F1: Monaco 2011 - a red flag to a Bull

Sebastian Vettel won the Monaco Grand Prix, Fernando Alonso was second and Jenson Button was third. Hamilton was handed two penalties for aggressive driving, Michael Schumacher was not. The hard tyres were soft and the soft tyres were super-soft. The already narrow track was reduced to a groove a single car wide and, having gone off line to try an overtaking move, Massa stuffed his Ferrari into the barrier in the tunnel. Petrov was one of several cars who tangled and his crash was so severe he had to be stretchered off - causing the race to be red flagged.

That's the prosaic story of this year's most glamorous race. But it's only a fraction of the story.

KERS and DRS proved next to useless around the tight streets where there are no straights. KERS gave a boost up the hill but did not aid in overtaking. DRS doesn't work when there are several cars lined up, all within a second of each other and all racing each other, especially when going off-line means hitting the marbles that, by the end of the race, covered more than half of the track in the faster (for which read less slow) corners.

A dismal start by Michael Schumacher - who for the first time this season had out-qualified team mate Rosberg, dropped him way down the field before the first corner where he returned to his tactic of overt aggression. A collision with Hamilton on the first lap led to Hamilton asking his pit if he had a puncture: he didn't. Button started in second but on the warm-up lap told his pit that for some reason his steering had become much heavier than on the way around to the grid.

Trying to get back up the order, Hamilton dived inside Massa, causing contact but that was not what put Massa out of the race: later in the same lap, Massa tried to retake the position on the outside in the tunnel. Without the ridiculous amount of rubber balls being laid by the soft tyres, he may have made it; but driving flat out around a corner while on ball-bearings is not to be recommended. Hamilton was penalised for his aggressive move even though it was clearly a racing incident and had no bearing on the outcome of the race. After a drive-through penalty, Hamilton did an action replay - and after the race was handed a further penalty.

Vettel's race was compromised when his team fluffed the pit stop. They decided to run a one-stop strategy which, later in the race, seemed like a desperate gamble. Vettel himself said that he had thought that, by the end of the race, his tyres would have been so ruined that he may have slipped back to third. When the second of two safety cars came out, Alonso and Button, who were chasing him down, Vettel's race seemed done, at least so far as the top step of the podium was concerned.

Then out came the red flag. Under the rules, teams can - to all intents and purposes - treat a red flag stop (where the cars stop on the start finish straight before heading off for a safety-car lap and rolling start) as a pit stop. With five laps to go, Vettel was in the lead and put on a set of fresh tyres, nicely pre-heated. As the race restarted, he sprinted off to a one second lead over Alonso in the first lap.

By the end of the race, the top three finished within two and a half seconds. If Vettel had needed to pit, he would have finished third. Struggling with past-their-use-by-date tyres, he would have found it hard to hold back Alonso and Button, both of whom were much faster and had much more grip. But at Monaco, an F1 car can legitimately be made to all but fill the track, particularly where the track is artificially narrowed by marbles several balls deep.

Webber was dropped to the front of the back of the field pack when his first pit stop was one of the worst in modern F1 history: stationary for more than 15 seconds because the team, having messed up Vettel's stop, was not ready for Webber when he arrived. Even so, he finished high in the points.

Williams continued to prove that the early season problems were largely developmental: Barrichello collected useful points and Maldonado would have finished fifth or sixth had it not been for the collision with Hamilton just four laps from the end.

Vettel was surprisingly subdued after the race: he knew that the tyre strategy was at best marginal and that his first Monaco GP win was not as clear cut as the results suggest. Alonso admitted he had looked after his tyres for a late challenge, knowing that if he was sufficiently aggressive, Vettel would not fight to win at any cost: his championship points would be more important than to risk getting nil. Button was resigned: he refused to say that he should have won the race or at least been second (both were realistic prospects as the race built to a conclusion before the red flag). He said that the team's strategy was to a degree a gamble with regard to the number of safety car interventions: less of them would have meant benefiting from frequent changes to new rubber and better grip.

But it was Webber who most questioned the end result. In a tweet after the race he said "Did 2 F1 races on Sunday,1 long one 1 short one. In the short race you can change wings,tyres,engine,oops where's the 1000 page rulebook?!"

He's right. The rules need a change: no changes to the car if the red flag is within, say, 15 laps of the end. It might not have changed the result, but it would have meant that there was no argument. Button and Alonso's strategy was good; giving Vettel what amounts to a free pit stop leaves his win open to question.

And that's not fair on the fans nor, in particular, on Vettel who did a superb job and deserves the kudos. Probably.