Räikkönen's weekend ruined by drive-shaft failure

Alonso and Schumacher provide stirring spectacle

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Kimi Räikkönen did more or less everything right last weekend at Imola, but he still came away from the San Marino Grand Prix empty-handed. The Finnish McLaren-Mercedes driver was fastest in both sets of qualifying, and in fact on Sunday morning in the second qualifying session he blew away the rest of the field to lap some 0.6 seconds ahead of his nearest rival.
      Räikkönen duly took pole position, made an excellent start, and was in complete command and extending his lead over Fernando Alonso in the Renault, with the remainder of the field straggling in their wake, when his engine suddenly terminated its contract without warning.
      As the other cars sprinted past, a naturally furious Räikkönen limped back to the pits to retire. The problem was a broken left driveshaft, and there was nothing to be done.
     
Thereafter we were treated to a race of two very different halves. In the opening stages, Alonso and Jensen Button  (BAR Honda) dominated and the Ferraris of World Champion Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello occupied uncustomary places in the middle of the field.
      Barrichello retired on Lap 18, and it began to look as though the fanatical home crowd would have nothing to cheer about.
      Schumacher had other ideas. His Ferrari was heavily laden with fuel, and as he stayed out on the track longer than the others in his first stint, he began to put together a sequence of blistering laps that brought him up to 3rd place and into serious contention for victory.
     
Amid scenes that have too long been absent from Formula One racing, he went wheel-to-wheel first with Button and then, having disposed of the Englishman, over a memorable last 12 laps, he tussled with Alonso.
      The young Spaniard, looking for his third successive win of the season, was given the toughest time of his career, but he managed to hold off the assaults of the considerably faster Ferrari and take the chequered flag just 0.2 seconds ahead.
      Alonso thus extended his already commanding lead at the top of the Drivers' Championship table.
      Jensen Button brought the BAR Honda home in third, scoring his first points of the season, and the other placings went to Alexander Wurz (McLaren), Takuma Sato (BAR Honda), Jacques Villeneuve (Red Bull Sauber), Jarno Trulli (Toyota), and Ralf Schumacher (Toyota). The younger of the two Schumachers was later penalised for a dangerous manoeuvre in the pit lane and was given a 25-second time penalty. This dropped him to 11th place and elevated Nick Heidfeld (BMW-Williams) into 8th for the last point.
     
If Räikkönen got nothing out of the wekend's racing but a sincere apology from the Mercedes-McLaren team, one other Finn did rather well at Imola. Heikki Kovalainen finished 1st and 3rd in the two GP2 starts in Imola on Saturday and Sunday, and he leads the standings in this new racing category.
      Nico Rosberg, son of former F1 World Champion Keke Rosberg, was 8th in Saturday's race and was leading in the early laps on Sunday but was forced out with brake failure.


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