Räikkönen repeats Belgium GP victory, but Alonso is nearly World Champion

McLaren celebrations dimmed by Montoya shunt and by Renault rival's presence on the podium

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Kimi Räikkönen notched up the ninth Formula One victory of his career and his sixth of this campaign, adding a second Belgian GP winner's trophy to go with the one he took last year, at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit on Sunday.
      However, any thoughts that the win would somehow smooth his path to the F1 Drivers' Championship could be forgotten, since Fernando Alonso (Renault) was right up there beside him on the podium, in 2nd spot. Räikkönen's net gain in points was just two: he is still 25 points adrift of the Spaniard, with only three races left in the season.
     
The McLaren-Mercedes cars of Räikkönen and his team-mate Juan Pablo Montoya were on the front row of the grid, with Montoya qualifying on pole, and the pair got away first. As they are these days easily the quickest cars in Formula One, the McLarens led the race to the point of dominating proceedings.
      Damp conditions made the track awkward in places, and the safety car had to be called in after Giancarlo Fisichella in the second Renault crashed out spectacularly on the fast Eau Rouge corner. Even this had little effect on the race as a real competition: Montoya and Räikkönen swapped fastest laps with almost tedious regularity.
     
After the requisite pit-stops around Lap 33, Räikkönen emerged in front of Montoya to nobody's great surprise: the McLaren team preferred this technique to the old Ferrari practice of having Michael Schumacher "overtake" a resigned Rubens Barrichello on the track.
      Thereafter the race appeared to be winding down to a comfortable and deserved one-two for McLaren-Mercedes, but Montoya had an altercation with the BMW-Williams of Antonio Pizzonia four laps from the end to gift Alonso an unexpected second place and two extra points.
      The Montoya-Pizzonia incident and an earlier shunt involving Michael Schumacher and the BAR-Honda of Takuma Sato both prompted investigations by the race stewards. Sato was demoted 10 places on the grid for the next Grand Prix, in Brazil. Montoya, meanwhile, was completely exonerated by his boss Ron Dennis for his crash, but Pizzonia was slapped with a cash fine of USD 8000 for bundling Montoya off the track while trying to unlap himself.
     
The disappointment in the McLaren-Mercedes camp was palpable: not only did Räikkönen make a net gain of just two points on his main rival for the Drivers' Championship title, but the team lost a valuable eight points that would have put them into the overall lead in the manufacturers' standings. Renault are currently setting the pace with 152 points to the 146 of McLaren. Ferrari are back in 3rd.
      The podium celebrations were thus rather subdued from Räikkönen's point of view - with 86 points to Alonso's 111, the Finn now has little more than a mathematical chance of grabbing the title, despite having a winning car that is now also reliable enough to complete races.
      Even if Räikkönen keeps on winning, Alonso only needs to finish 3rd in one of the remaining three events, or to secure six points by some other means, and he will be crowned champion. This feat should not be beyond him, as he has missed out on points only three times so far this season. For Räikkönen, it will be the second time he finishes in the frustrating runner-up spot: he was 2nd behind Michael Schumacher in 2003.
      The Brazilian Grand Prix will be held on the weekend of 23-25th September.
     
Ever since he entered Formula One racing, Kimi Räikkönen has been a bona fide Finnish celebrity. Being in the public eye has not always been such a delight, and in a weekly article to be published on Tuesday, Räikkönen expresses the somewhat impossible wish that he could live a more "normal" life. The article will appear in our weeklies on Tuesday afternoon.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Räikkönen victory in Istanbul brings only marginal gains in F1 title race (22.8.2005)

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