Italy - Ferrari Owners' Club

GRAND PRIX: Italy: See You in Court
by Winston D'Arcy

11.9.07

Well what can you say, other than McLaren gave Ferrari the most severe drubbing? Painful under any circumstances, but especially so at Monza.

The Grey Empire qualified and raced the wheels off the Scuderia with Alonso first and Hamilton second in both. Massa retired early on with something awry in the rear suspension, this after Räikkönen had been pitched off the track in Saturday practice when approaching Ascari at high speed, seemingly the result of a mechanical failure too. He crashed heavily and next day complained of sore neck, which may sound a bit wet, but not when you've got 4G heaving your bonce about in various directions!

This must have meant that he was below par for the race or maybe could not look in his mirrors properly, but for whatever reason he was unable to do anything about the most astonishingly brave and aggressive overtaking manoeuvre by Lewis Hamilton to seize back second place - it having fallen to Räikkönen by dint of his one stop to Hamilton's two.

The performance of both McLaren drivers was exceptional all weekend. Alonso was sublime, serenely in control throughout. Hamilton was pugnacious. At the start he angled his car to cut Massa off, barging him out of the way but leaving him a car's width on the outside, which Massa grabbed to get ahead. In turn, Massa left a car's width on the outside heading into the first corner, which Hamilton plunged into. The two cars kissed, Hamilton clattered across the run-off area but hung onto the car and the place. He then defended robustly for the rest of the lap and that was it. Meanwhile, Fred was long gone.

Hamilton's move on Räikkönen on lap 43 was astonishing in its audacity, aggression and the sheer brilliance of his car control. He launched himself up the inside of the Ferrari into the first chicane, the move coming from a long way back, and he seemed to carry impossible speed into the corner. Where a lesser man would have shot straight on, Hamilton flicked the back end out to get the car to turn into the corner and wrestled his way through the rest of it to hang on to the place. A masterpiece of a move, worthy of Michael Schumacher at his best - and therein lies the problem. The current Ferrari drivers do fine when they've got the best car, but unlike Hamilton, Alonso and of course Michael, do not seem capable of pulling anything out of the bag when they haven't.

It pains me to say so but the performance of the whole McLaren team was superb. Flawless in the face of every pressure that Ferrari and the rest of Italy could apply; e.g. representatives of the Italian magistracy choosing this race to interview them about the Spy Scandal. In the face of this they united, forgot their own differences, and got the job done - except they haven't. This year's Championships will be settled on Thursday when the FIA sits again on the Spy Scandal to consider fresh evidence.

The evidence is said to regard an e-mail exchange between Alonso and (McLaren test driver) Pedro de la Rosa. In them de la Rosa makes reference to Ferrari set-up secrets that he had obtained from McLaren's suspended chief designer Mike Coughlan. These e-mails are said to pre-date the receipt of the infamous dossier. If all this is true, then a draconian penalty is the likely outcome and both titles may well yet end up at Ferrari. However if this does happen, Ferrari will not have earned them.

To return to the actual business on-track. A car's ability to ride the kerbs properly is critical at Monza - it must be "compliant", yet F1 cars' suspensions are extremely stiff and have little travel, so how can that be? After careful data-analysis (watching and re-winding the old Betamax a few times) I reckon I have the answer for the Maccas - their wishbones are flexing! Anyone know better?

Ferrari might have been trounced, but Räikkönen still finished near half a minute in front of the next man, Nick Heidfeld. Both Bimmers did well again with Kubica fifth, despite a chaotic pit-stop during which his car fell off the front jack. Rosberg was a strong sixth for Williams and is consistently quick now. It'll be interesting to see where he is next year. He raced hard and long with - Swampy! Yes, Honda had a bit of a renaissance with Button qualifying in the top-ten and coming home eighth to score his and the team's second point of the year. Kovalainen was seventh for Renault, meaning that again 50% of the points-scoring places were occupied by young chargers.

It was interesting that in the week prior to the Italian GP Jarno Trulli was saying the best he could hope for from Ferrari was one of their gelati and bemoaning the fact that they never give Italian drivers a chance. I always thought this was due to the fact that the Italian press, always demanding and hyper-critical of failure by the Scuderia, were simply impossible if an Italian driver was driving, so years ago Enzo said "No more Italians".

This was relaxed for Michele Alboreto who drove for Ferrari from 1984-1988 and I thought that was it, but then I remembered that after Enzo died Ivan Capelli had an unhappy year there in 1992. I had quite forgotten that Gianni Morbidelli finished sixth in his only race for the Scuderia (1991 Australia) and Nicola Larini, who drove two in 1992 and two in 1994, subbing for the injured Jean Alesi. He actually finished second in the 1994 San Marino GP but this achievement was totally overshadowed by events at that tragic weekend. Since 1996 only six drivers have had the honour of occupying the ultimate seat in F1 and none of them Italian. I would suggest that there just hasn't been one remotely good enough. The last Italian World Champion was Alberto Ascari in 1953! Alboreto came closest with second in 1985 but it looks like there won't be another for quite some time.

Some had high hopes Valentino Rossi would join Ferrari and do a Surtees, but at the end of the day he just wasn't quick enough. Fiat were so keen to be associated with him that they chose to sponsor his Yamaha MotoGP team. I've already mentioned how this-to-me cynical marketing manoeuvre has backfired as Rossi, Yamaha and Michelin been unable to match Casey Stoner on the other red Italian racing machine - a Ducati. The latest example of this was the San Marino GP at Misano recently where Stoner won with ease and Rossi dropped out with engine problems after being off the pace throughout the race.

I like MotoGP but admit that I allowed myself a wry smile after Misano, which was so boring it could have been F1. Bikers have been pretty smug about the superiority of the spectacle of their sport compared to ours, but they've managed to mess it up by just fiddling with the engine and tyre rules. Just think what would have happened if they'd had aero too! The change in tyre regulations has stopped Michelin cooking up a fresh lot overnight at Clermond Ferrand on race weekends and rushing them to the (mostly European) race venues, something Bridgestone obviously could not do.

There's been a lot of moaning about tyres, but pundits believe that the real problem is the drop in engine size from 990cc to 800cc. The 'bikes are less powerful, but better balanced and quicker if ridden more smoothly and "technically". As any fule kno, what you need for spectacular motor racing is an excess of horsepower over handling!

Roll on next year when traction control will disappear from F1 with the introduction of an FIA-specified standardised ECU. Should be very interesting when combined with wooden control tyres. Unfortunately, the return to slicks has been quietly dropped, so aero will still have an excessive influence. Didn't stop racing and overtaking at Monza though did it? Probably because the circuit has evolved, rather than being designed. A curse on Tilke and all his works!

Footnote
Did anyone else clock what looked like a 348 course car as the grid formed up?

Jean Todt:

"We are very disappointed at having failed to secure a better result than just this third place for Kimi in our home Grand Prix. Felipe was forced to retire in the early stages because of a mechanical problem with the rear suspension, the cause of which has yet to be analysed. With Kimi, we ran a different strategy to our rivals but we did not have enough speed to get ahead of them."

Kimi Räikkönen :

"This was definitely a tough race for me because of the pain I felt in my neck after yesterday's accident, which was bad enough to make it hard for me to hold my head steady under braking. Having said that, today we were not really quick enough. We knew it would not be an easy weekend, as we had already realized that in last week's test, with Friday and yesterday confirming it. The car was not bad in the first stint but then we were not strong enough. Hamilton's overtaking move? I tried to defend my position but he was definitely quicker than me."

Felipe Massa:

"I am very disappointed. It's horrible to see your chances go in the early stages because of a reliability problem. There was something not working with the rear suspension: coming into Ascari I could feel a problem under braking and came into the pits, thinking it might be due to a puncture. However, once the tyres were changed that was still undriveable and I had to retire. "

THE ITALIAN GRAND PRIX, AUTODROMO DI MONZA, ITALY; 53 LAPS: WEATHER: SUNNY.
Classified:
Pos	Driver	Team	Time
1.	Alonso	McLaren	1:18:37.806
2.	Hamilton	McLaren	+ 6.062
3.	Räikkönen	Ferrari	+ 27.325
4.	Heidfeld	BMW Sauber	+ 56.562
5.	Kubica	BMW Sauber	+ 1:00.558
6.	Rosberg	Williams	+ 1:05.810
7.	Kovalainen	Renault	+ 1:06.751
8.	Button	Honda	+ 1:12.168

Rtd.	Massa	Ferrari	Lap 11

Fastest lap:Alonso, 1:22.871

World Championship Standings, Round 13

Drivers:			Constructors:
1.	Hamilton	92	1.	McLaren*	166
2.	Alonso	89	2.	Ferrari	143
3.	Räikkönen	74	3.	BMW Sauber	86
4.	Massa	64	4.	Renault	38
5.	Heidfeld	52	5.	Williams	22
6.	Kubica	33	6.	Red Bull	16
7.	Kovalainen	21	7.	Toyota	12
8.	Fisichella	17	8.	Super Aguri	4
9.	Wurz	13	9.	Honda	2
10.	Rosberg	12
11.=	Coulthard	8
11.=	Webber	8	* Subject to appeal, court hearings etc.
13.	Trulli	7
14.	R. Schumacher	5
15.	Sato	4
16.	Button	2
17.	Vettel	1