5 races that cost Sebastian Vettel the championship

#2 Monaco GP

Daniel Ricciardo won the Monaco GP

The Red Bulls looked dominant all weekend, securing one-two in all the free practice sessions. It was expected that they would repeat this again in qualifying but the wall was waiting for Verstappen at the end of FP3 and the car wasn’t ready for Qualis.

Ricciardo got his pole ahead of Vettel, with Hamilton 3rd on the grid. Even though Ferrari had the race pace, it wasn’t easy to overtake at a street circuit with no room for error. In the race, Ricciardo had a faulty MGU-K (giving him 25% less horsepower) with only 6 gears working and Vettel was desperate to get ahead of him.

Ricciardo drove very carefully without any errors and the hard work paid off, denying the German the victory. This meant Vettel had to settle for 18 points, trailing his rival Hamilton by 14 points. Vettel was clearly frustrated to have failed to take advantage of Ricciardo’s position.