Race 6 on the Monaco Street Circuit is now complete. Unfortunately, Russ Andrew has decided to retire from the sport, so Jean Eric Vergne, Toro Rosso's reserve driver, will be taking his seat for the rest of the year. More driver news comes with Sebastian Vettel coming down with an illness, causing Mark Webber, Red Bull's reserve driver, to take the seat for this race. Qualifying was uneventful, and saw Z. Blum on pole, Webber 2nd, D. Ricciardo 3rd, and A. Smith 6th.

The race was exciting from Turn 1, where both Toro Rosso's created major contact, resulting in a spin by A. Smith, among other things. Within a few more turns, P. Maldonado crashed into the wall after getting around another car, taking him out of the race. After this, the race saw Z. Blum in the lead, followed by D. Ricciardo and J. Bianchi. Smith had dropped in the field and started climbing back up after a penalty. An error by Blum allowed Ricciardo to get past, after which he opened a wide gap. Just before he put on primes, Blum had an incident which resulted in a drive through penalty. After getting primes and serving the penalty, he started putting up some very quick laps. About halfway through the race Blum came up to pass the Marussia of Smith, but Smith did not see him on the right going into the braking zone of Turns 10 and 11, and put them both into the wall. The FIA saw this as an avoidable collision and awarded a drive through penalty to Smith for the action. The rest of the race for Blum was very eventful, as he set best lap after best lap trying to close the 40 second gap to the leader, however, slight mistakes cost drivers big in Monaco, and he lost part of his wing a few times. Smith, however, was having many difficulties with the tight track, and had fallen back to 21st after getting more penalties that he didn't agree with and having issues keeping his wing intact. On lap 33, L. Hamilton crashed in Rascasse, Turn 18, causing a pile up and bringing out the safety car. This was good for Blum, as he was unsure whether his pace was enough to catch Bianchi in second, some 25 seconds ahead. Smith used his position to give his pit crew a couple of in race practices, both under the safety car and on the last lap. Blum used the safety car to his advantage and pushed through the field of backmarkers to catch Bianchi. With 2 laps to go, he got around the Marussia and set his sights on Ricciardo. However, the Toro Rosso driver had already gotten 18 seconds ahead because of traffic, and Blum was unable to close such a massive gap.

Notable Positions

D. Ricciardo - 1st

Z. Blum - 2nd

J. Bianchi - 3rd

J. E. Vergne - 4th

M. Webber - 12th

A. Smith - 20th