| 2003 European Grand Prix Race Report |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Williams In Charge
Raikkonen started well from pole position. Michael Schumacher, the man who had only recently passed him for the Championship lead, had expressed some misgivings about qualifying second and therefore starting on the dusty side of the track, and he was right to do so. The Ferrari did not leave the line particularly rapidly, and of all the leading drivers Schumacher was the one who devoted most effort to moving across rather than down the track as soon as the race started. The upshot of all this was that Ralf came sailing past, demoting his brother to third (as pictured below).
Each of the Williams drivers suffered tyre graining quite early on, so Michael was held up in the early laps as Raikkonen opened out a big lead. The first round of pit stops did not change the race order to any significant extent, though it was quite revealing. Nearly all the front-runners came in within a couple of laps of each other, which showed among other things that Raikkonen's pace was not due to a light fuel load. In fact, the man who turned out to have been working under the most difficult conditions during the first stint was Ralf, who stopped last of all, a full four laps later than Raikkonen. All the same, the Finn looked as if he had more than enough speed to deal with any clever Williams strategy. He was still way out in front when his engine fell apart, denying him what would surely have been his second Grand Prix win.
He changed all four next time in, and from that point on his Williams absolutely flew. He quickly caught Michael, who he noticed was struggling through the corners, and was in a position to pounce as the two drivers approached the Dunlop hairpin. People will be talking for months to come about what happened next. Schumacher did what he had to do, moving to the inside line to force Montoya the long way round if he wanted to get past. Montoya, whose tyres were still fresh, knew he had to make the move Right Now, and also remembered that he had seen Rubens Barrichello take a very wide line through here earlier in the race, which suggested that there was a lot of grip round the outside. So he went for it. There was the tiniest amount of contact between the two cars. Schumacher's left front wheel brushed the wing of the Williams, though not by enough to cause any damage. In these situations, if either car goes off it's likely to be the one on the outside, but this time it was the Ferrari which spun. Montoya, admitting that he hadn't made life particularly easy for his rival, also denied that he had forced him into an accident: "When I went to the corner I wasn’t going to give him all the track but I gave him enough room to go around the inside. Michael probably went in too fast and when we touched it spun the car around." Ferrari's Ross Brawn was highly critical of Montoya afterwards, saying that "a very crude overtaking manoeuvre" had been attempted by someone who was "not a class driver." Brawn was wrong. It was a peach of a move, performed by a real racer. It's difficult to recall many occasions when Schumacher has done such a neat job of getting past anyone. With the rear wheels of the Ferrari now sitting in the gravel on the outside of the corner, Schumacher required assistance from four marshals to get going, and many people at first believed that this would result in his exclusion. How ironic that would have been - reliability was on the whole very impressive in this race, and it looked as if the only two drivers to have retired at this stage were the ones sitting in first and second positions in the World Championship. However, Schumacher was not excluded. As they stand at the moment, the regulations allow a car to be pushed by marshals if it is in a dangerous position (which the Ferrari certainly was), and in these circumstances the driver will be excluded only if the car's engine has stalled (which it hadn't). No rule had been broken, so Michael was free to continue. He was now seventh, behind the Williamses, Barrichello (who spent the whole race struggling with his car's balance, and had lost out to Montoya during the second pit stop) and an impressive three-way battle involving the two Renaults and David Coulthard's McLaren. Jarno Trulli retired on lap 37 out of 60, but that still left the other two to put on what became the big show of the afternoon. Neither of the Renaults looked particularly comfortable at any stage of the race, but crucially Fernando Alonso (pictured) was ahead of Coulthard and showing every sign of intending to stay there.
Although the McLaren took lengths out of the Renault at each of the major braking areas, Coulthard never found a way past. Alonso couldn't pull away, so his only hope was to approach corners on what might be described as ambiguous lines and reduce Coulthard's options. He was still doing this four laps from home as the two cars approached the final chicane. Coulthard started to move to the inside, realised there wasn't going to be enough room, and then moved to the outside, while Alonso wobbled rather than weaved in front of him. The Renault had started braking much earlier than the McLaren, and Coulthard simply ran out of space, roaring past on the outside and careering wildly across the scenery before coming to rest in the gravel. Coulthard was not happy. "I have my own views on the incident which I will discuss privately with Alonso," he said, "but at the end of the day it's for the Stewards to decide." They did. Alonso retained fourth place, though it was nearly stolen from him as Michael Schumacher caught the ever-slower Renault and nearly ran into its gearbox coming round the final corner. Mark Webber and Jenson Button had an entertaining battle for fifth which ended in the former's favour, Webber complaining of early understeer which cleared up after the second pit stop. Behind them came the two Saubers - Nick Heidfeld, who would have started from the back of the grid after going off in qualifying, elected instead to start in the pit lane, and did a fine job to work his way up to a points-scoring position even though a healthy proportion of the field made it to the finish.
The Minardis of Justin Wilson and Jos Verstappen were the last cars running at the finish in 13th and 14th, though Coulthard was classified 15th on the basis of having completed enough of the race distance. The Minardi result belied the fact that both drivers raced very hard in the early laps, mostly in the company of Jacques Villeneuve's BAR. Villeneuve looked to be on spectacular form, but each of the moves he made to work his way up from last place was followed by some incident (a spin, then a pit stop to replace a dislodged front wing) which put him back there again. Eventually the car broke down.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
"You see, even a bad driver can win a race," explained Ralf Schumacher after taking maximum World Championship points in the European Grand Prix at the Nürburgring. It was a crafty dig at the people ("those who call themselves experts") who say he's not aggressive enough. Schumacher and Williams team-mate Juan Pablo Montoya were two of the truly class acts this afternoon - but the race really belonged to Kimi Raikkonen.
.gif){kind=small}
