Monaco Grand Prix mayhem as Lewis Hamilton overcomes puncture for iconic F1 win

If you want to watch an example of how the very best drivers in the world can meet their match, watch the Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix.

Or to be more precise, the 2008 Monaco Grand Prix, where it seemed just about every single top-class F1 star made mistakes you would associate with rookies. The calamities were endless.

In fairness to them, Monaco is challenging in the dry. Throw a load of water on the track and it's a recipe for absolute chaos. You can test this yourself... no, not by driving to Monaco on a wet day.

Instead the cheaper and safer option is to pick up any F1 game. Turn off assists, have manual gears and drive in cockpit mode around Monaco in the wet and see how fast you are compared to other drivers if you haven't already binned it before your first lap.

So out of a star lineup in 2008 that included Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa - every single one of them made huge errors that would usually cost you a race win.

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The chaos of the 2008 Monaco Grand Prix

But 2008 was no ordinary grand prix. It started in the wet with pole sitter Massa leading away his Ferrari from team-mate Raikkonen who was passed at the first corner by McLaren's Hamilton who pounced on the world champion's sluggish getaway.

Massa and Hamilton soon pulled away from the pack but on the sixth lap as the rain increased, Hamilton's race looked over when his McLaren ran wide at Tabac and collected the barrier, giving him a right-rear puncture.

There were three elements of fortune in Hamilton's favour. Firstly, the accident didn't damage his rear suspension or rear wing from the delaminated tyre. Secondly, the accident occurred near the end of the lap so the limp back to the pits wasn't too far. Thirdly, the gaps between drivers behind him and Massa were so big that when he did come back into the race he only dropped back to fifth.

Two laps later, signs the rain was getting heavier and that the intermediate tyres were moving out of their operating window were even more prevalent when Alonso 'did a Hamilton' by running his Renault wide at the top of Massenet, hitting the barrier and getting a right-rear puncture. A longer trip back to the pits for the Spaniard.

Moments later, David Coulthard made the exact same mistake, only this time it put his Red Bull out of the race. Mere seconds after, Toro Rosso's Sebastien Bourdais followed suit and piled into the back of the Red Bull.

These days the race would be stopped with a red flag fearing the wrath of the rain Gods for going racing in the wet. Not in 2008, only the safety car was needed with drivers having the option for an extreme wet tyre (that actually worked).

Once racing resumed, Raikkonen was hit with a drive through penalty for not having his tyres put on in a certain time frame before the race - one ridiculous error not down to a driver.

Alonso was one star who did choose the extreme wets but as he was flying along, ambition got the best of him at the Fairmont hairpin as he crunched into Nick Heidfeld's BMW. This caused a traffic jam which saw another incident as Heikki Kovalainen's McLaren rear wheel tagged the Williams front wing of Nico Rosberg. Carnage

Martin Brundle's case for the defence

ITV commentator Martin Brundle at this point offered a defence for the amount of driver errors, saying: "These are the finest drivers in the world make no mistake about it but in these conditions these cars just feel hopelessly inadequate. They are not designed to be going around hairpins at 20mph. They are rubbish at that sort of thing, and that's why..."

Brundle was then cut off because at the start of lap 16, of course Massa lost control under braking into turn one, and although he did remarkably well to keep his Ferrari out of the barrier, lost the lead to BMW's Robert Kubica.

Raikkonen's awful race got worse 11 laps later when like Massa he ran wide at turn one, but unlike Massa he clipped the barrier and damaged his front wing... back to the pits for the Finn.

With drivers pitting for intermediates and fuel, this allowed Hamilton, whose tank was brimming from his earlier stop after his puncture, to take the lead in front of Massa. The Brazilian got back out in front of Kubica on the switch to intermediate tyres.

Alonso's gamble for slick tyres and going fastest was the trigger for Kubica to pit on lap 54 and switch for similar rubber, with Hamilton following suit a lap later. Massa though only decided to pit for slicks three laps after Kubica and it cost him as he ended up coming out of the pits just behind the BMW driver.

You think of fine margins in the 2008 title battle which saw Hamilton beat Massa by one point, this is one of the forgotten moments. Massa should have stopped sooner, and in doing so would have cleared Kubica.

Force India heartbreak

More drama was to follow though when on lap 62 Rosberg had a heavy shunt at the swimming pool section to bring out the safety car.

At the time Adrian Sutil was running fourth for Force India, and on course to give the team its first ever points. However on the restart, an impatient Raikkonen behind him lost control coming out of the tunnel and careered into the back of the German bringing heartache to the team, who wouldn't score a single point all season.

As one world champion had an afternoon to forget with arguably the worst race of his career, the world champion elect recovered from his earlier puncture and crash, with Hamilton taking a superb race win in one of the most manic Monaco Grands Prix, with Kubica and Massa making up the podium.

Monaco Grand Prix Results

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Written by

Dan Ripley - Global Editor

I've been a massive F1 fan since the mid 1990s and continue to study the history of the sport long before that. As an experienced motor sport reporter covering F1, MotoGP and the LeMans 24 Hour race, being part of GPFans has allowed me to work with a diverse team with all sorts of different backgrounds in watching the sport and given me a greater appreciation of F1.

View full biography