San Marino Grand Prix Review

It was by no means a vintage Michael or Ferrari performance as we have come to expect. In this day and age when Renault is in the ascendancy, Schumi and his team had to scrap hard and make use of all their strategic know-how. A slow warm-up lap, plus several laps early behind the safety car, coupled to his pace over the first stint, allowed the German to make use of the flexibility in his plan, where at his first stop he could choose a three-stop or a two-stop strategy.

He went for the safer two-stop route, given that he had a handy lead over Alonso already, and the race should have been in the bag. But then the Ferrari slowed, its pace horrendous in the second and third stints on scrubbed tyres that were susceptible to further graining. The Renault caught up insatiably, but two factors saved Maranello's day. The first was the confidence-inducing memory that last year, in a much faster car, Michael had been unable to pass the Spaniard, and Alonso's task now was no easier.

Imola is narrow by current standards, and in its current configuration there are no straights that are long enough between the chicanes to facilitate a proper slipstream. You could say the same about Albert Park, where we had an ultra-exciting race three weeks ago. But this race didn't feature the same regular safety car interventions that Melbourne did, and a warm, dry, sunny weekend did not present the less-than-optimal conditions that threw performances into disarray in Australia.

In fact, Pat Symonds made the call to bring Fernando in first to free him from the 248 F1's dirty air. Ferrari now had the advantage, and responded by bringing Michael in the next lap. Alonso did not do enough on his out lap, Michael emerged in front, and provided that he could stay there it was game over. From there it was a controlled, mistake-free effort to the finish, with no sense of being flustered, no locked brakes, no running wide on exits, all of which Schumi can be prone to from time to time.

It was Michael's first 'real' win since Japan 2004, and in some ways a fortunate one. The 248 F1 and the Bridgestones have flashes of speed but not consistent race-winning pace. The team needs to continue working hard, because the factors won't always come together for them as they did at Imola. The same set of circumstances on a different, more overtaking-friendly track may not have resulted in a Ferrari win. But Maranello's work ethic is beyond doubt, and Schumi cannot be considered out of title contention.

While all the attention was on Michael, it was a creditable effort from Felipe Massa, in arguably his first proper unhindered drive for the Prancing Horse, after his problems in the first three races. On the graining Bridgestones he did well to maintain a solid pace and not throw the car into the scenery as he is wont to do, but the reality is that he could not keep up with Michael's pace, and one wonders if a higher-quality driver would have managed to prevent Juan-Pablo Montoya from jumping him for 3rd.

The Alonso who fights tooth and nail all the way is the one we know and love, but with 36 points already and a 15-point buffer, he could also afford to start employing 2005-style tactics, where discretion and points-accumulation was often the better part of valour. That would be a shame if once again we see Fernando start to play it safe. Even if it is understandable, those kind of tactics won him no extra admirers last year, and they wouldn't excite many spectators this year either.

And perceptions are increasingly becoming a major issue for the Spaniard. His move to McLaren for 2007 is, on the whole, viewed negatively for the way it was handled. And this weekend he had to play down reports in the Spanish media of incredible comments he made about how he had received no help from his Renault team in the past few years. Fernando claims he was misunderstood, but he didn't deny the comments. So what the heck did he mean? Surely he's not that arrogant? Are there tensions already?

Giancarlo Fisichella became the latest big name to fall foul of the new qualifying system when he missed the second cut, but from there his race was compromised by a weird strategy that saw him run very long in the first stint, only to still make two stops when they were a hop, skip and jump away from utilising a one-stop plan. In the end it was yet another sadly anonymous race from Fisi that dampens the hopes of all those who wish that he could lift his game and prove himself title contender material.

Montoya is 21 points adrift of Alonso already, and Kimi Raikkonen 18 points behind. And McLaren hasn't shown any world-beating speed as yet! In some ways, their situation is even more dire than it was 12 months ago at this point. For Montoya, it was little more than a very solid afternoon's work in getting past Massa at the second stop for 3rd place, while for Raikkonen, after his first lap tussle with Mark Webber that was resolved in the Williams' favour, it was a case of sitting back and waiting for his strategy to work.

Hang on, this is The Iceman we're talking about - the man many consider to be the outright fastest man in F1. Kimi qualifying 8th (his lowest genuine grid position since he started 9th in Bahrain last year), then sitting back on the fringes of the points, until a strategy advantage and not much else carries him up to 5th by race end, is unnatural. Surely Kimi wants to challenge up front. If he can only have either speed or reliability but not both, if he must be denied a title win, I think he'd go for race-winning speed.

Preferably, he'd have both. It was the fact that he had a dynamite-fast car last year which nonetheless kept failing him that irked him so much, but he would be no-less frustrated right now by a car that scores points but not wins. No wonder the rumours link the Finn to Ferrari. The Prancing Horse may have faltered in Malaysia and Australia, but they've won at Imola and could have won in Bahrain. Meanwhile McLaren seem stuck in this inability to take that final step of fusing speed and reliability into a title winner.

Webber's performance should not be underrated. It was a typically solid effort from the Australian, maximising the potential of the car, and with a slightly longer second stint and without his off-track excursion, he may have been able to fight Raikkonen for 5th. In contrast, after his Bahrain and Malaysia heroics, Nico Rosberg's star has waned temporarily, an off on Saturday and difficulties in adjusting to the spare car leaving him anonymously in the midfield for the rest of the weekend.

Rosberg is almost certainly also being hampered by the lack of mileage that the two Williams drivers are getting before qualifying. Sure he may have raced at Imola in GP2 last year, but there is nothing like track time in an F1 car to build confidence and speed. Such are their reliability fears, and with the ability to use Alexander Wurz in a third car, the two race Williams tend to sit out most of Friday free practice, but even on Saturday they tend to do fewer laps than others.

From now on, officially there is no longer any need to take notice of Honda's grid positions, after another galling performance in which Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello started 2nd and 3rd and finished an eventual 7th and 10th respectively. Even without the dramas both had with their pit stops, a three-stop strategy would never have worked, despite Nick Fry's crazy protestations that they preferred to run up front early. The fact is, they couldn't even match the early pace of a two-stopping Schumi.

That second stop for Button was a comedy of errors. Chief mechanic Alistair Gibson clearly took his cue for raising the lollipop from the front jack man moving away, as there was no movement whatsoever from the refuellers. Button incredibly also did not immediately stop once the lollipop had come back down and hit his head. The entire team was fortunate to get away with no spilt fuel and no inferno in the pits. For his part in the calamity, Gibson came close to taking our 'Reject of the Race' award.

Likewise, a three-stop strategy was never going to benefit Ralf Schumacher in the Toyota, but the points-scoring potential was still there in the first race without Mike Gascoyne's technical direction. Meanwhile, Jarno Trulli (who along with Fisichella and Vitantonio Liuzzi was part of an Italian triumvirate who all showed up at Imola with new or revised helmet designs) was an early retirement having once again failed to match his team-mate's pace.

Jarno has since been livid in the press with being held up by Michael Schumacher in qualifying, promising revenge, but that only serves to divert attention from the pressure that must surely start to mount on Trulli soon if he doesn't score some points. Gascoyne's departure doesn't help; Jarno feels confused about it all, and we all know how even the slightest lack of confidence affects his driving. But if he is to prove his worth he must rise above that.

REJECT OF THE RACE
Yuji Ide
Flipped Albers into the gravel on lap 1

Likewise, Toro Rosso had a quiet weekend on Minardi's home soil, neither Liuzzi or Scott Speed showing any of their Melbourne spark. Tonio's early spin at the revised Variante Alta was rather gormless, but he still beat his American team-mate home. The tough-talking Speed, unrepentant for his clash with David Coulthard in Australia and for swearing at the Scot in the steward's meeting, is showing not enough of his surname, especially in qualifying, where Liuzzi routinely makes the first cut and he doesn't.

For the Red Bull main team, reliability continues to be a major issue, the RB02 having made it to the finish only three times out of eight so far, and still yet to show any real signs of being able to regularly score points. Before Imola, Dietrich Mateschitz had put pressure on Christian Klien, saying that the Austrian and not Coulthard was the one under the pump to retain his seat for 2007, and although Klien said he was untroubled by the comments, missing the first cut in qualifying was not a useful response.

Admittedly, neither Klien nor Coulthard ever remotely looked like getting into the top 10 in either qualifying or the race. Although the colour that the team brings to the paddock is welcome, one wonders if some of the money that Mateschitz pumps into those gigantic motorhomes for Red Bull and Toro Rosso could actually be better spent in developing the cars into points-scoring machines. Especially with Adrian Newey on board, surely they have the resources to climb out of their current mediocrity?

Albers had a point, and to his great credit (for someone who is regarded as outspoken and rather difficult at times) has come out in support for Ide's place in F1 after his own struggles with tail-ending Minardi last year - or is he just afraid that a better driver in the Super Aguri might actually beat him? But also after another nothing performance from Tiago Monteiro, the reality is that Midland seems like a rather disenchanted place to be, and it's having an effect on their on-track displays.

Super Aguri came to Imola with a revised paint scheme, but their definitive new car now won't come until maybe France. Takuma Sato, who before this weekend had actually done more kilometres during race weekends than anyone else, continued to do a workmanlike job before having his first self-induced DNF for 2006. But by contrast, Ide is simply embarrassing, even if you take into account his lack of testing, such as at Barcelona recently when mechanical problems meant he didn't even register a single lap.

His speed is humiliating, his racing lines are erratic, and his racecraft is highly questionable after that ridiculous lunge at Albers on the first lap. He deserved the reprimand from the stewards that he received, and he also deserves the 'Reject of the Race' award. With the news coming out of the Super Aguri camp that Yuji's place in the team is under review, and that he might be replaced before the next round at the Nurburgring, we just had to get in with an ROTR while we still had the chance!