While watching the Monaco Grand Prix wasn't the most exciting way to spend a Sunday afternoon, I suspect much of the negativity Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton expressed about the race came from their own frustration. I'm sure they would have seen things differently from the top of the podium.
But there were several very interesting things from a technical point of view that the weekend threw up beyond the details of what went wrong for Daniel Ricciardo, who made sure he got Red Bull the result it deserved while Max Verstappen tried to put a positive spin on finishing ninth instead of being part of a rare one-two for the team.
Behind Red Bull, we saw that Mercedes is still struggling to get its car to work on this type of circuit because it still can't get the softest Pirelli tyres to work as well as others.
Monaco is a one-off, so there's no need to build a car that is tailored to the track and Mercedes didn't have high hopes before the race, but every team and driver wants to win the Monaco Grand Prix so sometimes you do need to do that little bit extra for this unique race.
It was a completely different deal for Red Bull. Ricciardo was fastest in all three practice sessions and then all three segments of qualifying, and there's no question it was the quickest car in Monaco. Verstappen wouldn't have been far behind without yet another error.
Clouting the barrier on the inside of the first apex at the exit of the Swimming Pool in FP3 put paid to his weekend, and the difference between his and Ricciardo's results tells you everything you need to know about their approaches.
We keep saying Max needs to learn from these type of errors. He is making way too many of them and in Monaco he was in a car that if nothing went wrong was going to be a race winner and would at worst be second. So, ending up ninth is no great reward for a team that had put so much into this race.
His mistakes show he is not yet mature enough to be a team leader. To get that credibility, you need to be able to bring the car home and throwing it into the barriers in a practice session is not doing that. It looked like he was ready to be a leader coming into the season, but he has been a disappointment.
As 2016 world champion Nico Rosberg said at the weekend, "If he wants to win the world championship, he has to start learning". Christian Horner has suggested "he has a very good teacher in the car next door".
While Verstappen needs to hit the reset button (Horner's words), Ricciardo's drive on Sunday was validation that he is right in there with the best. Give him a car that can win the championship and he will bring it home for you. As we saw, he is one of the best at coping with difficult circumstances - he takes the old Aussie saying of 'she'll be right mate' to a whole new level.
The battle between Ricciardo and Sebastian Vettel for the lead just shows how difficult it is to overtake at Monaco - and how bad these cars are at following each other. But even so, to lead from lights out, and drive from lap 28 to the chequered flag on lap 78 without MGU-K power was without doubt an incredible drive.
Vettel closed the gap down to less than a second but he still couldn't get the job done and had to drop back to around two seconds
When these sorts of problems happen, people often exaggerate the extent of it. Christian Horner said Ricciardo lost 25% of his power, but it's not really quite as dramatic as that. Even so, Ricciardo did a fantastic job keeping his cool and adapting to the situation rather than just whinging about it.
To put a few rough numbers to the level of his power loss Riccardo suffered, I have taken a few rounded-up numbers and come up with the following.
If the MGU-K, which is the motor that is mounted to the engine and charges up the battery pack and puts all the electrical power back into the system, failed completely then that's a loss of 160bhp for roughly 30 seconds per lap.
If you are doing a 1m15s lap time, and in Monaco you use full throttle for 50% of the lap, that means you could use more power for about 37 seconds of the lap. This means a 130 average bhp loss while you are on full throttle requesting maximum power.
To quantify that loss, 10bhp improvement across the range equates to around one tenth of a second. So, a power loss of that magnitude would be at least a 1.3s loss per lap, and probably a bit more due to the fact that the electrical torque is longer and instant whereas the torque from the turbocharged engine is engine-dependent.
As Horner said, there is also the loss of retardation during braking and the fact that the rear brakes are designed to work in conjunction with the harvesting system, meaning that without it the braking balance would be all over the place and very easy to overheat.
While all this was happening, Vettel closed the gap down to less than a second but he still couldn't get the job done and had to drop back to around two seconds.
The reason for this was just to keep his car cool and this is the main problem when following another car for too long - everything just gets that bit too hot. His chance was in the laps when Ricciardo first suffered the MGU-K problem.
But near the end of the race there was a virtual safety car, and to me this highlighted one of the reasons the Red Bull had been so dominant over the Monaco weekend. Vettel had pitted on lap 16, Riccardo on lap 17, and both fitted ultrasofts so there was really no big difference in tyre life.
But as soon as the VSC was switched off, Riccardo was able to get the hammer down, with Vettel struggling behind with getting the tyres working again. Hamilton, who had fitted his ultrasofts on lap 12, also struggled.
Red Bull was just that bit better at getting the tyres working than its main competition, and I think the same was true in qualifying.
So, my hat's off to what Riccardo achieved. While others like Romain Grosjean, Lance Stroll and even Hamilton to name but a few would have spent most of the afternoon on the radio whinging, he just got his head down and did the best job he could.
In the end, it was good enough to stand on the top step of the podium in Monaco. I bet there's a Ferrari contract being totted around this week.
My hat's off to what Riccardo achieved - he just got his head down and did the best job he could
As for the others, I give huge credit to Esteban Ocon. Without the VSC he would have caught Bottas. Would he have tried an overtake? I don't think so - especially given how helpful he was in letting Hamilton past after his pitstop. But he has done his reputation with Mercedes no harm after his drive in Monaco.
McLaren's problems continue. A brake problem for Alonso during Thursday's first practice session and then a transmission problem for him in the race has done nothing for the team trying to keep him for next year.
As for Stoffel Vandoorne, he had a problematic pitstop that cost him any chance of points. But McLaren was beaten by teams using the same power unit. I can remember the days when McLaren dominated Monaco, but this hasn't happened for a long time.
And to cap it all, Pierre Gasly finishing seventh with that old dog of a Honda power unit must have rubbed salt into an already very painful wound.
While watching the Monaco Grand Prix wasn't the most exciting way to spend a Sunday afternoon, I suspect much of the negativity Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton expressed about the race came from their own frustration. I'm sure they would have seen things differently from the top of the podium.
But there were several very interesting things from a technical point of view that the weekend threw up beyond the details of what went wrong for Daniel Ricciardo, who made sure he got Red Bull the result it deserved while Max Verstappen tried to put a positive spin on finishing ninth instead of being part of a rare one-two for the team.
Behind Red Bull, we saw that Mercedes is still struggling to get its car to work on this type of circuit because it still can't get the softest Pirelli tyres to work as well as others.
Monaco is a one-off, so there's no need to build a car that is tailored to the track and Mercedes didn't have high hopes before the race, but every team and driver wants to win the Monaco Grand Prix so sometimes you do need to do that little bit extra for this unique race.
It was a completely different deal for Red Bull. Ricciardo was fastest in all three practice sessions and then all three segments of qualifying, and there's no question it was the quickest car in Monaco. Verstappen wouldn't have been far behind without yet another error.
Clouting the barrier on the inside of the first apex at the exit of the Swimming Pool in FP3 put paid to his weekend, and the difference between his and Ricciardo's results tells you everything you need to know about their approaches.
We keep saying Max needs to learn from these type of errors. He is making way too many of them and in Monaco he was in a car that if nothing went wrong was going to be a race winner and would at worst be second. So, ending up ninth is no great reward for a team that had put so much into this race.
His mistakes show he is not yet mature enough to be a team leader. To get that credibility, you need to be able to bring the car home and throwing it into the barriers in a practice session is not doing that. It looked like he was ready to be a leader coming into the season, but he has been a disappointment.
As 2016 world champion Nico Rosberg said at the weekend, "If he wants to win the world championship, he has to start learning". Christian Horner has suggested "he has a very good teacher in the car next door".
While Verstappen needs to hit the reset button (Horner's words), Ricciardo's drive on Sunday was validation that he is right in there with the best. Give him a car that can win the championship and he will bring it home for you. As we saw, he is one of the best at coping with difficult circumstances - he takes the old Aussie saying of 'she'll be right mate' to a whole new level.
The battle between Ricciardo and Sebastian Vettel for the lead just shows how difficult it is to overtake at Monaco - and how bad these cars are at following each other. But even so, to lead from lights out, and drive from lap 28 to the chequered flag on lap 78 without MGU-K power was without doubt an incredible drive.
Vettel closed the gap down to less than a second but he still couldn't get the job done and had to drop back to around two seconds
When these sorts of problems happen, people often exaggerate the extent of it. Christian Horner said Ricciardo lost 25% of his power, but it's not really quite as dramatic as that. Even so, Ricciardo did a fantastic job keeping his cool and adapting to the situation rather than just whinging about it.
To put a few rough numbers to the level of his power loss Riccardo suffered, I have taken a few rounded-up numbers and come up with the following.
If the MGU-K, which is the motor that is mounted to the engine and charges up the battery pack and puts all the electrical power back into the system, failed completely then that's a loss of 160bhp for roughly 30 seconds per lap.
If you are doing a 1m15s lap time, and in Monaco you use full throttle for 50% of the lap, that means you could use more power for about 37 seconds of the lap. This means a 130 average bhp loss while you are on full throttle requesting maximum power.
To quantify that loss, 10bhp improvement across the range equates to around one tenth of a second. So, a power loss of that magnitude would be at least a 1.3s loss per lap, and probably a bit more due to the fact that the electrical torque is longer and instant whereas the torque from the turbocharged engine is engine-dependent.
As Horner said, there is also the loss of retardation during braking and the fact that the rear brakes are designed to work in conjunction with the harvesting system, meaning that without it the braking balance would be all over the place and very easy to overheat.
While all this was happening, Vettel closed the gap down to less than a second but he still couldn't get the job done and had to drop back to around two seconds.
The reason for this was just to keep his car cool and this is the main problem when following another car for too long - everything just gets that bit too hot. His chance was in the laps when Ricciardo first suffered the MGU-K problem.
But near the end of the race there was a virtual safety car, and to me this highlighted one of the reasons the Red Bull had been so dominant over the Monaco weekend. Vettel had pitted on lap 16, Riccardo on lap 17, and both fitted ultrasofts so there was really no big difference in tyre life.
But as soon as the VSC was switched off, Riccardo was able to get the hammer down, with Vettel struggling behind with getting the tyres working again. Hamilton, who had fitted his ultrasofts on lap 12, also struggled.
Red Bull was just that bit better at getting the tyres working than its main competition, and I think the same was true in qualifying.
So, my hat's off to what Riccardo achieved. While others like Romain Grosjean, Lance Stroll and even Hamilton to name but a few would have spent most of the afternoon on the radio whinging, he just got his head down and did the best job he could.
In the end, it was good enough to stand on the top step of the podium in Monaco. I bet there's a Ferrari contract being totted around this week.
My hat's off to what Riccardo achieved - he just got his head down and did the best job he could
As for the others, I give huge credit to Esteban Ocon. Without the VSC he would have caught Bottas. Would he have tried an overtake? I don't think so - especially given how helpful he was in letting Hamilton past after his pitstop. But he has done his reputation with Mercedes no harm after his drive in Monaco.
McLaren's problems continue. A brake problem for Alonso during Thursday's first practice session and then a transmission problem for him in the race has done nothing for the team trying to keep him for next year.
As for Stoffel Vandoorne, he had a problematic pitstop that cost him any chance of points. But McLaren was beaten by teams using the same power unit. I can remember the days when McLaren dominated Monaco, but this hasn't happened for a long time.
And to cap it all, Pierre Gasly finishing seventh with that old dog of a Honda power unit must have rubbed salt into an already very painful wound.
