North American Clean Sweep
United States Grand Prix

By Erik Nielsen
Photos courtesy and copyright Ferrari Media

Ferrari finished the North American portion of the 2004 world championship by scoring maximum points with a 1-2 finish at Indianapolis, after the same result at Montreal last week. Schumacher has now won eight of the nine races of the season and leads his team-mate by 18 points. It may not seem like much, but the next competitor is 44 points back. It may not be over yet, but it's starting to seem like it.

The German didn't start on pole, but rather beside his team mate after the Brazilian managed to get the top spot in qualifying. This led several to believe that Burino only had enough fuel to make it one lap. Actually, the pass officially occurred on the fifth lap after sufficient debris was removed from the track after the incident at the start.

Lots of fans come to Indy to watch accidents now that the brickyard is home to the NASCAR crowd. Those in attendance now understand the difference between shattered carbon fiber and bent steel. A first lap crash took out Cristiano da Matta, Gianmaria Bruni, Giorgio Pantano, Felipe Massa and Christian Klien. From a technical standpoint, that only meant that there were fewer moving chicanes for the front runners to worry about.

Once the safety car came off and Michael Schumacher made his pass, Fernando Alonso’s tire came off and the Spaniard crashed into the wall in turn one. Shortly thereafter, Ralf Schumacher's Williams-BMW crashed heavily into the wall at the last turn. The crash happened at approximately 220 mph . . . backwards. Due to strict FIA rules, the German survived the crash with a concussion and some bruises. The decision has not been made at this time if he will run in France.

After the dust had settled, the Ferraris were still up front and swapped the lead during pit stops around lap 42. Burino didn’t have it in him to put up some quick laps and was not able to build enough of a lead to stay ahead at the end. Or maybe it was team orders...

There was decent racing for third place between Juan Pablo Montoya, Jarno Trulli and Takuma Sato. But, by lap 58, the race stewards had finally watched all of the tapes with their stop watches and determined that the Columbian was off the grid for two seconds longer than the rules allow when he changed to the spare car. The black flag was shown and the cursing in Spanish began. Sir Frank's boys had nothing to show for their road trip.

The Honda engineers might have slightly tampered with Sato-san's rev limiter and lowered it a few hundred, as the hard charger didn't blow an engine in the race and managed to finish third. Or maybe they put his engine in Button's car which only lasted 27 laps.

Toyota stopped cribbing off of the Williams design and Panis finished in fifth. Darth Vader’s team finished next to each other, albeit in 6th and 7th. And yes, enough people crashed out this weekend. The last point went to Zsolt Baumgartner of Minardi.

So, North America was kind to the boys in red who have a hell of a lead in both championships. Honda is showing that they are fully committed to making an engine that can run with the big boys. Williams-BMW is still having a string of bad luck and McLaren is an also ran. It's a good time to be a Ferrari fan. F1 returns to Europe for the French Grand Prix in two weeks.