Race: It's Barrichello's turn

For a while it looked as though Jenson Button might score his and BAR's maiden victory, but eventually the superiority of the Ferraris took hold and the Englishman could do nothing to keep them from scoring a formation finish.

"I can honestly say from the bottom of my heart that I think this is the best season ever," said Barrichello after leading home Ferrari's eighth 1-2 of the season. "It has been lacking one win at least from me until now! But the amount of points, the amount of victories that Michael had, and the way we won the constructors - the team is so very good this is for them."

The situation had looked dire for Ferrari after just five laps with Barrichello running ninth and Schumacher 11th. But as the track dried, it came back to them, and eventually as Button later admitted, they were unstoppable.

Barrichello opted to start the race on intermediates after torrential rain soaked the circuit through the morning. But 20 minutes before the start, brilliant sunshine began to burn the surface moisture away. Thus it proved a difficult tyre choice for the teams. Nearly all the front-runners, excluding Barrichello, David Coulthard and Felipe Massa, chose slicks.

Barrichello pulled out a 7s lead on the first lap and his gamble looked to have paid off. But once settled, Renault's Fernando Alonso - second after another brilliant start - pegged back the Ferrari. By lap four the Spaniard was past Barrichello into Ascari. Immediately afterwards the Ferrari dived pitward. The Brazilian came out in ninth position.

Chosing slicks didn't work any better for Schumacher though. Bridgestone's slick tyre cannot cope in the damp conditions as well as its Michelin counterpart and the world champion slithered tentatively over the first chicane on lap one, losing vital places before spinning at the second chicane after contact with Button. He dropped to 15th.

By lap five the world champion team's cars were running ninth and 11th...

"After five laps we had a disaster on our hands and I was thinking that maybe we would score some points and maybe we would get a podium if we were lucky," said Ferrari's technical director Ross Brawn afterwards. "We probably should have pulled him [Barrichello] in one lap sooner. There was a bit of confusion on the radio why he didn't come in because we were losing time.

"It was the worst possible conditions for Bridgestone, a damp track is their Achilles heel. We were a bit stuffed at that stage."

As others began to make their first stops however, it was clear that the two Ferraris had a huge performance advantage over the rest of the field. Barrichello and Schumacher traded lap records in the low 1m21s bracket, while everyone else lapped in high 1m22s. By the time the field had completed those stops, (and Barrichello his second), Rubens and Schumacher were fifth and sixth and catching the battle for the lead that consisted of four drivers. Button, Alonso, Montoya with Takuma Sato a little further back.

When the leading trio all pitted on lap 33 for their final stops, Barrichello surged back to the front. The Brazilian's earlier stop had allowed him to run longer on fuel and he put in a string of astonishingly fast laps that meant he emerged from the pits after his final stop on lap 42, in front of Button and in the lead.

Schumacher by this stage had also made his final stop and worked his way up to third. He had closed up to Button, who was struggling to maintain his pace on full tanks. As Barrichello left the pits, still leading, Schumacher simply blew by the BAR on the pit straight.

And that's how they finished.

It must have been frustrating for Button, who despite his car's inability to behave on full tanks, seemed to have control of the race for the first half of the grand prix, before Ferrari blasted by.

The Englishman took the lead from Alonso in the first pitstop cycle, then soaked up the pressure from the Renault driver and Montoya's Williams through the middle stint. Every time he was able to pull away slightly as the BAR's fuel load became lighter.

The pressure eased somewhat when Alonso spun out of third place at the second chicane and into retirement. The Spaniard admitted that he was trying too hard in a car that wasn't really capable of running at the front. But by this time Ferrari was already overwhelming Button.

"I didn't think the Ferraris were going to be so strong towards the end of the race, but the pace of those two guys was just untouchable," said Button afterwards. "The balance wasn't too bad. The car seemed to run much better on lower fuel towards the end of the stints, that's when the car got stronger, and that's when I was able to pull out a gap on Alonso and Montoya.

"I was feeling positive that we were on for a podium position at least. I actually thought we had a chance of a win there for a while, but as I said I didn't know those two guys would be so strong."

Takuma Sato finished fourth in the second BAR. The Japanese driver had followed the Button/Alonso/Montoya battle for much of the race, but took advantage of Alonso's error and a gearbox problem for Montoya to move up the order. The Colombian eventually finished fifth.

David Coulthard had pitted after the warm-up lap to change to slicks and immediately the McLaren team switched to a one-stop strategy. Midway through the race the tactic looked to have worked as the Scot lapped faster than anyone else, but the weight of fuel through his second stint cost him a higher-placed finish. Nevertheless it was a strong drive to sixth.

That nearly ended in tears however as the fired up Antonio Pizzonia, in the second Williams, tried to get past Coulthard in the closing laps.

"I could see it coming," said Coulthard, "ten laps before he did it."

Pizzonia was clearly faster, and for several laps followed the McLaren closely. Eventually he went for a gap that wasn't there at the first chicane. Both cars were damaged slightly and were lucky to escape.

Giancarlo Fisichella had another good run in his Sauber to take the final point ahead of Jaguar's Mark Webber and an off the pace Jarno Trulli in the second Renault.

Ricardo Zonta had a quiet run to 11th, ahead of Jaguar's Christian Klien who ran strongly early on before picking up a stop-and-go penalty for speeding in the pits. Nick Heidfeld and Zsolt Baumgartner completed the finishers.

Kimi Raikkonen retired from fourth place on lap 13 with a water leak in his McLaren-Mercedes engine, while Giorgio Pantano and Olivier Panis both crashed out. The most spectacular retirement was that of Gianmaria Bruni however, after his Minardi caught fire during a fuel spillage in the pits. The fire was put and the car refuelled, but the Italian had inhaled fumes and needed a lie down in the back of the pits before declaring himself okay.

It was perhaps fitting that of all the places for Ferrari to demonstrate its dominance in 2004, it would be at Monza. But for a while early on, it looked as if the party was going to be well and truly spoilt. As Rubens Barrichello put it: "Even though we had a time in the middle of the race that we thought it was gone, everything came back. That's why you have to believe in life that whenever it is your day, it has to be your day."