Monaco Grand Prix: Max Verstappen win leaves Lewis Hamilton looking for answers

A win at Monaco is always special, but for Max Verstappen this one meant more than just the status of victory at Formula 1's most celebrated race.

It not only arrested the momentum Lewis Hamilton was building up in their private fight for the title, but also provided the perfect opportunity to fire back at some of the barbed comments the seven-time champion had been aiming in the direction of the Dutchman and his Red Bull team.

The Monaco weekend started with Hamilton saying he had "done well" to avoid colliding with Verstappen in their wheel-to-wheel battles in the first four races of the season, and that the younger man "feels he perhaps has a lot to prove".

Verstappen gave a pointed verbal response to that - but saved his most effective one for the track.

His drive to victory was aided by the removal from the race of pole-winner Charles Leclerc's Ferrari before it had even started. But what followed was a consummate, masterful drive, while Hamilton and Mercedes floundered behind him.

Never on the pace all weekend, Hamilton started seventh, and finished there, too. The seven-time champion was not only unable to get past Pierre Gasly's Alpha Tauri on pit strategy, but also lost places to Sergio Perez's Red Bull and Sebastian Vettel's Aston Martin.

The result was that Verstappen turned a 14-point deficit in the championship into a four-point lead.

"Actions always speak louder than words; that is a good lesson after this weekend," Verstappen said. "You have to talk on the track. That's what I like. As a team, so far we have made the smallest mistakes. That is why we are ahead. I hope we can keep that going for the rest of the season."

In that answer, Verstappen addressed not only Hamilton's pre-Monaco barb, but also ones he had made at previous races in reference to small mistakes the Red Bull driver had made that potentially harmed his chances.

Hamilton's response to all this?

"I'm not playing mind games," he said. "They did a great job this weekend and that's that. There are 17 races to go. I'm not going to get into a war of words. It's childish."

Why did Hamilton's weekend unravel?
Verstappen and Red Bull went into the Monaco weekend as favourites. Ferrari's remarkable competitiveness was a surprise. But with Leclerc removed from the picture by a pre-race driveshaft failure, Verstappen converted what became de facto pole position into a lead at the first corner, and was in total control of the race from then on.

At Mercedes, meanwhile, serious questions were being asked about their lack of competitiveness.

Hamilton's team-mate Valtteri Bottas had managed to take third on the grid, but after Verstappen fended off the Finn's attack at the start, Bottas slowly but surely dropped away, coming under pressure from Ferrari's Carlos Sainz, before a stripped wheel nut forced his retirement at his pit stop.

Hamilton, meanwhile, was nowhere. Lacking confidence in the car in qualifying, he had struggled to generate tyre temperature, lacked grip as a result and been only seventh fastest on Saturday afternoon.

Verstappen takes title lead with Monaco win
Style over substance: Is the racing at Monaco really rubbish?
Mercedes' pre-race plans had been to run longer than those in 
front of them and try to gain time and places back with some 
fast laps before a later pit stop.

But high tyre wear scuppered that. The drivers in front did not stop as early as Mercedes expected. When Hamilton pitted, pretty much at the point that had been planned, his tyres were shot.

And, although it was not broadcast on television, Hamilton had already been asking the engineers to try the undercut - stopping first and gaining time on fresh tyres - in an attempt to pass Gasly, before the engineers decided to do exactly that, reversing their pre-race plans.

"I don't feel any pain," Hamilton said. "It is not a great weekend but I am not dwelling on it. There is a lot we could have done better in terms of how we prepared. We've had some good conversations through the weekend but it's not good enough from all of us.

"We don't take it lightly but there is no point getting depressed. We have to look through the data and work out why we are in this position. We will be on calls the next few days and we all want answers."Why were Mercedes struggling so in Monaco, lacking speed when they had it before, using up their tyres quicker than others when in the first four races it had been the other way around?

"Monaco has never been a happy place for us," team boss Toto Wolff said. "You are building a car for 23 races and there will be outliers in both directions where you underperform and Monaco is definitely an outlier where you need a different car than for the average tracks."

Hamilton won there in 2019 but generally in recent years Red Bull and/or Ferrari have had the advantage around the streets, and so it was this year.

Part of the explanation lies in the philosophy of the Mercedes car itself. It is longer and the team run it flatter than other teams. This limits the total downforce the car can generate, and its size makes it cumbersome on such a tight track.

"We have the longest car," Hamilton said. "It is like a bus to turn and it is not as nimble as the others, but it's great elsewhere. There are things that don't work here that bode well for the other circuits."

Neither Hamilton nor Wolff, though, is under any illusion that they will necessarily automatically return to winning ways in two weeks' time in Baku, another street track but one with very different characteristics to Monaco, and the longest 'straight' on the calendar.

"It is going to be tough," Hamilton said. "I told you at the beginning of the season that they have a championship-winning car and they are going to be very hard to beat.

"I have been serious about it all year. We have won races we shouldn't have won, like in Bahrain. But it is not over. There is a long way to go. We can't afford another weekend like this but I am grateful l finished and got a point for fastest lap. Every point we get on a bad weekend like this can be important later on.

"The reasons we have all the championships we have is because we made mistakes but we learn from them and came back stronger. There is a lot to take from this weekend. We don't have all the answers but it will force us to go and have to search for them."