Italian Grand Prix Review

As is now well-documented, the Stepneygate affair has taken a few new twists. The Court of Appeal hearing scheduled for this Thursday has been postponed, replaced by another hearing before the World Motorsports Council as a result of new information emerging. The speculation is that that new information centres around an email from McLaren tester Pedro de la Rosa to Alonso referring in detail to Ferrari's set-ups - proof that the information in Mike Coughlan's possession filtered throughout the team?

Hollywood could hardly script this much intrigue. How did the FIA find out about this? Why did the FIA send this mysterious request for further information, not only to each of the teams but to all three McLaren drivers (along with the promise of immunity from punishment if they produced information), as if this was not a fishing expedition, but rather as if the FIA knew exactly what they were looking for? Why has McLaren all of a sudden made inquiries relating to Renault?

And then it seems far too convenient for this email, of which Alonso was the recipient, to emerge just at a time when Fernando's frustrations with McLaren as a result of Quali-gate in Hungary are said to be boiling over and it's becoming increasingly likely that the Spaniard will not drive for the team next year. Did Fernando, happy to act to the detriment of his team, with the promise of immunity, spill the beans? He has denied such a serious allegation of betrayal, but it is a tempting connection.

But it is probably best to speculate no more given that the fresh hearing before the World Motorsports Council is this Thursday (13 September 2007), and that the possible penalties that could be imposed on McLaren could range from the proverbial slap on the wrist to huge fines and even bans - maybe as early as for this weekend in Belgium! One simply hopes for just and fair findings, and that any punishment will fit the crime. No one wants to see championships decided by way of technical knock-outs.

In that context, McLaren's supremacy in testing and throughout the weekend at Monza was a tribute to their resilience. The silver cars have had the edge on slower circuits, but the general view is that the faster the track, the more it suits Ferrari. Although that seemed to be proven in Turkey, Italy overturned the form guide yet again in this pendulum-like season. With no guarantee that Ferrari will have the ascendancy in the last four rounds, it seems that the title battle is really now an all-McLaren affair.

The weekend was also a statement of Alonso's determination. Gone was the somewhat churlish young man that we have seen in the last two rounds. It was almost as if he had made a conscious decision to channel the fire in his belly into his driving rathe than into mind games. He let his driving do the talking as a champion should, and frankly he was peerless all weekend, especially in his sensational first flying run in Q3 which set the pole time, when he was on heavier tanks. From there, the race was a comparative cruise.

In a way, Hamilton was relegated back into his place (as Alonso would probably like to believe), and once again he suffered from his mid-race pace drop, such that it allowed the one-stopping Kimi Raikkonen to get in front of him after his second stop. But ironically, it was in these kinds of situations that Lewis was allowed to prove the fighting and racing qualities that he has not had to deploy throughout the year. If he does end up taking the title, what he did in Monza went a long way to proving that he deserves it.

Hamilton started the season with two daring starts in Australia and Malaysia, but we haven't seen much of that since. Here, after an initial poor getaway, he squeezed Felipe Massa but left him with enough racing room, but once the Ferrari was past he made a bold dive around the outside into the first chicane - one that not only rounded Massa but had the momentum to challenge Alonso as well, had he not been tapped by the Ferrari and forced to cut the corner. It was brave stuff with championship points on the line.

Ferrari helped to make things easy for McLaren. Perhaps some complacency had crept in, thinking that the unfavourable circuits were over and now it was just a matter of taking points off McLaren in a last-gasp championship run. Raikkonen in particular had a lacklustre weekend. He had that huge accident in Saturday free practice, and bizarrely, for an incident that looked for all the world to have been some mechanical failure, he seemed keen to take the blame for it as a driving error!

But what it meant was that he had to take the spare for qualifying and the race, and it seemed as though he never got to grips with this chassis. He was off the pace in qualifying, which in a way forced Ferrari's hand to put him on a one-stop strategy, but in the race itself he was not fast enough on heavy tanks to make the ambush work. Worst of all, he was caught completely napping by Hamilton, although he blamed it on neck pains under braking after his shunt the day before.

At least he came away with six points though, which was better than Massa's fate. His rear suspension-induced retirement came at the worst possible time. Although he had mechanical problems in qualifying in Melbourne, and at the start at Silverstone, this was his first mechanical retirement all year, and his only failure to finish apart from his disqualification in Canada. Shades of Michael Schumacher's engine blow-up at Suzuka last year, anyone?

Due to Ferrari's unreliability, which has been one of their bugbears all season, the championship positions of their drivers swapped again for the fifth race in succession, and the points gap now has Hamilton 18 points up on Raikkonen, and 23 up on Massa. Raikkonen needs to win each race with Alonso and Hamilton in 3rd and 4th all the time. Massa needs to win each race with Hamilton down in 5th or worse each race. Barring judicial intervention, realistically they can both kiss the 2007 championship goodbye.

Nico Rosberg came in 6th after another terrific weekend. In the last few races, he and Kovalainen have established themselves as the 'best of the rest' after the top three teams. Fittingly, at Monza they were engaged in a battle of strategy, with Rosberg on a one-stop plan and Kovalainen on two. Even despite being held up by his spirited battle with Jenson Button, in which with a bit more aggression he may have got past slightly earlier, Nico still had enough pace to outrun Kovalainen at the stops and stay in front.

As a result, Rosberg was the only driver on a one-stop strategy to beat a direct two-stopping rival. By contrast, it was another nothing weekend for Alexander Wurz. The Austrian is now consistently making the Q1 cut, but he is still yet to make it past Q2 all year; Rosberg has made it into Q3 eight times. Once trapped in the tight midfield, Alex has been able to do very little. Williams seem desperately keen to keep Rosberg for 2008, with good reason, but they must surely be looking at a young gun for the second car.

Kovalainen continued to star, even if Rosberg beat him in the end, but Heikki recorded his ninth points finish out of 13 races, and his fifth in succession. It was another fine weekend of pace and consistency, and he has done more than enough to erase his wobbly start to his F1 career. He has become Renault's clear lead driver since the middle of the year, whereas Giancarlo Fisichella flounders. The Italian has only scored points six times this year, and his effort at his home race did little to help his cause.

Yes, he lost time in his final run in Q2 due to a recovering Rubens Barrichello coming back onto the track right in front of him going into the second Lesmo, but one suspects he didn't have the pace to get into the top ten anyway. And, if he really did have the speed, he would have made fairly light work of the likes of Anthony Davidson and Jarno Trulli in the race. 12th place a lap down, equalling his season's worst finish, rather says it all. Fisi's career must surely now be well and truly on the ropes.

Rubens has been very consistent all year. The problem is, he seemed to have hit his peak early on, and he's stayed at that level. Button, on the other hand, started the year struggling to adapt to Bridgestone tyres, but he firstly got on terms with Rubens, and from France onwards he has thoroughly out-driven Rubinho and has been superb. His effort at Magny-Cours, his opening laps at the Nurburgring, his dynamic race in Turkey, and now another 8th place finish at Monza have been right out of the top drawer.

Webber claimed his third 9th place finish of the season, and given that he qualified 11th and was fuelled long, but not long enough to leapfrog Rosberg, Kovalainen and Button, there was not much else the Australian could do. Once again he had David Coulthard's measure, but then again it was the Scot's turn to suffer from Red Bull's embarrassing plague of unreliability this week. Without his gearbox problem in Q1, he wouldn't have got himself caught up in a midfield melee that led to his front wing failure and crash.

Such is the tightness of the midfield and the difficulty of passing at Monza, the Toyotas were also trapped in the mire with little hope of escape. Jarno Trulli continued his amazing run of top ten qualifying efforts - he has only missed out once all season, at Monaco - but a poor start spelled doom as yet another good grid spot was wasted. Trulli has not scored points since Indianapolis, and before that you need to go back to Bahrain. He's been at Toyota for three years and looks like he needs a change of scenery.

Still, it's a lot better than Ralf Schumacher, who has now missed out on the Q1 cut as many times as he's made it into Q3 - five times each. The good form of Silverstone and Hungary seems to have disappeared in typical Ralf fashion. He seems to have no answer sometimes, and one wonders why Toyota are even contemplating persevering with him into 2008. The talk was that Toyota had offered him less than a third of his current pay packet, and many would think that even that was being generous.

REJECT OF THE RACE
Mike Gascoyne
Promised B-spec cars would be midfield; they came last!

Although Vitantonio Liuzzi caught the eye in Turkey, he could not keep up the Sebastian Vettel-beating pace in Italy. The German made it into Q2 for the first time for his new team, but his inexperience showed when he damaged his front wing on the opening lap, and only recovered the lost ground thanks to the safety car. From there the two cars ran closely for the rest of Sunday afternoon, finishing five seconds apart with Tonio ahead, but the Italian needs to keep asserting himself if he wants a future in F1.

Spyker came to Monza with their much-vaunted B-spec chassis, and although on lap times they were relatively closer to Toro Rosso and perhaps even a shade quicker in free practice, when it really mattered they were still well at the back of the field. Adrian Sutil was almost 0.7s slower than Coulthard, who had had mechanical problems. He was over 0.8s behind Liuzzi who qualified 19th. Hardly the big lap time gain and the jump into the midfield as boldly predicted by Spyker technical chief Mike Gascoyne.

In a race largely devoid of embarrassing incident, for making a wild promise that has fallen flat, we give Gascoyne the 'Reject of the Race' award this time around. Sakon Yamamoto, though, had his best weekend for Spyker so far. Unlucky in Q1 after being held up, as he was in Hungary, he was still less than 0.4s slower than Sutil, and a good start meant that he spent the early stages of the race running ahead of his team-mate. In the end, Adrian beat him home to the flag by under 12 seconds.

The bigger issue for Spyker though is the imminent buyout of the team from Spyker Cars by the consortium led by Michel Mol and Vijay Mallya, as the parent Spyker company look to off-load the team to solve its deepening financial crisis. Team Holland looks set to become Team India, with possibly the third name change for the team in as many years. Although Mallya is promising an injection of funds, constant instability has never been the recipe for progress and success in Formula One.