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Articles by Darren Galpin
| Kimi wins through as McLaren are almost buttoned up - Sun 12th Jun 2005 |
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There were two races this weekend. The first was the Canadian Grand Prix. The second was my dinner. Given the fact that it started at 6pm here in the UK, could I manage to cook my dinner and eat it before the end of the race without burning it? Kimi Räikkönen won the first, and I won the second.
ITV’s adverts and the safety car from Button’s faux pas at the final corner helped me in my race in the same way that it helped Kimi and destroyed Montoya’s. Button had clattered over the kerbs on the exit of the final chicane, and as a result he glanced the Champions Wall, breaking his suspension in the process. The race directors brought out the safety car to clear up the mess. Misunderstanding the call from the pits, Montoya drove past the pit entrance and continued onwards for another lap, so Kimi came in instead and took advantage of the space in the pits. Montoya came in the next time around, but when he was released from his pit, the safety car was driving down the finishing straight. The rules say that in these situations, the pit exit is closed for safety reasons, but through either panic or not being able to distinguish the colour of the light through the red mist, Montoya shot through the pit lane and forced his way into the traffic between Kimi and David Coulthard. Almost immediately he was under investigation by the stewards, and a lap later he was black-flagged. He had been well and truly buttoned up.
But lets wind time back a little bit. The reason for the McLaren’s being in first and second was due to Renault dropping the ball again. Although they hadn’t started on the first row, bad starts by both Button and Schumacher and the usual excellent ones by Renault meant that they were first and second by the first corner, but not in the normal order, as Fisichella was leading Alonso. And surprisingly enough, there it stayed for the next few laps, much to the consternation of Alonso. Alonso realised that he was faster, but couldn’t do anything about it, and his driving got slightly more ragged as a result.
Mind you, the cars looked very skittish to start with. All of the cars were in low downforce configuration, and the combination of a lack of downforce and bumps meant that the cars were moving around a lot, and any slight error was amplified. This caught out Alonso once Fisichella’s engine had lost oil pressure. Skating slightly wide coming out of a corner, he brushed a wall with his right-rear, and broke part of the suspension. The damage was terminal, but the episode had highlighted a flaw in the Alonso character, and no doubt it will have been noted, and will be exploited by the cleverer of the drivers.
This left Montoya and Räikkönen in first and second, which is where we came in. With Montoya removed, Michael Schumacher was now in second, with Trulli third. It stayed that way for a lap, at which point the Toyota gave way. Yet another brace of points given up. Barrichello was then in third, good reward for a drive from the back of the grid following yet another gearbox failure in practice. This is someone who is so unlucky that even when taken around on the drivers’ parade, his car breaks down.
So what does this mean for the championship? Well, Räikkönen has closed the gap to 22 points, but Renault are still in the driving seat, so to speak – the championship is still theirs to lose. However, this is perhaps slightly more likely given that they are showing increasing signs of frailty these days. Plus the season is moving into an extremely busy period, with six races in eight weekends, so finding a way to combat this without losing any competitiveness will be extremely difficult. For Ferrari, there was a chink of light with a large haul of points, but they are still showing a worrying lack of competitiveness – despite qualifying with seemingly the least amount of fuel, Schumacher could still only qualify second. They still have a lot to do. Roll on Indianapolis…..
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