2000 Monaco F1 Grand Prix Race Report & Results
Event: Monaco Grand Prix
Track: Monaco Circuit
Weather: dry, warm, sunny
David COULTHARD won his 8th F1 World Championship race at the 2000 Monaco F1 GP. The McLaren driver started from 3rd on the grid and won at Monte Carlo after Michael Schumacher retired with a rear suspension failure while leading. It was the 126th win for the McLaren F1 team and Coulthards first Monaco Grand Prix victory.
Schumacher takes pole and controls the opening 55 laps
Monte Carlo on 4 June 2000 opened as another Michael Schumacher masterclass. The Ferrari driver put his car on pole with a 1:19.475 lap that was 0.271 seconds clear of Jarno Trulli's surprise Jordan and 0.413 clear of David Coulthard's McLaren. It was Ferrari's 130th pole position, and Schumacher led away from the first attempt at the start before the race was interrupted after a single lap by an accident. On the restart he pulled out the small margin he needed at Ste Devote and never looked in real danger.
For 55 laps Schumacher held Coulthard at arm's length. The pit-stop sequence played out cleanly, and by three-quarters distance the Ferrari was running 15 seconds clear of the McLaren with only the Monaco walls left to worry about. The paddock was already writing the headline that would give Schumacher his fifth Monaco win.
Rear suspension failure ends Schumacher's Monaco
On lap 55 exhaust vibration finally caught up with Schumacher's Ferrari. The engineers had been managing an escalating issue at the rear left corner since the first stop, and as the German climbed the hill from Ste Devote toward the tunnel, the rear-left pushrod snapped. He limped the car back to the pits, parked it in the garage, and watched Coulthard inherit the lead he had never once been able to threaten.
Coulthard's remaining 23 laps were an exercise in Monaco patience. He controlled the pace over Rubens Barrichello, whose Ferrari now became the second car Ross Brawn had to see safely home, and Giancarlo Fisichella's Benetton. The gap at the flag was 15.889 seconds to Barrichello and 18.522 to Fisichella, for a podium the Scot had earned by attrition rather than pace but that no one at McLaren was inclined to complain about.
Accidents thin the field, Irvine takes Jaguar's best result
Monaco 2000 was a bruising day for the midfield. Ralf Schumacher's Williams crashed out on lap 37 at Ste Devote, Ricardo Zonta binned his BAR on lap 48, Jos Verstappen's Arrows retired on lap 60 with an accident, and Frentzen's Jordan collided out of the race on lap 70. Six cars in total failed to see the flag, four of them from crashes.
Eddie Irvine took his best Jaguar result of the season with fourth place, 1m 05 seconds behind Coulthard, restoring some paddock credibility to a team that had struggled at every European round. Mika Salo grabbed fifth for Sauber, and Mika Hakkinen recovered from his own gearbox issue to bring home the final point in sixth after being a lap down at one stage.
Championship fallout: Coulthard closes on Schumacher
Coulthard's ten points closed the drivers' championship gap to Schumacher from 18 to eight points, and lifted the Scot into third overall behind Barrichello. McLaren pulled to within four points of Ferrari in the constructors'. The 2000 title, which had opened as a three-race Ferrari sweep, had turned into a season where every non-finish now mattered. Schumacher's Monaco retirement was his second in a row after his Nurburgring win, and the Canadian Grand Prix in two weeks would be his best chance to reassert control before McLaren's European summer began.
Classification 2000 Monaco F1 GP
Fastest lap: 1:21.571 min. by Mika Hakkinen
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