ALONSO HAS THE LAST WORD
Image taken from Yahoo
The F1 circus swung into town with one thing still to be decided, the constructors title, Renault two points ahead of McLaren, the only news of note being that the "Red Bull Junior" team that Minardi will become in '06 will be called...Torro Rosso. Puhleese.
Anyway, Sato was first out in qualifying after getting disqualified in Japan for crashing into Ralf, so he set the initial time to beat, only to have it beaten straight afterwards by Montoya. Montoya's time lasted till the back end of the session when it got beat by Jenson. It took Alonso to beat the Brit's time and that time went on to earn pole for the new World Champion, with teammate Fisichella in second, Raikonen third, Button fourth and Montoya fifth, Michael sixth and DC seventh.
On the warm up lab, Michael managed to tangle with Minardi Dutch driver Christian Albers which forced both men to start from the pits. When the lights actually went out, Montoya got ahead of Button while DC automatically picked up Michael's sixth place. The two Brits went into the pits early on but not long after that, the safety car went out...Montoya had run over a loose drain cover which had to be sorted out, the incident eventually forcing the Columbian into retirement and as everyone else was able to take advantage of the safety car to go into the pits, the two Brits got pushed down to seventh and eighth.
The safety car wound up coming out again later on in the race when Jordan's Indian rookie Narain Kartekeyan spud mid track and once again it was the Brits that lost out in the resulting pit shuffle, winding up ninth and tenth. However when the sixth placed Barrichello had a lock up, Jenson and DC were among those that were able to get past him, even though Coulthard needed two goes. They finished eighth and ninth.
Further up the field, Raikonnen had managed to get past Fisichella in the pit stops and Ralf went on to make his way up from ninth to collect third. Michael wound up crashing out during the safety car period, leaving '05 with the certainty that he'll be on a hiding to nothing if this sort of form continues in '06.
However, there was one man that no one was ever going to be able to catch in this race and his name was Fernando Alonso. His singing of "we are the champions" over the team radio and his caught-on-camera nuttiness in the cockpit after the race pretty much said it all, though Raikonen and McLaren put up a big fight, F1 history will say that 2005 belonged to Renault and Fernando Alonso.
Roll on 2006.
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