MONTOYA WINS BRAZIL, ALONSO WINS THE WORLD

 

 

And so the F1 scene hit Brazil, home of the late great Ayrton Senna, home of '05 Ferrari driver and '06 BAR driver Rubens Barrichello. Earlier on in the week, Jenson Button was confirmed as Barrichello's teammate for next season at BAR after bunging £15 million to Williams so he could stay put, the big loser in that mess being Jenson's current Japanese teammate Takuma Sato who might be heading to the new Midland(currently Jordan) team if he's to get a race seat for next year.

That taken care of people got down to business for qualifying, Fisichella, Michael Schumacher and Coulthard amongst those that wound up going out early. Fisichella was the big winner in that three and wound up keeping provisional pole till Montoya took it off him in the latter stages of the session. DC was the big loser, winding up starting from 15th. It was Fernando Alonso who picked up the pole whoever leaving Montoya to settle for second, Fisichella to start from third, Button fourth and Raikonen fifth after some major screwups with Michael sixth.

At the start of the race TV commentator(and ex-F1 driver in the 80s and 90s) Martin Brundle's predictions of Jenson "getting mugged" by Michael and Fisichella came true and he quickly wound up sunk to sixth his BAR not up to the job of going round Interlagos particularly fast(sounds familiar). At least he was still in the race however, more than can be said for DC and the Williams pair of Aussie Mark Webber and Brazilian Antonio Pizzonia, all of whom took each other out at the start (cue safety car). Up front, Montoya soon took care of Alonso to take the lead, not that the Spanish hotshot was going to be bothered about that.

With Fisichella managing to do a generally solid backup job for Alonso, the crowning of the Spaniard today never looked in doubt. He duelled with title rival Raikonen for a bit, slipped down to third but third was all the guy was ever going to need anyway, despite his stated intention to win the race.

As for Jenson, he did get as high as fourth midway through a pitstop sequence but this never looked like being one of his better races through he did in the end manage to hold off Ralf Schumacher's Toyota for seventh.

The race itself however, belonged to McLaren, the only question was going to be which one and given that Alonso was just cruising in third that side of things was up in the air for a while. However barring pitstops, Raikonen never looked in a position to really do that much about Montoya so it was the Columbian who won the nearest race he can call home for the second year running, after winning it for Williams last year.

It was however Renault boss Flavio Briatore who went completely mental with delight at the end of the race. He ran the Benetton team who took Michael Schumacher to two world titles in the mid 90s and went on to manage Alonso's career in the lower formulae. Ten years is a very long time for the remains of the old Benetton team from that time that stayed on as the team have turned into Renault and though they claimed to care more about the constructors championship, which McLaren still have an edge in, they came out of Interlagos with one thing on their mind! Party!

Although it's supposed to be a country more interested in motorcycle racing than F1 traditionally, I doubt there be much booze left in Spain after tonight.

To read my Formula 1 State of Play article go here

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