Kimi Raikkonen took pole position in Monaco but it was Vettel who won the race after jumping his team-mate in the sole round of pitstops.
While Vettel was clearly delighted to take his third win of the 2017 Formula 1 season, Raikkonen looked even more icy and disappointed than usual after the race.
Hamilton, who recovered from 13th to seventh in Monaco, is now 25 points behind Vettel in the drivers’ standings after his rival’s victory.
Speaking after round six of the season, Hamilton admitted to reporters he thinks Ferrari has already established a team hierarchy for the 2017 championship:
“It’s clear to me that Ferrari have chosen their number one driver. So, they are going to be pushing everything to make sure Sebastian will maximise on all of his weekends. On strategy that just doesn’t happen – the leading car, it’s very hard for him to get jumped by the second car unless the team decide to favour the other car. That’s very clear.”
However, Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff disagrees, explaining he doesn’t think Ferrari knew the ‘overcut’ would work so well with Vettel:
“They are finally where we were back in the day where you finish one and two and you have to explain why the right guy won. First of all, they deserved to be there, they had the quickest car out there. So, the team result, the 1-2, is good and congratulations from our side.
“I think we need to give them credit. It wasn’t clear how the tyre would perform. They needed to pit one of the two drivers and put him on the super-soft and how it all panned out, the super-soft was not quick enough and Sebastian was able to pull out some stunning laps on the used ultra-soft and that gave him the advantage over Kimi.
“I don’t think they saw that coming, but at the end of the day it’s the right result for the team and for the Drivers’ Championship. But I don’t think it was orchestrated.”
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