Alonso Wraps It Up
Chinese Grand Prix

By Erik Nielsen
Photos courtesy and copyright Erik Nielsen

Fernando Alonso capped off his championship winning season with one more win which brought Renault it's first ever manufacturer's championship. The Spaniard dominated the race and was able to lead from start to finish even with two safety car periods that threw everyone's race strategy in the dust bin. The speed that he showed all weekend proved that while the gap between him and Kimi Räikkönen may seem small points wise, he truly was deserving of the title.

Before the race started, there was some excitement when Michael Schumacher was hit from behind by Christian Albers during the reconnaissance lap. While some Ferrari fans dressed in red headed for the exit, Schumacher headed for the spare car and most people prayed for the season to end so that Minardi would disappear from the field.

Alonso started the race from pole and was helped by Giancarlo Fisichella holding up the field, allowing him to build an advantage of almost two seconds a lap. This lead would extend until lap 19 when a drain cover came up and effectively took Juan Pablo Montoya out of the race. For those that follow motor sports closely in Shanghai, a similar thing happened during last year's DTM race (which was held downtown and not at the track) when a man hole cover came up and a DTM car flipped during the start of the race. Wonder if the same contractor is working at the track now?

The safety car came out and Schumacher went off with cold tires. Ferrari fans breathed a sigh of relieve when Montoya called it a day thus leaving Schumacher safely in third place in the driver's championship. The delay of racing did bring most of the cars in to the pits and the team bosses guessing at how best to run the race.

The field bunched up but when racing went green, Alonso drove off into the distance again. But rather than drive away from the field, Karthikeyan crashed out coming onto the back straight and brought the safety car out for another extended session. If it came out one more time, some of us were actually expecting to see it have to pit for new tires and fuel!

It looked like there would be a battle to the end with Kimi Räikkönen, but the Finn was caught off pit cycle and had too much fuel to catch up. Several cars would stay out and get behind the new world champion and there wasn't much that Ron Dennis could come up with to change it. The timing sheets showed the Finn four seconds back at the end, but there wasn't anyway that he was going to catch up. Close, but no cigar for McLaren this year. Reliability killed them in the end.

A surprise on the podium was Ralf Schumacher who didn't have that great of a season, but at least the team now goes back to Japan thinking that some of the money they spent was worth it. They did beat Honda this year and in the neighborhood. Just don't tell them that the head of Renault is also the head of Nissan.

Fisichella played the role of the number two driver well, but struggled to find speed. His fourth place finish put the final touch on the gap between Renault and McLaren. Rumors are floating around that Mercedes will take a bigger stake in the Woking based team since it seems that you need to make both the engine and the chassis (gee, didn't someone around here say that a few years ago?) to be competitive.

Massa wrapped up his racing career at Sauber in sixth place. The Brazilian moves off to Ferrari next year and the Swiss team gets absorbed into the BMW organization. More importantly, he finished ahead of the BMW-Williams. Both of those organizations thought there would be synergy, but not the type of synergy that made them also-rans. Mark Webber finished in seventh, but no one except his personal manager and family really paid attention. The last point of the race went to Jenson "over-hyped" Button in the BAR. He's definitely fast some of the time, but the jury is still out on consistency to see if he can challenge for the title. The jury never left the room when the same was decided about his team mate.

For Ferrari, it was more or less a season that everyone wants to forget. Even the only 1-2 of the year for the Scuderia is causing heartburn. Enzo was always happy when he was losing, because it allowed him to push the team harder. Let's see if Jean Todt can remember the formula he used several years back to build the team to what they accomplished from 1999 to 2004.

As for me, I'm going to take a break along with everyone else in F1 for a few months. In my opinion the rule changes this year didn't work. Yes, the racing seemed closer, but there wasn't much excitement. The show is starting to loose some of its luster. Maybe the rest of the journalists will write similar comments at year end and the promoters and Bernie will stop counting their money and figure out something to bring the magic back. Let's hope so, otherwise the real cynic may show up next season to write this piece. Thanks for putting up with me for another year.

And if you're a Ferrari fan, start praying for divine inspiration for the new V8!