Monaco – home of Leclerc! 

Alonso looked once more promising throughout practice. Red Bull shows complete dominance yet again, with Mercedes struggling with their new upgrades. 

That is a major difference between the two Red Bull drivers: one can rescue the bad days when the car might not be quite there and the other struggles badly.

PER is not able to compete on this track, and his time gap to VER keeps opening.

Their straight-line speed is very similar, meaning that the power unit is performing similarly for both drivers, and the difference is simply on the way the 2 drivers are driving along the streets of Monaco.

PER is breaking earlier, at the very beginning of the turn, and harder across the whole turn, and as a result the speed is lower quite everywhere. The gap keeps increasing every foot and there’s no game for PER.

It looks like PER Redbull has no grip and vertical load, so he needs to reduce the speed to not hit the wall on the side.

Let’s look at the telemetry of VER and HAM.

Even if VER leads with a good gap, the 2 drivers are not so apart along the track. Finally Mercedes seems to be competitive again. The speed records show that they’re close, but VER still keeps a minimum advantage on the fastest point and is more precise on the turn, and this gives him the chance to accelerate earlier and faster.

HAM is more effective on the slow sections, recovering all the gap and even leading the game. As well on most turns, very evident on T6, Mercedes is well balanced, so HAM can brake very at last moment, gaining a good advantage, while keeping the same speed as VER. Obviously entering faster he is going longer in the turn, so VER is able to accelerate earlier limiting the loss.

HAM can definitely be more aggressive, using this drive style very often, but on T16 this game shows its risk. HAM is pushing to the last in and brakes later than VER, but he is not able to keep the speed, being too deep into the turn, so he need to be much slower in order to close the Turn, loosing 2-3 time the gain recovered at turn entrance.

Completely different the gear usage across the lap, maybe due to different ratio chosen.

In any case  a good lap for HAM and Mercedes is back for the podium, not yet for the win, and Mercedes still needs to work on top speed. Let’s see them on faster tracks.

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