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The fifth sixth round of the 2009 F1 World Championship takes the teams and drivers to the famous streets of Monte Carlo. Follow all the Monaco Grand Prix actions live online at www.livef1.net. 

The Monaco GP is the second European race of the season, with Jenson Button winning last time out in Spain for Brawn GP. Watch F1 live online here to see if anyone can challenge the supremacy of the Brawn team. Button’s team-mate Rubens Barrichello completed a perfect weekend for the team at the Circuit de Catalunya with a second place finish. Red Bull’s Mark Webber completed the podium in third. 

2009 marks the anniversary of the first ever Monaco GP, staged in 1929 and won by the mysterious Englishman ‘Williams’, driving a Bugatti. You can follow all the F1 action live online at www.livef1.net to see who will win the most famous race on the Formula 1 calendar this year. 

Last year’s Monaco GP was won by Lewis Hamilton, but the defending F1 World Champion is unlikely to be in contention for victory this year, as he continues to struggle with his troublesome McLaren. Last year’s pole-sitter Felipe Massa could be in with a chance of victory, as Ferrari showed improved performance in the recent Spanish GP.  

The Red Bull pair of Webber and Sebastian Vettel should be up front in Monaco. They have a very quick car and both go well on the tricky street circuit. Last year both Webber and Vettel finished in the points. Follow their progress at www.livef1.net to see if they can make the podium this year. 

Although Ferrari and Red Bull will be hoping for victory in Monaco the Brawn GP team remain favourites for the race. Barrichello, Formula 1’s most experienced driver, made it clear after the Spanish GP that he will walk away from the sport if he discovers team orders are being used in the team to favour Button. Watch live Monaco GP F1 streaming at www.livef1.net to see if the veteran Brazilian can get the better of his team-mate and score his first Grand Prix victory since 2004. 

At the other end of the grid Toro Rosso will be hoping for a better race than Spain, where both cars were eliminated on the first lap. Renault’s Nelson Piquet continues to struggle in the shadow of his double World Champion team-mate Fernando Alonso. Watch the 2009 Monaco GP live online here to find out if the young Brazilian can turn his season around at the most demanding race of the season. 

The Monaco circuit rewards precision and, with barriers in close proximity to the track, punishes mistakes. The race has thrown up some surprise winners over the years, such as Olivier Panis in 1996. Catch F1 live online at www.livef1.net to see if the 2009 race produces another upset.  

The 2009 Monaco GP takes place on Sunday, May 24^th. The race will be run over 78 laps of the demanding 3.340 km (2.075 miles) circuit, giving a total race distance of 260.520 km (161.887 miles).  The lap record is still held by retired multiple F1 World Champion Michael Schumacher. Watch Monaco Grand Prix live online here to find out if any driver can challenge the German’s time of 1 minute, 14.439 seconds. A subscription to www.livef1.net also gives access to online streaming of other major racing series, including MotoGP and NASCAR. 

STAR OF THE RACE
Jenson Button showed that he has the metal to be a World Champion with his third win in four races. Driving a very careful race, the Brit brought his Brawn GP car home in such extreme conditions that his engineers were telling him to cool it as early as Lap 7 – and that was running in free air.

He made a great start, tucking up his championship rival Sebastian Vettel and condemning him to a first stint behind Lewis Hamilton. He dispatched Hamilton with a supreme bit of overtaking (more of that below) and then drove within the parameters laid down by Ross Brawn.

He was never really under pressure thanks to Vettel being delayed by Trulli and then Trulli being delayed by Vettel, but if Trulli couldn’t get past the Red Bull then he wouldn’t have got anywhere with the Brawn.

That ‘Milepost’ just gets quicker and quicker.

Overtaking Move of the Race
Lap 2: Jenson Button on Lewis Hamilton for P3.
Button knew that he needed to get past Lewis Hamilton in a hurry, and he also knew that it was going to be difficult getting past a McLaren equipped with KERS. Yet such is the Brawn’s agility in the braking zone that Button was able to dive inside into Turn 1 and get his car stopped. It looked a very neat move on a driver who hates being overtaken.

Alonso made a brave move on Trulli round the outside on Lap 14, but as we know, Trulli’s a pussy when it comes to strong arm stuff.

WINNERS

Sebastian Vettel, Red Bull, 2nd
‘Katie’s Dirty Sister’ took Seb to P2 and installed him as Jenson Button’s clear title contender. We ought to point out that Sebastian likes to give his cars names and for this race we got….Katie’s Dirty Sister. It would have been interesting to see what might have happened if the Dirty Sister hadn’t been held up behind The Anthony Hamilton Pension Scheme and the World’s Fastest Winemaker, but probably not that interesting as there was little on-track overtaking after half distance. Raikkonen steaming past Glock being the one glorious exception.

Jarno Trulli, Toyota, 3rd
Trulli proved that he is both faster than Glock, and that the Toyota is a knackering beast to drive. The difference between Lewis Hamilton and Trulli after the race was amazing. Lewis sauntered over to reporters with his drinks bottle (you notice how he can’t answers questions without it) looking like he’d finished a 10-lap charity karting sprint. Trulli looked like he’d been jammed into a microwave-grill unit for two hours on 215C.

Though he said he was disappointed that Toyota didn’t win their first GP, we could have told him that wasn’t going to happen from the moment they published the qualifying weights.

Lewis Hamilton, McLaren, 4th
Lewis came within a gnat’s of a podium when he grabbed P2 momentarily on Lap 1. Had he been able to delay Trulli long enough, then that would have been the Toyota strategy out of the window. It wasn’t to be and this time he really did settle for 4th place behind Jarno. As long as he can keep scoring points he stands a chance of a late-season recovery.

Rubens Barrichello, BrawnGP, 5th
Rubens suffered a bout of old-gitism in the middle of the race when he got stuck behind Nelson Piquet Junior. As they were racing for position it seemed hard to know who he was appealing to by constantly taking his hand off the wheel. They weren’t going to blue flag Junior and I can’t imagine anyone in Flavio Briatore’s Renault team asking Nelson to move over because the Brawn GP was on a different strategy. Not even for The Nearly-Retired-one.

A three-stop strategy wasn’t the way to go, but he made the best of a bad job by squeaking in front of Raikkonen in the final pit-stop.

Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari, 6th
Though commentators were keen to say that Raikkonen had saved the Scuderia from their worst season start ever, it’s hard to see why. In 1980 Jodi Scheckter scored a 5th place at Long Beach in the fourth race; in 1981 Didier Pironi scored a 5th place at Imola in the fourth race. In what way are those 5th place finishes better than a 6th?

It hardly matters, the fact is that Raikkonen looked good for his result and didn’t inherit any places. Had Barrichello stumbled in the tiniest way possible on his final pit-stop it would have been a 5th place. What’s more he had the wrong tyres (Grommit) to go mixing it up with Timo Glock on Lap 44, but he still got in front of the Toyota.

What he needs to do is bring a recognisable father figure to the races so that the TV crews can focus on Raikkonen Senior and not Luiz Massa when something happens to him on track.

Fernando Alonso, Renault, 8th
Alonso had a pretty scary start where he stuck two wheels onto the grass to avoid Nico Rosberg running down to Turn 1 and almost lumped his car into the back of Felipe Massa. He pulled a fantastic move to get by Jarno Trulli, but otherwise it was a fairly low-key race. He was only 13 seconds in front of Junior by the line.

Nelson Piquet Junior, Renault, 10th
Junior bought some time at Renault. He was in sight of his team-mate at the finish line and did nothing stupid on track. He also renewed his friendship with Rubens Barrichello, so all in all, a good afternoon’s work.

LOSERS

Felipe Massa, Ferrari, 14th
This was more like a 57-lap race simulation than an attempt at points after a first corner sandwich that broke his front wing and an issue with his KERS device. You can’t imagine the ongoing KERS saga is going to be fixed any time soon, especially when they’re so busy redesigning the diffuser and the floor.

What Felipe needs most, though, is for Kimi Raikkonen to do well. Because if the Finn chucks in the towel at the end of 2009, then he’s going to be sitting alongside Fernando Alonso in 2010 when Ferrari will have a Championship Contender again.

And Fernando likes a lot of attention.

Mark Webber, Red Bull, 11th
Despite working his way up to 11th place early in the race, Webber struggled to make up further places. He was desperately unlucky to be stranded at the back of the grid, but it might be God’s way of saying – get your killer Qualy 1 lap in early.

Robert Kubica, BMW, 18th
Kubica’s driving style is getting him into incidents with a lot of cars. In the three races I’ve seen him this year he’s had contact of some kind with another car. When he overtakes anyone, the carbon fibre vultures gather. As a ratio of overtaking moves made to cars hit, he and Rubens Barrichello must have the highest strike rate in F1. Or just the highest strike rate full stop. Button and Raikkonen are the other end of the scale.

F1 As A Spectator Sport…?
The Crown Prince of Bahrain admitted on camera that his country’s race isn’t a sporting event. No, it’s a branding exercise. The state of Bahrain uses the Grand Prix to promote the country in the world as a brand.

There is no groundswell of popular support for F1 in Bahrain. On Saturday for Qualifying the grandstands had less people than an English Football League Two bottom of the table clash. In Japan or Spain or the UK the grandstand on the start-finish straight would have been almost full for Qualifying.

During the race the main grandstand was half full. It was embarrassing. What’s more the landscape the race passes through is a sandy quarry. State of the art? No, state of my ****. And it’s the same story in China and in Malaysia where free tickets help boost the numbers.

What Bernie Ecclestone has to understand is the overwhelming majority of F1 fans don’t care that the media centre is able to hold 500 accredited journalists, or that the grandstand looks like two wings of a Stormy Petrel (especially when it’s equipped to seat 10,000 and 17 turn up). What they want is a circuit where they can instantly distinguish where the cars are, that facilitates overtaking and produces a good race.

As long as Silverstone or Donington or Montreal or even an improved Imola can do that, they should be on the calendar.

BBC Coverage
More underwhelming coverage from the BBC who seem incapable of running Grand Prix highlights after the race. When they broadcast a football match, they immediately go back to the pundits in the studio to review the highlights and the controversial incidents.

There’s none of this second class treatment; “if you’d like to hear what Alan Hansen thinks about the sending off decision, or see the two goals, or see if Torres was offside, press the red button.” No, give it to us straight.

We had a few more Leggardisms to enjoy: “What magic is Ross Brawn weaving on the pitwall…?” I don’t know, let’s see, has he got his cape on again…?

Plus the hilarious moment when the timing screens reshuffled as they do at the end of each session in Qualifying and Jonathan announced that Button and Barrichello were 14th and 15th in Q1. Martin Brundle’s reply was witheringly brief.

Oh, and we missed Mike Gascoyne.

Credit: Planet F1

The FIA has summoned McLaren to an extraordinary meeting of the World Motor Sport Council to respond to charges that it breached Article 151c of the International Sporting Code (ISC) at recent stewards meetings at the Australian and Malaysian Grands Prix in the last fortnight. The news comes just days after Lewis Hamilton was thrown out of the Australian Grand Prix after he and his team were found to have misled stewards in a post-race investigation.

Article 151c of the ISC states that “Any fraudulent conduct or any act prejudicial to the interests of any competition or to the interest of motor sport generally” is a breach of the code, prompting the FIA to call a special meeting of the WMSC to examine the details.

The post-race investigation at the Australian Grand Prix concerned Lewis Hamilton’s overtaking of Jarno Trulli behind the safety car in the closing stages of the race, when the Italian ran wide. However, after being told to by his team, Hamilton let Trulli by again later in the lap, but in the stewards meeting directly after the race, both Hamilton and the team insisted that no instruction was given to let Trulli by. After hearing evidence to the contrary and after listening to Hamilton’s pit-to-car radio, the world champion was subsequently disqualified from the race.

More concerning to the FIA however is that Hamilton and McLaren continued to plead their innocence at the season hearing in Malaysia, at a time when the stewards had already heard the pit-to-car radio and a post-race interview given by Hamilton confirming he had been told to let the Toyota through. Soon after the Malaysia hearing, McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh continued to deny that Lewis had lied to the stewards, saying “I don’t think there is any indication of [a lie]. There is no suggestion that Lewis lied to the stewards”.

Sanctions against McLaren could range from points deductions and fines, to the extreme case of being disqualified from the constructors’ championship for the second time in three years. Lewis Hamilton is unlikely to be punished individually.

The WMSC hearing will take place on Wednesday, 29 April 2009, just three days after the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Full statement from the FIA:
Vodafone McLaren Mercedes has been invited to appear before an extraordinary meeting of the FIA World Motor Sport Council in Paris on Wednesday, 29 April, 2009, to answer charges that, in breach of Article 151c of the International Sporting Code, it

• on 29 March, 2009, told the stewards of the Australian Grand Prix that no instructions were given to Hamilton in Car No. 1 to allow Trulli in Car no. 9 to pass when both cars were behind the safety car, knowing this statement to be untrue;

• procured its driver Hamilton the current World Champion, to support and confirm this untrue statement to the stewards;

• although knowing that as a direct result of its untrue statement to the stewards, another driver and a rival team had been unfairly penalised, made no attempt to rectify the situation either by contacting the FIA or otherwise;

• on 2 April, 2009, at a second hearing before the stewards of the Australian Grand Prix, (meeting in Malaysia) made no attempt to correct the untrue statement of 29 March but, on the contrary, continued to maintain that the statement was true, despite being allowed to listen to a recording of the team instructing Hamilton to let Trulli past and despite being given more than one opportunity to correct its false statement;

• on 2 April, 2009, at the second stewards’ hearing, procured its driver Hamilton to continue to assert the truth of the false statement given to the stewards on 29 March, while knowing that what he was saying to the stewards was not true.

Source: Manipe F1