomfortable in his car, and was not happy having Verstappen pressuring him so closely for the majority of the race.
Any slip from Hamilton and Verstappen would have been through. Had he got into the lead on track, Verstappen’s pace advantage meant he would surely have made up enough time out front to win the race, even with his penalty.
With victory in the most prestigious race of the season at stake, it’s perhaps unsurprising he sounded so anxious on the radio.
For me, though, there was an element of showmanship in Hamilton’s radio messages. It was all a bit ‘Hollywood’.
No other driver would have been on the radio in quite the dramatic way Hamilton was. In fact, we barely heard any other team radio throughout the race, apart from the odd gee-up from Verstappen’s race engineer, in typically casual fashion.
