MONACO: Nico Rosberg took a surprise hat-trick of Monaco Grand Prix victories on Sunday after Mercedes blew championship-leading team mate Lewis Hamilton’s chances with a late pitstop, in one of Formula One’s greatest tactical errors, while he was leading.

Hamilton looked set to take his 37th career win after leading from the start, until the 17-year-old Max Verstappen rammed his Toro Rosso into the back of Romain Grosjean as he tried to overtake the Lotus driver.

That meant a safety car had to come out at the start of the 64th lap, and when Hamilton was then called in for a pit stop, he suddenly found himself behind both Rosberg and Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel having led by 21 seconds before he pitted.

When the safety car finally went off track, Hamilton had only a few laps to try and get past Vettel and Rosberg on the most difficult track to overtake on F1.

“I’ve lost the race haven’t I,” the disconsolate double world champion enquired over the team radio after rejoining in third place. “What’s happened guys?”

For Hamilton, it was an outrageous result and the Briton angrily snapped over the radio: “Please stop talking to me, please.”

His team were swift to apologise for it, but their actions had deprived him, and the spectators, of a fair sporting outcome after he had dominated the 62nd running of this classic 78 laps contest.

The result slashed the Briton’s lead over German rival Rosberg to 10 points after six of 19 races.

It was Rosberg’s second win of the season following his victory two weeks ago at the Spanish GP, and he became the first driver since Ayrton Senna to win the Monaco race three straight times. The others to do it were Frenchman Alain Prost and Briton Graham Hill.

Hamilton was leading Rosberg by 15 seconds when Verstappen — who had never driven on Monaco’s sinewy street circuit before — tried to pass Grosjean but found no room and went spinning off, crashing heavily into the barriers. He was unharmed.

Rosberg was 4.4 seconds ahead of four-time F1 champion Vettel, and six clear of Hamilton.

As Rosberg and Vettel celebrated warmly with each other, Hamilton took a long while to get out of his car, taking his helmet off slowly and walking to join the other two on the podium with his head down after finishing ahead of the two Red Bulls of Russian Daniil Kvyat and Australian Daniel Ricciardo.

Finn Kimi Raikkonen finished sixth for Ferrari ahead of Mexican Sergio Perez of Force India and Briton Jenson Button who claimed the struggling McLaren Honda team’s first points of the year in eighth place.

Brazilian Felipe Nasr came home ninth for Sauber and remarkably, after starting from the pit lane, Spaniard Carlos Sainz finished 10th to score a point in the second Toro Rosso car.

Published in Dawn, May 25th, 2015

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