Monaco
Division 1 had a full grid of drivers at the start of Grand Prix with the toughest track of all, as the narrow streets of Monaco leave no margin for mistakes and overtakes are a rare sight. That means that qualifying up front is needed to have a chance at a top finish.
Once again AlphaTauri ace Lebedev was the quickest driver in quali with gap to second placed Athanasiou of more than 9 tenths. A phenomenal lap by the Estonian. On the second row Zettervall and nhonwkey ahead of BeniBunno and Hayward.
Despite his brilliant qualifying lap, it was Athanasiou who had the best start and took the lead into turn 1. Unfortunately it took Connor only a few corners before he had to retire the car. He did everything he could to hunt the Greek driver down, but he defended like a lion and managed to hold Lebedev off. Right behind them Swedish driver Zettervall, who like always shows off phenomenal pace, but so far has been unable to convert that into big results. After 10 laps the trio had a 10 second lead over the next driver, BeniBunno, who lost a lot of time behind nhonwkey, but once he finally got past the Aston Martin driver he started to make up ground quickly on the leading trio. When Zettervall pitted in lap 12 he however dropped back into the middle of the pack. Lebedev pitted not much later, but did manage to get back on track in third. After both Relliott and Nellboy retired from the race a Safety Car came out. BeniBunno used this in his favor as he pitted right away and managed to come out of the pit in second, ahead of Lebedev.
At the restart both Lebedev and Zettervall got into trouble as they had contact with other drivers and damaged their cars, forcing them to pit again and fall all the way to the back of the grid. In their march forward through the field especially Lebedev was way too eager trying to overtake cars where he shouldn’t, causing damage to several drivers and as a result Zettervall even had to retire. This meant another safety car came out and with several cars pitting it was Gooner who moved up into third. With just a handful of laps to go everyone behind him put on the pressure. One driver taking a little bit too much risk was honwkey, who hit the wall at the chicane and retired from the race. Klepy did manage to take third from Gooner, who eventually fell back to tenth after a mistake in the penultimate lap.
The win however was for Athanasiou, who was flawless in this race, just ahead of BeniBunno and Klepy completed the podium. With Beni’s third podium of the season he now takes the lead in the championship.
Division 2 had a grid less full, but nevertheless not less exciting. In qualifying Ferrari claimed front row, with their brotherly pairing of Paqman and Berzerk ahead of Bobspun and Hammers.
The start of the race was quite something. Bobspun, Berzerk and Hammers all tangled into each other at turn 1 opening the path for Hummer, Bogarovski and Scully, who made up seven places at the start. From his fourth position he was looking at possibly the best result of his career and tried to hold onto that for as long as possible, which he did until lap 7. By then the three drivers up front already had 17 second gap on the next car, Brother Adam, who lost loads of time behind Scully.
Paqman looked like to be running away with an easy win, but managed to either have an incident on his inlap or a very slow pit stop as he came out only in third after his pit stop in lap 22, while until then he had a comfortable lead of 10 seconds on HummerGP. When Paqman on lap 26 tried to send it on Bogarovski at turn 1 it went wrong. Bogarovski ened up in the wall, while Paqman could continue his way. When the end of race was nearing rain clouds formed over the track, with more and more drops falling as the laps counted down. One by one did the drivers come in for intermediate tyres as the track went wetter and wetter.
HummerGP never got into trouble and took his first win of the season ahead of Paqman and Brother Adam. After a great revival Hammers still got fourth place and remains in the lead of the driver standings, while his McLaren team still is leading quite comfortably.
Next week round 5 at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
