“I went and apologized to him,” said Buemi after the race. Nonetheless, that didn't save the young rookie from heavy criticism coming from his own team manager Franz Tost. The Austrian, known to be one of the toughest team principals in the sport, lambasted Buemi for his lack of patience on the very difficult to tackle Monte Carlo circuit.
“You end up in the barriers if you don't have the discipline to wait a little bit,” argued Tost, who also expressed hopes that Sebastien Bourdais (Buemi's teammate) scoring a point in Monaco would boost his performances in the races to come.
As far as Piquet goes, the Brazilian was in need of a good result in Monaco in order to keep rumors about his potential replacement within the Renault team down to a minimum. Following his 12th place finish in Spain, he started the Monte Carlo race from 12th on the grid and was running in 11th when the unfortunate accident happened.
At the time, Piquet was part of a 9-car pack of cars compressed within 4 to 5 seconds because of 4th place Sebastian Vettel's holding them all back. It was in the same lap that Vettel entered the pits to change his tires, but Piquet never got to benefit from it due to Buemi's impatience. While yet to score a point this season (after 6 rounds), Piquet must really feel the pressure coming from GP2 driver Romain Grosjean, race winner this weekend in Monaco and main contender for an F1 seat with Renault next year.
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