McLaren's Monaco miracle: when Hamilton was blessed by F1 racing gods

As I write, the Formula 1 circus is on its way from Imola to Monaco — which, for those who have the luxury of not having to fly back to their UK factories in between the two races, is a lovely 320-mile (515km) drive whose route runs inland through Bologna, Modena, Parma, and Piacenza, before ducking south to Genoa and taking the coastal road that hugs the shimmering Med to Monte-Carlo.

The Monaco Grand Prix is often more of a spectacle than a race, since, now that Formula 1 cars are as hefty as S-class Mercs, overtaking is so ludicrously difficult on the narrow streets of the Principality that the result is effectively dictated by qualifying the day before. If no grand prix had ever been held in Monaco, and someone were to suggest the idea for the first time now, it would be dismissed as the folly of a moron, for it is a venue patently ill-suited to the racing of today’s big, long, wide, heavy, super-powerful, and ultra-grippy F1 cars. But since a Monaco Grand Prix was first run 96 years ago, and the race has been an almost ever-present fixture on the F1 calendar since the series was inaugurated 75 years ago, we are stuck with it now. Besides, it is a glorious event in many ways, even though the race itself is usually as dull as ditch water.

The four leading teams have all won it many times – Red Bull seven times, Mercedes eight, Ferrari 11, and McLaren 15. Max Verstappen’s and Red Bull’s magnificent win at Imola two days ago notwithstanding, the McLaren drivers will be the favourites this year, simply because, unless one and/or both of them louses up his qualifying, and/or Verstappen delivers an out-of-this-world pole lap, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri will sew up the front row and will cruise to a leisurely one-two finish, thereby recording McLaren’s 16th Monaco Grand Prix victory. If that is what happens, I am here to tell you that, perhaps astonishingly, it will be the Woking team’s first win in Monte-Carlo for 17 years.

That 2008 Monaco Grand Prix victory was delivered to McLaren by Lewis Hamilton. I had been the team’s comms/PR chief for a smidgen over four months, and, although the season was only five grands prix old by the time we arrived in Monte-Carlo, it was already clear that it was going to be a close, tense, and perhaps acrimonious one. The previous year, 2007, had been McLaren’s annus horribilis – dominated as it had been by ‘Spy-gate’, the painful saga wherein the team had been fined $100 million (around £50 million) as a consequence of one of its senior engineers having been caught in possession of 780 pages of highly confidential Ferrari intellectual property – and the mood in Woking in early 2008 was therefore one of defensive and fearful pessimism. Nonetheless, the team had survived; the fine would be paid; and our new car, the MP4-23, had been inspected meticulously by the FIA and had been found to be legally compliant and fit to race.

Grown McLaren men and women cried tears of joy when Lewis won the first grand prix of the 2008 season, in Melbourne, and the fact that he had bagged the pole the day before, and his team-mate Heikki Kovalainen had driven the fastest race lap, underscored our belief that our new car was a quick one. However, the next four races were won by our old enemy, Ferrari, the Malaysian and Spanish Grands Prix falling to Kimi Räikkönen and the Bahrain and Turkish Grands Prix falling to Felipe Massa. Even so, Hamilton had scored points in Malaysia (fifth), Spain (third), and Turkey (second), and, as we flew out of Istanbul, he lay joint second with Massa in the F1 drivers’ world championship standings, on 28 points, seven points behind the leader, Räikkönen, who was still within striking range on 35.

When we arrived in Monaco 10 days later, I remember that we were all consumed by a mounting ambition — no, make that desperation — to win there. We needed that fillip for sporting reasons, obviously, because we were worried that another win for Ferrari, especially if it were to be achieved by Räikkönen, might serve to stretch his lead in the F1 drivers’ world championship standings to a magnitude that would be a tall order for even Hamilton to overhaul; but we needed it also to assuage the concerns of our ever-avaricious sponsors, who had been awaiting their next glory day with ever-decreasing patience.

Massa made a great start from the pole, and he duly led on lap one. Behind him was Hamilton, who had managed to muscle his way past Räikkönen into Turn 1, Sainte Dévote. Kovalainen had stalled on the formation lap, so fourth was Robert Kubica (BMW-Sauber) and fifth Fernando Alonso (Renault). It was going to be a long race, and Monaco in the rain is always treacherous, so the key thing for Lewis was to keep it neat and stay out of the barriers.

On lap six he failed in that task, clouting the wall at Tabac. He limped the car from there to the pitlane, where our mechanics fitted a new set of wet tyres and brimmed his fuel tank. He had lost time, and track position, but not that much: he was now fifth.

Again luck was on our side, for on lap seven David Coulthard (Red Bull) and Sébastien Bourdais (Toro Rosso) both crashed at Massanet, triggering a safety car deployment that closed up the field. Yes, Hamilton was still only fifth, which was not great, but Massa’s hard-won 12-second lead had disappeared. A worse fate was to befall Felipe soon afterwards, for, having re-established a decent margin over his pursuers, he outbraked himself on the slippery approach to Sainte Dévote and he had to take to the escape road to avoid hitting the barrier. Even better, Räikkönen was served a drive-through penalty, the result of the Ferrari pit crew having not fitted his tyres within the regulation three-minute time limit before the scheduled race start time, dropping him to fourth. Kubica was now in the lead, Massa was second, and Hamilton was third.

However, Lewis had already made a pitstop, and, after Robert and Felipe also now dived into the pits for fuel and fresh wet tyres, our man found himself in a handy lead. Could we win the race after all? We hardly dared hope. But perhaps we could, for, as brilliant in the wet as ever, Lewis now began to fly. Lap by lap he increased his lead until, by the time he had made his second pitstop, this time fitting dry tyres for the rain had stopped, he had built up a cushion of 37 seconds. Yes, we might win, we began to think. But we did not enjoy that thought for long – for, when Nico Rosberg (Williams) shunted at the Swimming Pool, bringing out the safety car once more, and the field was closed up yet again, we began to fear that perhaps we might not.

The safety car peeled into the pitlane on lap 68. Lewis had to hang on to his lead for just 10 laps more. On lap 75, with three of the 78 still to run, he now suffered a slow puncture. Was his win going to be cruelly plucked away at the 11th hour? No, it was not, for, so slow had the race been run as a result of the heavy rain early on and not one but two safety car deployments, that the two-hour limit saved him. The race ended after just 76 laps therefore, by which time Hamilton had managed to cling on to his lead, crossing the finish line just 3.064sec ahead of Kubica in second place. Had the race run its full distance, would Kubica have caught and passed him? In a word, yes. Might Massa, who was third, just 1.747sec behind Kubica, also have finished ahead of Hamilton? Probably.

Did we have a big party that night? Oh yes: a memorable one. When my colleague Ekrem Sami and I shared a taxi to Nice Côte d’Azur Airport at 5.00am the next day, it would be fair to say that we had had no sleep at all. We were tired, very tired, but happy, very happy.

And Lewis? He had had a couple of drinks with us, but not that many. Then, as now, he was an outstandingly focused sportsman who felt as sure as anyone has ever felt sure about anything that he had been put on Earth to win F1 races. He was now leading the F1 drivers’ world championship standings on 38 points, having leapfrogged Räikkönen (still on 35) and Massa (now on 34). As you well know, just over five months later, in Brazil, he became F1 world champion for the first time, in a climax to the 2008 season’s F1 racing so improbably dramatic that, had a screenplay author scripted it for a Hollywood movie, he, she, or they would have been laughed out of the writers’ room. But it happened; I was there; and one day that incredible story will feature in another of my Motor Sport columns.