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The F1 circus returned to the awesome splendour of the Spa-Francorchamps circuit after missing a year due to wrangling over fag advertising. This was such a relief after the sterile autodromes we’re increasingly having to suffer and a fitting venue for Scuderia Ferrari’s 700th GP and also for the race in which MS could clinch his seventh world title - if he scored two points more than Rubens. As if to emphasise what we’ve been missing, qualifying was wet – further adding to the challenge faced by the drivers. Mark Webber was quickest until the rain eased off and it started to dry out. Jenson Button was caught in the transition period, where it was too dry for wets and too wet for dries and he was slower than Webber despite the drier track. If you follow. Incidentally, there has been intense speculation about Button’s forthcoming defection from BAR to Williams, most think it’s about money - despite what he says. This website can now exclusively reveal the real reason. Jenson is a young guy, Cock-o’-the-Walk, with all the trappings of success, “popstar” girlfriend, yacht, jet etc. and what do they give him to drive? An old Honda Civic! No wonder he’s off to (BMW) Williams! Similarly, Mark Webber must have been really proud of his Jag, until his mates down the pub dissed it because it’s just a jazzed-up Mondeo. It’s going to be really funny when these two turn up at Grove next season, expecting to get their hands on M5s and Sir Frank hands them they keys to their 1 Series’........ It’s ironic because if Ralf had known about this he might well have stayed at Williams. He’s not getting any younger and wanted something easy to park, but Sir Frank did the deal too late and Ralf’s off to Toyota and looking forward to taking over da Matta’s Corolla. Pablo must have been furious though, he’d have to have something big, black and German with smoked glass and shiny wheels, so he had no choice but to go to McLaren where, of course Mercedes provide the pool cars. Let’s hope that Ron is generous and lets DC take his with him when he leaves and that it’s a diesel, so he can either run a taxi service or he’ll have to spend some of his redundancy money. So what must Ferrari have done when Schuey went to Jean and said he needed something with more seats than the Enzo for Corrina to do the Vufflens-le-Chateau school run? Easy, Jean’d be on the phone to Luca and there’d be a Maserati Quattroporte parked outside before you could say Bling! Meanwhile, Rubens has got his new Panda and so everyone’s happy. Yet another reason why Ferrari is the top team in F1 – they’ve got ALL the angles covered. Meanwhile, back at Spa, when the Renaults came out, their tyre choice was spot on, both were sent out on intermediates and Jarno Trulli went quickest by 2½ seconds! Alonso was a bit heavy-footed and consequently slower than his team-mate. Then it started to rain again with Ferrari yet to run! Giancarlo Fisichella was the first of the Bridgestone wet runners and was awesome through Eau Rouge but nearly two seconds slower than the Renaults This did not look good for Ferrari but the tifosi need not have worried. When Rubens came out his F2004 had so much grip he was able to use a dry line! Such was the grip that he was sucked into the Bus Stop chicane too fast and ended up slightly slower than Fisi. MS must have been told about this and was just a fraction too cautious in the same corner, which put him in second place behind Trulli by just 0.072 seconds! The race itself was dry which meant for a great deal of uncertainty, like who had least compromised their dry set-ups for pace in wet qualifying and which brand of unscrubbed dry tyres would work best? At the start Webber left his braking too late for La Source and ran into the back of Rubens, he carried on, ran wide and clipped Sato in Eau Rouge precipitating another accident in which both Minardis and Pantano (Jordan) were involved. This and other first corner incidents caused the Safety Car to be deployed for the first time that afternoon and about half the field went into the pits, where one of the most interesting sights was Ruben’s car having its rear wing replaced. They are obviously super-strong, yet feather-light – clever stuff this F1. At the restart Trulli led and with Schuey clearly lacking grip, he suffered the ignominy of Raikkonen doing him up the inside of La Source and out-dragging him down to Eau Rouge. Montoya added insult to injury when he passed MS on the outside going into the Bus Stop. This left Schuey fifth – clearly the Bridgestones were slower in coming up to temperature after the Safety Car. Raikkonen made his way up to third and was promoted to second when Trulli pitted on lap 10; taking the lead a lap later when Alonso spun on his own oil (I had a Renault like that once). The Finn pitted for the first time on lap 13, his team-mate having made an emergency stop immediately before with what was to prove a portent for the rest of the race – a punctured Michelin. Raikkonen “did a Schuey” after his stop - got the hammer down and disappeared, aided by erstwhile leader Trulli’s handling having gone awry which also allowed MS to easily catch and pass him for second place. Montoya later tried the same move on Trulli in the Bus Stop as he’d pulled earlier on Schuey, though maybe from further back, or maybe Renault mirrors aren’t as big as Ferraris’, but for whatever reason the two collided. MS picked up his pace just before the final stops and closed on Kimi, so McLaren nicked another page out of the Ferrari hand book and brought their man in. However, the effectiveness of this move was nearly spoiled when Button suffered a Michelin blow-out at over 200mph when braking for Les Combes. He collected the hapless Baumgartner’s Minardi which he was lapping at the time. The Safety Car was deployed again as there was debris over the track and again we were treated to the sight of the field filtering past the accident, whilst marshals pushed shards of carbon fibre and other razor-sharp debris around with brooms – shades of Indianapolis. It seems that it’s OK to emasculate great corners in the name of safety but not to red-flag races. Cynics suggest that this is all to do with TV. Slow corners mean that the sponsors get more coverage, but stopping races messes up TV schedules. It was odd that only Michelins seemed to be affected. Raikkonen was clearly in control of the situation as he backed the field up before the re-start then got the jump on Schuey. Montoya suffered a rear Michelin failure and limped into retirement. DC tagged Klien whilst shaping up pass him, causing yet another Safety Car period. At the restart Kimi repeated the last process, Schumacher had no answer and that was that. Amazingly, Rubens had taken advantage of the carnage to work his way up to third but MS still had the required point gap to secure his seventh World Championship But the day was Raikkonen’s, his sheer speed and mastery of the Safety Car situations somewhat overshadowing Schuey’s title win, his fifth in a row.
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