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Imperious Alonso rides waves of chaos
Sunday, 02, April, 2006, 19:27
The 2006 Australian Grand Prix will go down as one of the most eventful, turbulent and downright bizarre races in the long history of the world championship.
But Fernando Alonso was cheerfully oblivious to the bedlam that was going on behind him as he judged every crunch moment to perfection and romped to a flawless second win of the season.
Kimi Raikkonen was the only man to put the world champion under any sort of pressure, but his challenge was dented by a damaged nosecone and he had to settle for second place.
Ralf Schumacher lifted Toyota out of the doldrums with a fine performance that secured the final podium spot, while Nick Heidfeld delivered on BMWÂ’s potential with fourth.
For Jenson Button, the race that had promised so much was an unmitigated disaster.
Having claimed pole position with a sublime lap in qualifying, the Briton lost the lead early on and fell ever further down the order on the numerous restarts.
He looked set to salvage three points only for his Honda engine to blow up yards from the chequered flag.
The non-stop drama began on the warm-up lap.
First Juan Pablo Montoya spun while warming his tyres coming out of the last corner, dropping to the tail of the field, and then Giancarlo Fisichella stalled his Renault on the line, triggering an aborted start.
The Italian was forced to take the delayed start from the pit lane, but Montoya picked his way through the traffic and resumed his original third-row grid position.
Button just held off a locked-up Alonso into the first corner, while the McLaren duo gave no quarter as they engaged in a thrilling wheel-to-wheel tussle through the first half of the lap.
But a collision at turn 2 between Felipe Massa (Ferrari), Christian Klien (Red Bull) and Nico Rosberg (Williams) brought out the safety car for the first of four appearances.
Rosberg and Massa were eliminated on the spot, while Jarno Trulli also had to retire following a skirmish with the other Red Bull of David Coulthard.
The restart gave Button the first taste of a problem that was to become a recurring theme of his afternoon.
Unable to generate sufficient front tyre temperature to get a decent shot off the final corner, Button fell prey to Alonso even before they got to turn one.
The Spaniard took off like a scalded cat, pulling out a massive 2.7s cushion after one flying lap as Button struggled to fend off RaikkonenÂ’s McLaren.
The race didnÂ’t have time to settle into a rhythm before the safety car had to be deployed again to retrieve the battered Red Bull of Klien.
The Austrian had survived his earlier shunt and was minding his own business when the car turned sharp left under braking for turn nine and speared into the wall.
Raikkonen took advantage of ButtonÂ’s tyre temperature problems to slice past into second place at the restart, but locked up badly into turn one as he did so.
Initially that didnÂ’t seem to present the Finn with too many problems and he even began to close on Alonso, trimming his lead to 1.9s on lap 12.
But soon afterwards the vibrations caused a piece of his front wing endplate to break off and his pace promptly disappeared.
Alonso soon re-established some breathing space and, thanks to a blistering sequence of fastest laps, got the lead out to over eight seconds before his first pit stop on lap 20.
After unaccountably falling to sixth during the first safety car interlude, Montoya had been marching back up the lap chart with some feisty overtaking and was hounding third-placed Button prior to the stops.
When Jenson emerged from the pit lane only just in front of him, and on cold tyres, the Colombian snatched the place around the outside of turn two as if stealing candy from a baby.
Meanwhile Mark Webber had sent the Australian crowd into raptures by taking over the lead as he stretched his first fuel load longer than most of the other front-runners.
Alas, he never made it to the Williams garage as his FW28 ground to a halt on the grass – a real shame as he was on for a podium finish.
BMWÂ’s Heidfeld was another to use a long first stint to his advantage, vaulting to fourth place ahead of Button.
Jenson once again struggled to extract any speed from his Honda on cold tyres, enabling Michael Schumacher to catch him hand over fist.
The German, in fact, was now one of the fastest men on the circuit, shrugging off an embarrassingly poor opening stint in which he suffered the ignominy of being passed by Tonio LiuzziÂ’s V10-powered Toro Rosso.
His Ferrari apparently miraculously transformed, Schumacher was now matching leader Alonso’s times – but looking increasingly ragged as he did so, running off the road out of turn 14 and skating across the grass at turn one.
On lap 33 Schumacher’s exuberance caught up with him, as he attempted to ride out some mid-corner understeer in the final turn and tattooed the wall on the exit – in full view of the teams along the pit wall.
The impact destroyed the left side of the Ferrari and the seven-time world champion trudged back to his pit via the Toyota garage.
The ensuing safety car period triggered the final round of pit stops, which effectively put paid to McLarenÂ’s hopes of challenging Alonso for victory.
The chrome-liveried cars were separated by just a couple of seconds when the SC was called, forcing Montoya to queue up behind his team-mate as Raikkonen was serviced.
Worse still for JPM, RaikkonenÂ’s stop took much longer than usual as the team elected to replace his damaged nosecone, the effects of which had hampered Kimi badly in the raceÂ’s middle stages.
The delay allowed Heidfeld to leapfrog Raikkonen for second place, while Montoya fell to sixth behind Button and Ralf Schumacher.
The restart could not have gone better for Alonso if he had scripted it himself.
With two slow-moving Midland cars acting as a buffer between him and Heidfeld, the Spaniard simply left his pursuers for dead, pulling out something like six seconds in the space of one lap.
That margin was negated, however, when the safety car was deployed yet again following a colossal accident for Liuzzi, from which the Italian was fortunate to emerge unscathed.
In the frantic half-lap before the SC was declared, Button had been demoted by both Schumacher and Montoya, although the McLaren driver got a bump from Jenson at turn three for his troubles.
Three corners later, Heidfeld undid some of his good work with a grassy excursion that promoted Schumacher and Montoya to third and fourth respectively.
The next man to err was Montoya, who – in a virtual carbon copy of Michael Schumacher’s incident – understeered onto the rough grass coming out of the final corner.
He somehow caught the resulting tank-slapper only for his McLaren to mysteriously lose all drive almost instantaneously.
Meanwhile Alonso continued on his merry way; so comfortable was he that he even radioed in to his race engineer that he was “just relaxing”.
“I’m feeling pretty chilled myself, mate,” was Rod Nelson’s amused reply.
As ever, Raikkonen didnÂ’t give up, proving both his spirit and his underlying pace by setting the fastest lap of the race on the very last tour; but the damage for McLaren was done.
SchumacherÂ’s third place was a real fillip for the beleaguered Toyota team, which just two races ago was mired in the lower reaches of the midfield.
Heidfeld was impressive again en route to fourth, although he would have made the podium but for his minor faux pas.
Button should have come home fifth, but as he turned into the final corner his Honda engine detonated, engulfing the close-following Fisichella in an oily cloud of smoke.
Whether Button could have coasted across the finishing line quickly became a moot point, as he was instructed over the radio to pull to a stop to allow Honda to make a penalty-free engine change before the San Marino GP.
His demise handed fifth to Fisichella, whose earlier lack of pace relative to Alonso had caused consternation in the Renault pit and led to a very public dressing-down over the team radio.
The high attrition rate promoted Jacques Villeneuve (BMW Sauber), Rubens Barrichello (Honda) and Scott Speed (Toro Rosso) to the final points-paying positions, but the American rookie was later penalised for passing under yellow flags, handing a welcome gift to David Coulthard.
Australian Grand Prix result - 57 laps
1. ALONSO Renault 1h34m27.870s
2. RAIKKONEN McLaren +1.8s
3. R.SCHUMACHER Toyota +24.8s
4. HEIDFELD BMW Sauber +31.0s
5. FISICHELLA Renault +38.4s
6. VILLENEUVE BMW Sauber +49.6s
7. BARRICHELLO Honda +51.9s
8. COULTHARD Red Bull +54.0s
9. BUTTON Honda +1 lap
10. ALBERS Midland +1 lap
11. SPEED Toro Rosso +1 lap*
12. SATO Super Aguri +2 laps
13. IDE Super Aguri +3 laps
R. MONTOYA McLaren +11 laps
R. MONTEIRO Midland +18 laps
R. LIUZZI Toro Rosso +20 laps
R. M.SCHUMACHER Ferrari +25 laps
R. WEBBER Williams +35 laps
R. KLIEN Red Bull +53 laps
R. TRULLI Toyota +57 laps
R. ROSBERG Williams +57 laps
R. MASSA Ferrari +57 laps
Fastest lap: RAIKKONEN 1m26.045s
*Speed penalised 25s for passing under yellows
