Ten laps in, and the gap between the leading two stood at four seconds. Whatever
McLaren team principal Ron Dennis may have claimed afterwards about his two drivers ‘cruising’ from there on in, the on-track evidence suggested rather differently, as no quarter was asked and none was given. Indeed, the more Alonso extended his lead, the more wayward Hamilton’s MP4-22 seemed to get as he doggedly gave chase, and there was many a heart-in-the-mouth moment as Lewis slid the car around the corners mere millimetres away from kissing the barriers, something that at Monaco can invariably spell instant disaster.
Further back, it was a similar story for an increasingly frustrated and lurid-looking Raikkonen, as Button placed his
Honda in all the right places to prevent the Finn from getting past. Honda’s Japanese rival
Toyota, meanwhile – which recently became the world’s number one car manufacturer – was having a particularly torrid afternoon, with both
Jarno Trulli and
Ralf Schumacher having struggled to get away from the grid and left back battling with the Super Aguris and Spykers over the final positions.
Webber would prove to be the race’s second casualty, pulling into the pits on lap 18 with a misfire and gearbox woes. It was the
Red Bull Racing star’s third straight failure to finish in 2007, and once again when he had been in a points-paying position.
There was a brief ray of encouragement for Hamilton when Alonso got badly held up fighting his way through traffic shortly before the first round of pit-stops, as the Spaniard lost 3.5 seconds to his team-mate in one fell swoop. Massa, for his part, had fallen away by some eight seconds, unable to keep pace with the two leaders who continued to go at it hammer-and-tongs.
