Fast Failures: F1's fastest runner-up

"No one remembers who finished second," is an adage nearly as old as competitive sport itself.

In the 2005 Formula 1 drivers' and constructors' championships, it was Kimi Raikkonen and his McLaren team in that position.

The Finn won as many races as Fernando Alonso, seven, but had to watch on as the Spaniard claimed his first world championship. Throw in three wins for Juan Pablo Montoya and McLaren's MP4-20 won 10 of the year's 19 races, two more than Renault.

Ultimately, McLaren's creation was far more fragile than Renault's R25, and that cost Raikkonen and the Woking team dearly. With the help of key personnel from the time, BEN ANDERSON looks back at how the year unfolded.

SAN MARINO HEARTBREAK

McLaren endured a tough start to the season, as Renault swept the first four races (Fernando Alonso winning three of them) and Kimi Raikkonen could only manage a best finish of third in Bahrain.

Things seemed to be finally coming good at round four, the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola. Raikkonen claimed his first pole position of the season and led the first eight laps before a driveshaft failure struck, handing points leader Alonso a hat-trick.

"As an organisation, we hadn't yet worked out there was a different game to play in terms of reliability," recalls Mercedes technical chief Paddy Lowe, then in the process of assuming control of McLaren's engineering department. "McLaren was stuck in an old-world approach - 'if there's a fault, have a go at fixing it'.

"Ferrari was five years ahead of everyone else in terms of taking reliability seriously, and I feel like McLaren were one of the last to spot that. We were completely reactive. There were no reliability strategies at all."

KIMI DOMINATES IN SPAIN AND MONACO

The season finally sprang to life for McLaren at May's Spanish Grand Prix. Raikkonen beat Mark Webber's Williams to pole and dominated the race, setting a blistering sequence of 13 consecutive fastest laps from the start and leaving Alonso's Renault trailing by over 27 seconds at the flag.

The Finn followed up by leading every lap on his way to victory in Monaco two weeks later (which remains his only win around the streets of the Principality), to move up to second in the championship.

THAT SUSPENSION FAILURE AT THE NURBURGRING...

Raikkonen should have made it a hat-trick at the European Grand Prix. He led most of the race after passing Nick Heidfeld's polesitting Williams at the start, but flatspotted his front right tyre while lapping Jacques Villenueve's Sauber.

In a season when rules dictated a set of tyres had to last an entire race distance, McLaren opted to try hanging on for victory instead of calling Raikkonen into the pits for a replacement.

He still led heading to the final lap, as Alonso's Renault homed in, only for the suspension to collapse under braking for Turn 1.

"It was getting worse and eventually the loads were just too high," rues Lowe. "A lot of the failures we had that year were related to our driveshafts and CV joints."

CANADA WIN MAKES IT THREE FROM FOUR

The Canadian GP helped McLaren recover some of the points lost in Germany, as Raikkonen won narrowly from Michael Schumacher's Ferrari while both Renaults failed to finish.

Raikkonen only qualified seventh, but jumped Schumacher's slow-starting Ferrari off the grid and finished the first lap fifth. In fact, starts were one of the MP4-20's strong suits, owing to clever work undertaken by Lowe and his team.

"The seamless shift, as everyone has now, was first on the McLaren that year and was worth about six tenths," recalls Lowe.

"Although we raced it from the word go, we had a thing called 'gear learning' and initially we couldn't retain that memory when the car stopped. Then we invented instrumentation so it could learn on the formation lap.

"The first time was probably Imola that we did a seamless-shift race start, and the drivers said the start was mega, because when you changed gear and expected to sit back, you actually went forward even more! With seamless shift you get that energy of the engine and speed reduction transferred into the car."

GRID PENALTIES GALORE

To encourage reliability and reduce costs in the final season of F1's V10 era, the rulemakers decided that engines should last for two full race weekends, or else grid penalties would apply for unscheduled swaps.

McLaren suffered badly under this regime, with Raikkonen copping 10-place hits for the French, British and Italian Grands Prix. He also suffered hydraulics failure while leading in Germany.

"It was different things," explains engine chief Andy Cowell, who recalls 2005 as a season of seismic change in the way Mercedes approached its F1 activities, as it took over completely from Ilmor.

"We were having different surprises and I think it was systematic of the broad process being incorrect.

"I think at Silverstone we had a problem with the water pump drive. A drive to a water pump shouldn't cause you issues.

"I think we had five failures in 2005, and many races where Kimi was just electric in the car. It was amazing in terms of the pace, but we kept on putting him to the back of the grid."

WINNING RUN CAPPED BY RACE OF THE DECADE

The final portion of the season was substantially better. McLaren won six races in succession from the Hungarian GP at the end of July to the penultimate race of the year in Japan at the beginning of October.

The last of these is recalled as one of the best grands prix in living memory, famous for Raikkonen's supreme charge to victory from 17th on the grid - including a final-lap pass on Giancarlo Fisichella's Renault to seal the deal.

"That was a fantastic win - probably Kimi's best ever race," enthuses Lowe. "I'd say that was Kimi at his peak in 2005. Such a great driver...

"Ironically, a lot of us were quite happy that he won [the championship] in 2007. We were pissed off that we didn't win it, but in the sense that we kind of let him down a number of times where he'd missed it by one or two points, and all because of reliability issues, we felt we owed him one, even if it wasn't in our car!"

RENAULT RUBS IT IN

Third place for Alonso in Brazil had sealed his first drivers' world championship with two races to spare, but it took until the season finale in China for Renault to clinch the constructors' crown, thanks to Alonso's narrow victory over Raikkonen.

It was a fitting epitaph for McLaren's season that Raikkonen should finish second in that race, with fastest lap, while team-mate Juan Pablo Montoya suffered another unfortunate problem.

"These things are never lost in a single event but it seemed like it when a loose drain cover hit Montoya's car, went through his radiator and punctured it, so he didn't finish," remembers Lowe. "These drain covers are all bolted down but somehow this one was loose.

"Some of the guys at Renault got the drain cover from somewhere and chrome-plated it and sent it over to us!"

RACING CAR OF THE YEAR
Although McLaren ultimately failed to win either world championship in 2005, readers of Autosport still voted the MP4-20 'racing car of the year' at December's Autosport Awards.

This recognised the fact that 10 wins, 18 podiums, seven pole positions and 12 fastest laps from 19 races still represented an excellent return for the British team, even though the ultimate prizes eluded Ron Dennis and his crew.

But this would only have been a small consolation for McLaren, which still hasn't won a constructors' crown since 1998 - and only one drivers' title since '99.

"We threw it away at the end of the day because we had all the things right that season," says Lowe. "Since I've worked in Formula 1 that was the standout 'fast failure'.

"That is the season that stands out for me, beyond any other, for throwing it away with such a fantastic platform.

"We were really chuffed with those things we'd brought to the car, like the power shift and being the first mover on that.

"We were looking at about a second of innovation exclusive to us and you should do something with that.

"You should come out with a championship from that, and we didn't."

MORE FAST FAILURES:

The final Autosport magazine of 2015 focuses on the great cars that failed to win what they should have done in our cover story - Fast Failures.

Among the cars we take an in-depth look at are the McLaren-Mercedes MP4-20 (which returns the cover of Autosport for the first time in a decade), the Toyota GT-One, the first-generation Subaru Impreza WRC and the STP-Paxton Turbocar that so nearly won the Indy 500.

We've also got a look back at the GP2 season with Edd Straw and the GP3 season with Aaron Rook, as well as Lawrence Barretto's analysis of the implications of the UK's F1 TV coverage moving to Channel 4.

Out now in all good newsagents, via the Apple Newsstand or as a digital magazine.