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The Monaco Grand Prix clearly highlights Ferrari's team orders

Sebastian Vettel stretched his championship lead over Lewis Hamilton to 25 points on Sunday after becoming the first Ferrari driver since Michael Schumacher in 2001 to win Formula One's showcase Monaco Grand Prix. Teammate Kimi Raikkonen, on pole for the first time in nine years, lost out in the pitstops but secured a Ferrari one-two with Hamilton finishing seventh for Mercedes after starting 13th. The German celebrated as jubilantly as his seven times champion compatriot would have done, whooping over the radio and beaming from the podium as mechanics sang the Italian national anthem. "It's obviously a great day for the team... great to get the points, great to get the win," said Vettel. As with Schumacher in his pomp there was also a distinct whiff of 'team orders', with Raikkonen pitting first and Vettel staying out for a further five laps in a move that worked in his favor. Vettel's 45th career win was the German's third in six races but there was plenty of sympathy for Raikkonen, who last won with Lotus in 2013. The Finn looked far from happy on the podium, staring fixedly ahead and taking gulps of the Champagne as Vettel sprayed his. "It's still second place but it doesn't feel awful good," he said. "It's how it goes sometimes." "I know how it feels, it's not a good feeling," reigning champion Nico Rosberg, who retired at the end of last year after years of battling Hamilton at Mercedes, consoled him as he conducted the post-race interviews on the finish straight. Australian Daniel Ricciardo took his second successive podium with third place for Red Bull. MINIMAL OVERTAKING In a race with plenty of sunshine and minimal overtaking, late crashes ensured the safety car made its traditional Monaco appearance. While Raikkonen led for the first 34 laps, the writing was on the wall at the pitstops with a consensus emerging already before the start that Ferrari would favor the championship leader. "It was a very tense race. I knew that (staying out) was the chance to win and I was able to use that window and come out ahead. After that I was able to control the gap behind," said Vettel. What had been a processional race, with the wider new cars making overtaking more difficult, turned into sudden drama with a collision between Jenson Button's McLaren and Pascal Wehrlein's Sauber at the tunnel entrance.

2016 Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix recap: another wild show on and off track

Normally we use this space to provide a lengthy recap of the weekend's Formula 1 race, but we're going to try something different since most folks reading this know what happened at the Shanghai International Circuit on Sunday. Instead, we'll alight on what we saw as the big issues in and around the race. Let us know what you think in Comments. Proper qualifying is back. Thank goodness. It only took a month of embarrassment to fix it. And so is passing! For the third race in a row, big performance improvements at the ten teams behind Mercedes-AMG Petronas and a wider tire selection at this race graced us with opening stints filled with dicing cars. Seeing the McLarens on screen doesn't make us cringe. Manor doesn't only make the global feed when it's being lapped. We've been complaining about parade races for so long that we forgot excitement was possible without rain or wholesale regulation changes. Yes, Mercedes is still the king of the jungle, but there are some other proper midfield beasts on the hunt, too. Malfunctions up and down the grid did help the show in Shanghai, like Lewis Hamilton suffering perpetual troubles, Nico Hulkenberg's runaway front wheel which red-flagged Q2, and Sebastian Vettel's and Kimi Raikkonen's flubbed hot laps in Q3 that let Daniel Ricciardo slip by into second on the grid. Come race day things went all Grand Theft Auto at Turn 1 on the opening lap, sending some of the best cars to the pits. Then came Ricciardo's puncture while leading, then came the Safety Car – all by Lap 5. Nico Rosberg got 38 seconds of airtime on the way to victory – at the start and the finish, and that happened to be his margin of victory, too – otherwise he was a ghost. Everyone else was struggling and juggling. Rosberg's win at the Bahrain Grand Prix put the German at five consecutive victories going back to last year's Mexican Grand Prix. The history books show that any driver who's won five straight contests has gone on to win the championship. With his triumph in China, the German has won the season's first three races, the history books again show that the other nine drivers who've pulled that off have gone on to win the championship. Rosberg, 36 points ahead of his teammate in the standings, is having none of it. He said of the other victors, "But they didn't have Lewis Hamilton as their team-mate." Perhaps Mercedes was right not to make an engine deal with Red Bull last season.

The Ferrari Enzo's designer isn't worried about the future of supercars

Ken Okuyama is a talented designer with a prestigious portfolio. He spent 12 years at the famed Italian design house Pininfarina after a stint with GM's Advanced Design Studio, where he worked on the C5 Corvette. He also styled the Boxster and 996-generation 911 at Porsche. His first Ferrari design was the Rossa concept car, though his most famous creation is the Enzo. Now Okuyama runs a design studio that not only is responsible for the new Kode57 supercar that debuted in Monterey this past weekend, but also eye glasses, civic planning, and even Japanese bullet trains. We caught up with Okuyama at the Concorso Italiano car show, plopped down on a couple of plush leather chairs right in front of his brand new Kode57, and chatted about what the future holds for car design. Alex Kierstein: Lately there's been a lot of talk about autonomy and future mobility. What sort of challenges and opportunities do you think this autonomous future is going to provide for you as a car designer? Ken Okuyama: It is a really fantastic time for designers because of two reasons. One is that the public and private transport have been two separate, completely different industries up until now. Now, when you think about the future of autonomy, that really brings the automobiles into something more of a public transportation. You really have to think about the total experience of the customers from buying the ticket to the paying mechanism. That's just hardware, actually. It is a huge challenge for engineers and designers, and I really love that. That's one reason. Another reason is that just like horses were a means of transport 100 or so years ago, up until Henry Ford mass-produced the Model T. Now, maybe sports cars are becoming like horses. Now, horses are a great object for hobby, sports, and part of the Olympics and everything. Cars are going to be like that also. Dr. Porsche [was asked what type of] automobile is going to last for the longest time. He said, "the sports car." I really believe in that, because with sports cars, you never lose a sense of ownership. Autonomous vehicles are things you don't have to own. You have to design a total experience and the whole operation. A car, you want to own it. It's part of you. Your mechanical watches, do you borrow them from somebody? You want to own it. Your suits, your favorite shirts, you want to borrow them from somebody for your experience? No, you want to own it. Ownership is a core part of human beings.