Nico Rosberg was in control of the Monaco Grand Prix, a race filled with crashes and incidents, to take his first win of 2013 ahead of Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber. The Mercedes driver was in the lead from start to finishas the race was interrupted by a safety-car period and a red-flag stoppage following two brutal accidents. Rosberg's team-mate Lewis Hamilton dropped from second to fourth after losing out through the safety car. Force India's Adrian Sutil took fifth position from McLaren's Jenson Button. Raikkonen moved up to 10th from 13th right in the last lap to take the final point.
Ferrari's Fernando Alonso had a rather poor race and finished seventh after losing places in a series of passing moves by Perez, Sutil and Button. Toro Rosso's Jean-Eric Vergne was eighth from Force India's Paul di Resta. The troublesome race faced by Raikkonen and Alonso boosted Vettel's lead at the head of the championship, which is now 21 points from Raikkonen and 31 over Alonso.
The race featured two safety car periods and a red flag stoppage following a series of crashes. Rosberg kept calm amid all that chaos and grabbed his second win of his career. "It's amazing," said Rosberg. "This is my home, I've grown up here all my life and it's really special. The whole weekend went perfectly. I had a terrible start and I was close with Sebastian and Lewis but after that I controlled the pace. The car was really good, the tyres held on OK and that was really the key, so a massive thanks to the team. I'm ecstatic."
Hamilton followed Rosberg through the first part of the race ahead of the Red Bull cars but dropped to fourth when he was forced to make his pit stop on the same lap as Rosberg because neither had stopped by the time the safety car came out. Reigning world champion Vettel said he was pleased with snatching second place from Hamilton. "Overall I'm happy. We know it's difficult to overtake here. Congratulations to Nico, he had the pace and the tyres. We had a fantastic start but there was no room to overtake and I had to lift. I was surprised by the slow pace of the opening laps - you expect two silver arrows in front of you and we had two buses in front going for a cruise. They had a strategy but we did well to get past Lewis."
At this point Vettel is an even stronger favourite to defend his world title, here are the odds for the Drivers' Championship crown at Bet365:
Sebastian Vettel - 5/6
Fernando Alonso - 15/8
Kimi Raikkonen - 7/1
Lewis Hamilton - 22/1
Nico Rosberg - 40/1
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