Montoya’s First McLaren Win
British Grand Prix

By Erik Nielsen
Photos courtesy and copyright Ferrari Media

Juan Pablo Montoya showed that it isn't just the Iceman's skill, but that the McLaren-Mercedes really is a competitive package this year. The Columbian got the jump on championship leading Fernando Alonso, and was able to keep the Spaniard in his rear view mirrors the entire way. This race also saw another journalist do a lap "naked" betting that McLaren would not win a race last year, let's just hope that no one made the same claims about Montoya this year.

Fernando Alonso was unable to add a sixth win for the season at Silverstone, but is still comfortable in the standings. With Kimi Räikkönen finishing only a few seconds back, it looks like this is going to turn into a battle between the blue and yellow cars and the black and sliver ones. Kimi was penalized, again, for blowing an engine in the Friday practice session. Maybe the mechanics are going to figure out that they need to put the weak engine in Montoya’s car if they really want to heat up the battle.

Fisichella demonstrated once again that the other Renault is also fast. But, he is playing the role of lightning rod on Flabio's team and never seems to get the most out of the car, evident today by stalling on the grid. His finish in fourth does help the team towards the constructor’s championship.

Jenson Button was hyped all weekend due to this being his home grand prix and he did try to bring some fanfare to the event, but at the end of the day, the BAR Honda is not the world leading chassis and engine combination out there and he would have to settle for fifth.

The two cars that were also disappointing this weekend were the Ferraris of Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello. The Scuderia does seem to be having issues getting the most out of this year's car. The rule changes for 2005 were designed to knock Ferrari off the top spot of the podium and in that regard, they seem to have been effective, much to the disappointment of the tifosi around the world.

The last point of the day went to Ralf Schumacher who showed that the Toyota is still capable of speed. By finishing only seconds back of the Ferraris, he showed that the corporate behemoth was able to match their speed. But the engineers are beginning to realize that the red team is not the one whose speed needs to be matched. His team mate would be the last car on the lead lap.

British fans were also disappointed with the performance of BMW-Williams when their cars finished eleventh and twelfth. Obviously, the announcement of BMW's decision to buy out Peter Sauber's team has not gone over very well with Sir Frank's team and their performance is really starting to show it.

With eleven out of nineteen races in the history books for the 2005 season, it seems that this is going to turn into a race between McLaren and Renault. The lead that these two teams have over the rest of the gird pretty much has things wrapped up and now it is just going to be a battle to see who ends up where.

Mathematically, Schumacher and Ferrari still have a shot at both titles, but there seems to be a rather large performance gap and time is running out for development work. All is not lost yet. Some of us were Ferrari fans in the late 80's and early 90's. We know that domination isn’t permanent and there is always a chance to get it back.

On the political front, it seems that the FIA may agree to the team's appeal over the Indy verdict, but we'll have more details on that one once we hear from them. Another French surrender?

F1 takes this weekend off and will return next Sunday at Hockenheim for the Grand Prix of Germany. Let's hope that Schumacher does well in front of his home crowd.