Reigning world champion,
Fernando Alonso has won the Monaco Grand Prix, leading from start to finish at the principality, the seventh round in the 2006
FIA Formula One World Championship.
The Spaniard, who started from pole, finished the event around 15 seconds up on Juan Montoya, who was runner-up for McLaren-Mercedes.
Alonso began the event perfectly, with a textbook start, to maintain P1 into the first corner. Initially
Mark Webber led the chasing pack, until a mistake at the start of the second lap, when he went wide going up the hill, let
Kimi Raikkonen through to hassle for the lead. Alonso and Raikkonen then traded fastest laps, but the 'ice-man' could find no way by as is the norm on the tight and twisty confines that make up the Monte Carlo challenge. Webber and Montoya meanwhile both slipped back, while
Rubens Barrichello held fifth, the one-stopping
Honda holding up the likes of David Coultard,
Nico Rosberg and
Giancarlo Fisichella.
Of the front-runners, Montoya was the first to pit around lap 21, with Raikkonen stopping on the following lap. Both re-joined ahead of the 'Barrichello train', which was over 30 seconds back by lap 20. Indeed JPM maintained fourth, while Kimi dropped to third in the sister MP4-21, after Webber put a charge to make up some of the ground he had conceded earlier on.
Alonso by now was out on his own - and two laps after Raikkonen had pitted, he also stopped for fuel and tyres. The
Renault number one driver though was stationary only for 7.9 seconds, and while he re-joined in front of Kimi, the Finn was right up there with him and now had the advantage of being able to run longer in his middle-stint, courtesy of a longer first stop - around 10.3 seconds.
