Monaco GP team review: Ferrari

Ferrari had a weekend to forget at the Monaco GP. With Massa suffering a massive crash on Saturday afternoon, the team did not have enough time to repair his car for the qualifying and hence, had to start from the back of the grid. Alonso did not have a great qualifying either after finishing 6th, 9/10th slower than pole sitter Rosberg. From the qualifying results, it was evident that the Ferraris lacked pace.

Alonso had a relatively incident-free start to the race as he stayed 6th through the first lap. He came under some pressure from Perez but held off the challenge. Tyre management seemed to bother Ferrari as well as they had to slow down and the gap between Raikonnen, fifth, and Alonso increased.

After the McLarens swapped their positions behind him, Button was finding it hard to overtake Fernando, which resulted in the cars queuing up behind the Spaniard, featuring Perez, Sutil, Vergne, Hulkenberg and even Bottas at 12th. He pitted on lap 29 for a set of soft tyres and came back right behind Raikonnen and looked more lively as he sought a way past the Finn.

There was a little bit of coming together with Button at the hairpin but there was no visible damage. But Perez, who by this time had overtaken his team-mate, made a bold move on the inside as they entered Nouvelle Chicane, resulting in Alonso going off-track and using the run-off to defend against the Mexican.

In spite of repeated protests, the Spaniard was asked to give up his position to Perez when the race resumed after the red flag. After the restart, Alonso lost another place, this time to a fantastic move from Force-India driver Adrian Sutil, who came up on the inside of Alonso at the Loews hairpin, making the manoeuvre work and was into seventh place.

He was then overtaken by Button soon as he struggled through the race and ended up finishing 7th, thanks to Perez’s retirement and Raikonnen’s puncture. It proved to be a day of frustration for the Ferrari driver and he now trails reigning champion Vettel by 29 points.

Massa, meanwhile, started on the soft tyres, setting him up for a longer stint as he started from the back of the grid. The Brazilian steadily moved up a few places. He was in 16th as he pitted for a new set of super soft tyres on lap 27, but disaster struck as Massa just could not make his car turn right at the Sainte Devote and crashed into the barriers due to a suspension failure, a carbon copy of his crash in the practice session. The Brazilian was taken to hospital as a precaution following the accident, but was released on Sunday evening.

Ferrari, along with Red Bull, have lodged a complaint regarding Mercedes‘s ‘secret’ tyre testing session after the Spanish Grand Prix. Though Mercedes claim innocence, the two teams believe that they had an unfair advantage coming into the race.

With the Canadian GP coming up next, the team will be hoping for better fortunes compared to last year when Alonso and Massa finished an unimpressive 5th and 10th respectively.