His season was set up by the six wins and three 2nds in the first nine rounds, five of which came from pole but the rest from the second row or further back. He did have his off days at Indy and Hockenheim, but he recovered masterfully from the mass dampers setback, the disappointments of Hungary, and the drama and injustice of Monza. Despite knowing he was leaving Renault at year's end, he fused near-perfect, unflappable driving with a relentless thirst for points, and became the youngest ever double world champion.

Back to the top.

Finally eclipsing Ayrton Senna's pole record, he only scored 4 poles, but his race speed and the ability to produce magic at will remained unequalled. His ingenious win at Imola kick-started his title campaign, he maximised his points mid-year, and he was often untouchable late in the season. His win in China will go down as one of his best, and there was that drive in Brazil. He seemed to really relish the clean title fight with Alonso, and his magnanimity in defeat ensured that he still went out as a champion nonetheless.

Back to the top.

What those figures don't reveal is his drive from the back of the grid to 3rd in Bahrain. Or how he scored decent points in the early races when often he lost track position by running heavy fuel loads. Or how he retired in both Monaco and China when he looked like having the car speed to win. Or how he scored three dazzling pole positions late in the season, and pushed Alonso hard in Canada and Schumacher in Italy. He scored 7 points fewer than Fisichella in a much inferior car. The Iceman had still been superb.

Back to the top.

From Germany onwards, though, it was his consistent speed that impressed. Between 4th and 7th six times out of seven in qualifying, he also finished six times in 3rd, 4th or 5th, and he had two exceptional drives from 14th on the grid - one in Brazil, and the other of course his victory in Hungary that finally got rid of the 'winless' tag. In those last 7 races of the year, only Schumacher scored more points. Easily accounting for Barrichello, Jenson established himself as the likely spearhead of any Honda title challenge in 2007.

Back to the top.

There has never been any denying his inherent pace, but in the first half of the year he struggled to tame it into consistency. But from America and France onwards, as the car got better, he smoothed out his driving style, became far less aggressive with the steering wheel, and it paid dividends. Even if he still struggled in the wet and was not enough of a championship help to his team as he could have been, he came ever closer to Schumacher, and his breakthrough victories in Turkey and Brazil were well-deserved.

Back to the top.

And what adversity it was. Mechanical failures struck when he was about to capitalise on longer-fuelled strategies at Albert Park, the Nurburgring and Hockenheim, plus he retired in the points in Malaysia and most notably at Monaco where he was an outside chance for the win. Sometimes he made blistering starts from lower grid positions, but three times he was taken out by others at Silverstone, Indianapolis and Interlagos. Frustration was the story of his year, but he regularly served up dollops of the immense speed he had.

Back to the top.

Two races later, he came 3rd at Monza from 6th on the grid, becoming the fastest man to reach the podium since Alexander Wurz, who also took three races to grace the dais in 1997. In Robert's six events, he qualified in the top 10 five times, and even if he made errors that emanated from inexperience, such as a weak middle segment in Turkey and changing to dries too soon in China, he was easily the revelation of the season and might have been even higher up our rankings had he driven in more races.

Back to the top.

But overall he displayed the leadership that the team needed on the track, and he always did the best he could with the machinery at his disposal, even if that wasn't much - but it was noticeable nonetheless. He showed the way to his rookie team-mates, he qualified 18th at Indianapolis which was an amazing effort in the senile SA05, and he put in one of the drives of the season at Interlagos when he beat home Red Bulls, Toro Rossos and Spyker MF1s, in an effort that gave the doubters some food for thought.

Back to the top.

Problem was, he averaged 4 points per race - in other words, 5th place per race. Alonso averaged almost 7.5 points per race. Fernando scored 62 points more than he did. Fisi only claimed 5 podiums, and four of those were 3rds. He was only on the front row three times, and only at Indy did he really have his team-mate's measure. All this in a title-winning car! Giancarlo made heavy weather of supporting Alonso and Renault's title bids, and his performances meant the team had no choice but to support Fernando.

Back to the top.

In fact, he may have even scored more were it not for 6 collisions over the course of the year, only one of which (his spectacular flip at Indy) ended his race. The one criticism of him, though, and it's not an insignificant one, is that he takes opportunities but doesn't make opportunities. That is, he's an expert at getting the most from a situation, but he doesn't extend himself beyond that. It was worrying that Mario Theissen reckoned at having Kubica in the second seat meant Heidfeld found an extra 0.5s a lap.

Back to the top.

That didn't mean the rest of it was bad for Keke's progeny. He out-qualified Webber 6 times, he remained steady throughout, and it didn't feel like he was a rookie. It couldn't have been easy when his car kept failing, although that would have been character-building. But for a GP2 champion, and after the Bahrain performance, we probably expected a bit more. That, plus his collisions with Montoya and Webber in Canada and Brazil, and his crash at Hockenheim, showed that while he belonged in F1, there was room to improve.

Back to the top.

How much of that was the team's fault, and how much of it was Pedro's? A lot came down to the MP4-21, which even in Raikkonen's hands only showed glimpses of race-winning potential, and the fact that McLaren were trying 2007-spec parts on his car. But, at 35, with the exception of Hungary, we also saw little of that racer's edge that was evident in Bahrain last year. Heavy fuel loads after lowly qualifying efforts didn't help, but perhaps too much testing had dulled de la Rosa's racing verve.

Back to the top.

At the time he left the team, Heidfeld had twice as many points as he did and was scoring regularly. Jacques, on the other hand, had just had three DNFs in four races, including two crashes. The scoresheet and Villeneuve's soreness after his Hockenheim crash gave BMW enough of an excuse to replace him with Kubica. It was a rather inglorious end to the Canadian's F1 career after his championship victory in 1997, but he had done his best during 2006 to give it as good a postscript as he could manage.

Back to the top.