Conclusions from the 2014 Monaco GP

Hamilton makes his own strategic mistake
It hardly requires a PR expert to recognise that Hamilton played a poor hand after the race. Speaking from a position of weakness after suffering defeat, he picked the wrong moment to forsake the friendship and paid the price by appearing petulant. His unflattering comparison of Mercedes' strategy set-up was equally ill-judged; yes, McLaren might have called him in for an opportunistic pit-stop, but had he been driving a McLaren on Sunday he'd also have been a lap behind. Nor should Hamilton escape culpability for failing to grasp the opportunity to alter course during the race. According to calculations made by Sky F1, almost 30 seconds elapsed between Hamilton passing the stricken Sauber of Adrian Sutil - another former friend, of course - at the exit of the tunnel and reaching the pit entry. Plenty of time for Mercedes to call him in, had they been so minded to break their own unofficial rule that the lead driver on the track holds strategic sway, and also plenty of time for Hamilton to drive the situation himself by telling the team he was coming in. Mercedes were hardly likely to refuse to change his wheels if he showed up at the end of the pitlane. Take the chance and deal with the consequences later? It was surely worth a try. It may not exist in team, but there's another 'i' in strategist, Lewis. Testing times to understand Monaco
Since time immemorial, the mean streets of Monte Carlo have been depicted of the ultimate challenge of a driver's ability, courage and concentration. Only this weekend, Fernando Alonso hailed the sport's showpiece event as the first among equals of races to be won in F1. There is, we told, nowhere quite like Monaco...to which the armchair resident may be inclined to reply 'that's just as well' because it is increasingly challenging to appreciate what all the fuss is about. The most damning statistic surrounding the event is that only once in the last 11 years has a driver failed to win the race after starting out on pole position. Just how challenging can the fabled challenge of Monaco be when less than one in ten fail it? The difficulty of passing another car there has made it an easy pass for a pole-sitter, and the giveaway - unless you believe that his error was no such thing - was Rosberg crumbling under pressure in qualifying before delivering a serene performance on race day, safe and secure in the knowledge he couldn't be overtaken on track. Monaco itself is starting to fail its own test. But testing success for Marussia
So much for the argument that the hassle and expense of in-season testing puts smaller teams at a disadvantage. But for the inclusion of four such events on to the schedule this year, Marussia might well be still waiting for their first points in F1, with the team openly acknowledging that their breakthrough result this weekend owed a substantial debt to the work done over the two-dayer at Barcelona earlier this month. "A lot of this weekend's clear step stems from the progress we made at the recent Barcelona test," admitted team boss John Booth in the wake of Jules Bianchi's ninth place. "We were cautiously optimistic about our performance increment, but we really needed to see it translate into a good race here in Monaco before we could feel too confident." It's a result which could be worth over £20m to the team at the end of the season when the year's prize-money is divvied up - a small price to pay for an extra couple of days in Catalunya - and a significant one in reverse for Sauber, now tenth in the standings, and Caterham, who are reputedly now up for sale. Marussia, by contrast, have made their point at the fifth year of asking. On a weekend when too much sounded false and hollow, it was truly the result of the day. PG