San Marino GP, Imola (***SPOILER***)

Hey,

Yeah i stayed up late last night and watched it on channel 10. It would rate as one of the best and most exciting formula one races I have ever seen IMO.

The last 10 laps of the race were amazing, seeing the red car stick just 0.4 of a second off the tail of Alonso's Renault. According to the commentators they were saying due to the '05 regulations relating to the aerodynamics, the air behind the car becomes very turbulent causing no slipstream thus making overtaking extremely hard.

The Renault did pull away in the straights a fair bit and gained a few car lengths over the Fezza but in the corners the Renault lost out quite a fair bit IMO.

Imola looks like quite a tricky track, not alot of room for a clean overtaking spaces!

Anyways that would have to be one of my favourite races ever!

Cyas Stalled
 
Racing again .. finally !! , cause if Renault were going to have it all their own way like Ferrari usually does, then it would as just as boring. Here's hoping Button and co. can make a go of it was well, is interesting the complete lack of passing opportunities, passing in the pits is boring.

- xTc -
 
Imola engines

What a drive by Alonso! Sure it was defensive. But what an impressive effort to gain a further 2 points lead over MS when it would have been much easier to concede them.

MS retired in Bahrain with Hydraulic problems (after being quite quick). This would allow him to change the engine. Why wouldn't Ferrari take this choice when all the finishing Bahrain engines had a question mark? Renault put an up-graded engine in Fischi's car. It retired with what looked a bit like a re-run of Trulli's high speed off last year with a suspension failure.

Ferrari have been quick for the last 2 races now. They will start to win shortly. Has Ferdy got enough points in the bag if Raikkonen can get to the top of the podium and deny MS and the red barons big points each race?

Renault must address Fischi's problems if they want to grab the man. champ as well as the drivers' champ.

PS Good news! Alonso and his manager Flavio have signed on to the end of 2006 which is the end of MS contract with the red team. Coincidentally.
 
David M said:
PS Good news! Alonso and his manager Flavio have signed on to the end of 2006 which is the end of MS contract with the red team. Coincidentally.
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i wouldn't count on Schumacher retiring after the end of next year if he's still competitive and i wouldn't count on Ferrari droping Schumacher as there number 1 driver if they have that choice.
 
Great race there by both Schumacher and Alonso. That would have to be one of Schumi’s best races in his career. A great passing manoeuvre over Button. Alonso played it very smart, defending well and never made an error, slowing it up on the apexes which would and did make it near impossible for Schumi to get into the slipstream out of the corners and down the straights.

BAR have made in-roads and Button drove well to stick it in 3rd.

An honourable mention to Wurz as well, first race in some 4 years and able to finish a solid 4th.

Toyota were disappointing compared to previous races but still managed to scrape in the points. Ralf of course penalised with a 25sec penalty, thus drops from 8th to 9th, allowing Heidfeld to claim the final point.

Williams were below par, Webber was very disappointing, starting up in 4th way ahead of his teammate but finishing behind him in the race. He simply makes too many mistakes, two that I saw – one which cost him position against Sato.

Liuzzi had a great debut weekend, outclassing his more experience teammate Coulthard.

Villeneuve finally stepped up and put in a decent performance to finish in P6, great confidence boost for he and the team in him.
 
Too early to tell!

On the Gazzetta Dello Sport, it states that Ferrari are negotiating with Todt and Schumi for an extension, and by the looks of the race at Imola, he ain't quite finished yet! :nownow:
Fantastic drive by Alonso, and the the reason Flav's signed for another year is to groom his best driver to possibly go to Ferrari; Webber still not good enough to drive for top teams, and rumor is that BMW will pull out of Williams and concentrate with Sauber next year, and that leaves Cosworth to fill in the rear of the Williams......Webber back to square one. :confused:



David M said:
What a drive by Alonso! Sure it was defensive. But what an impressive effort to gain a further 2 points lead over MS when it would have been much easier to concede them.

MS retired in Bahrain with Hydraulic problems (after being quite quick). This would allow him to change the engine. Why wouldn't Ferrari take this choice when all the finishing Bahrain engines had a question mark? Renault put an up-graded engine in Fischi's car. It retired with what looked a bit like a re-run of Trulli's high speed off last year with a suspension failure.

Ferrari have been quick for the last 2 races now. They will start to win shortly. Has Ferdy got enough points in the bag if Raikkonen can get to the top of the podium and deny MS and the red barons big points each race?

Renault must address Fischi's problems if they want to grab the man. champ as well as the drivers' champ.

PS Good news! Alonso and his manager Flavio have signed on to the end of 2006 which is the end of MS contract with the red team. Coincidentally.
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Too early to tell

I agree, it is far too early to tell, but at the moment it is a tantalizing scenario. IMHO I dont think that Renault can stave off the pace that Ferrari showed at Imola until the end of the year. I suspect that the season will degrade into another red team benefit.

Drivers Champ
Michael can easily overhaul Ferdy with 150 points still available.
From Renault's point of view it's now all about damage control. But they have inflicted serious damage whilst Ferrari were sleeping. Alonso's drive to get, rather than lose 2 points, was inspired.

Man Champ
The second drivers for both teams are struggling to get points in recent events. This may give Renault cause for some hope at the end of the year.

Overall, it is game on. I'm staying up late in 2 weeks time. At Barcellona where the Renault's regularly test, Michael will have to race on the same (well-worked) engine from Imola. Ferdy will have a "new spec" engine and so will Fischi. Renault think this track will suit them better than Imola.
It's fingers crossed again!

At least F1 is a competition this year and our boys have a sniff of success.

The last section of my previous post was all (mostly) about conspiracy theories.

PS. What a shame about Mark Webber. He doesn't seem to be able to show the race-craft needed to hold his qualifying position, let alone improve on it.

PPS. If Ferdy does win in his home Grand Prix of Spain, the county will explode into festivites bigger than Moomba*

* a celebration by the banks of the Yarra River attended by Melburnians in their tens/hundreds thousands (in my childhood) with fireworks and a carnival atmosphere.#

#posted in the historical interests of current Victorian capital city dwellers.
Thank you Jeff.
 
Sounds as if Villeneuve's problems have been very much set-up related. Apparently he likes his cars to be very stiff. It almost reminds me of the time when Rosberg joined McLaren in '86. At the time, Rosberg had a reputation for being the fastest driver in the world.

Prost wiped the floor with him that year. But Rosberg spent much of the year trying to dial out understeer from his car, and he and designer John Barnard were at loggerheads all year because they fundamentally differered in their ideas as to how a race car should be driven.

Note that when Rosberg did manage to get the car set-up to his liking at Hockenheim and Adelaide, he completely blew the field away!!

Some F1 insiders are labelling Ferarri's new pace 'hollow' aftey they did 16 days of back-to-back testing after Bahrain, in a clear violation of the 30 days per year testing limit. Other teams are now considering their options, as they cannot allow Ferrari to waltz away into the sunset.

Webber again showed strong early pace but was let down by a bad start (again) and bad strategy (again). His frustrations got the better of him and he was lucky not to spin off. Will be an interesting year for him, as after getting the full support of the Jaguar management for two season, it will be interesting to see who Frank and Patrick treat him.
 
http://www.asturianos.net/multime/videos/2005/sanmarino_ultlap.wmv
the last lap of the imola race. 14mb great quality!!
 
purrr-geot said:
http://www.asturianos.net/multime/videos/2005/sanmarino_ultlap.wmv
the last lap of the imola race. 14mb great quality!!
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awesome stuff... didnt see the end of that race. good find
 
Reminiscent of Senna's masterfull display on Mansell in monaco '93, although not quite. Alonso is something special

Yes the Ferrari is coming good. You would have been foolish to write off a team with a budget of over $600,000,000 in their pockets per year

But i have to express my disgust in the FIA's lack of control over Ferrari. Teams are trying to implement a limit to the amount of testing done between races to keep the sport from ballooning to astronomical costs. This is completely ignored by Ferrari. As always, they think they are bigger than the sport itself

Ferrari had 16 days of gruelling testing where they were even running in more than one circuit at the same time. Outrageous

They're claims that they're the only competitive team running on Bridgestones and they have a right to is rubbish. Why? because years ago when most teams were on bridgestones, Ferrari were they're number one priority. Rivals like McLaren and Williams defected to Michelin as Bridgestone clearly favoured Ferrari

The tables have now turned and look who's crying? Being the favoured bridg$tone runner has lost it$ advantage as everyone el$e i$ on Michelin$. It$ they're own choice
 
2cv said:
But i have to express my disgust in the FIA's lack of control over Ferrari.
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One has to wonder how much of the $600,000,000 Ferrari spent on buying the 'F' in FIA :eek:
 
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HONG KONG PUGGY said:
One has to wonder how much of the $600,000,000 Ferrari soent on buying the 'F' in FIA :eek:
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Maybe it should become the FYA ;)
 
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