Belgian GP: Raikkonen, Alonso, Button
Written by George Katinger · September 11, 2005
On a wet but drying Spa-Francorchamps course Kimi Raikkonen demonstrates his driving and car superiority by racing to his sixth victory of the year. Teammate Juan Pablo was not so fortunate.
speedtv.com: Raikkonen Wins at Spa, But
Comments
9 Responses to “Belgian GP: Raikkonen, Alonso, Button”
Got something to say?
You must be logged in to post a comment.
“Nice” transistion from one week to the next wasn’t it?
Pizzonia goes from Supersub and drive of the race, to NYC hack driver looking like a wreck waiting to happen.
Lap 42.
If Mike wanted to smack Sato imagine what Juan wanted to do…
we can’t be sure what happened between pizzonia and montoya. i could be montoya’s fault: http://www.planetf1.com/news/story_20916.shtml . but sato needs to go back to driving school. an accident under safety car period is unforgivable and totally unnecessary.
There can be no doubt that Pizzonia was largely to blame; but Juan has demonstrated a flagrant disregard for his own welfare by sliding in front of knuckle heads as in Turkey and Spa. If Juan was a little more caring about his own situation he would have finished second.
Witness Alonso “racing” with Klien; Fernando moved over and let the guy go instead of risking his position and race. Bottom line, Juan needs to be smarter and more careful.
perfect point george. montoya has just one too many encounters with backmarkers, and that isn’t doing him any good. alonso handled the situation more elegantly, or maybe klien was more careful than pizzonia. whatever it is, alonso survived the race, and possibly the championship, while montoya crashed and lose the championship for kimi.
I’m no admirer of Pizzonia, however, with no guarantee of a seat for next season, a patchy record subbing at Williams & a equally iffy Jaguar history, this type of gaffe was almost inevitable.
Finding himself on superior rubber compared to the grip deficient Montoya, he has tried to impress his employers by unlapping himself with a late race demonstration of speed. Not that it will make a great deal of difference, in the absence of Button next year(?) he’s not that high on Frank’s list of “race” drivers anyway.Montoya seems to have a unique attraction to these type incidents,his clash lapping Monterio in the previous race was as costly as this one.
Quote - “Finding himself on superior rubber compared to the grip deficient Montoya, he” …
What race were you watching!?!
Pizzonia was on SLICKS on a reasonably damp track. Juan may have pulled in front of him but he certainly wasn’t on “superior rubber”. Juan has shown that once he can’t see a car in his helmet they don’t exist anymore. This could very well be part of the cause, but the real problem and it has to be admitted…
Slicks were a mistake and a danger and it would not be inappropriate for a penalty for Williams’ choice to run an unsafe car.
There were certainly sufficient examples that it was not appropriate rubber at Spa.
The race stewards have agreed with everyone’s take that Pizzonia caused the incident, including me. That does not mean that Montoya doesn’t deserve a partial head slap for allowing himself to disregard the loose cannons around him.
When racing against mediocrity inspired by desperation it’s usually wise to give that circumstance a wide berth. Especially because Juan had radically slowed his pace.
It’s not like he was burning up the track 3-4 seconds a lap faster than AP. All of this is after the fact hindsight, I’m sure sitting in the car Juan didn’t have the luxury of thinking all this through. Which is what makes Fernando so extraordinary, he thinks that way and will have a title to show for his discretion and speed.
I agree. Juan must learn to watch out for the people that can take him out if he ever expects to win the championship.