Matador Alonso in for the kill

A swashbuckling Fernando Alonso beat Ferrari in Germany; now Lewis Hamilton should be worried. By MARK HUGHES

It came so fast, an ambush from over the Eifel Mountains, a rainstorm of biblical proportions just as the racestart procedure had got under way. As fast as it came, it dried out. It left chaos in its wake, litters of cars in the gravel bed, a red flag, a suspended race, confusion about positions. Those who survived the carnage were left to fight out a relatively normal race, one in which Ferrari looked to have a slight edge over Fernando Alonso. Then the sting in the tail - another rain ambush seven laps from home, another throw of the dice for Alonso.

He can't help himself. He has the essence of racer to his core. He can cover it up with a tactical approach - that's how he won his two titles - but sometimes it's just too damn tempting to fight. "I was happy with second. Eight points and both Lewis and Kimi were out of the points. For the championship it was good. So when it began to rain at first I was not happy." 'Why now?' he asked himself as he tiptoed back to the pits for his intermediate tyres, trailing in Felipe Massa's wake.

But getting back out there, feeling the car just as he liked it, seeing Massa, clearly struggling, getting bigger in his vision: how could he resist? He couldn't. It was there, the dangling carrot - a possible victory against the odds. And against Massa - the man at the centre of Alonso's ridiculous Monza penalty last year, when they were trying to take away his title.

It was way, way too good to resist. Here was the emotion coming to the fore, the driving force behind a very great driver, the passion that has given us moves like on Schumacher at 130R in 2005. As he and Massa rubbed wheels through Turn 5 and Alonso took the lead with three laps to go, an onlooking Schuey could probably well understand the irresistible combination of will and desire his protege Massa was up against. He'd been on the receiving end of it himself.

"You should learn to drive," said Alonso in Italian in the podium room afterwards, irritated at the wheelbanging, adrenaline still flowing. At this Massa exploded: "Hey, maybe you should." Alonso moved away and poured himself a drink. Still Massa wasn't finished though, tagging along and following up with: "This is the second time this year with you. You banged wheels with me at Barcelona too, remember?" 'Yes, yes', Alonso nodded with a mocking smile, not even looking at his rival and, as Massa still ranted, so Fernando turned to the camera and gave a fist of delight.

The outpouring of his joy on the podium seemed greater and more spontaneous perhaps than ever before. McLaren chief Ron Dennis stood on slightly awkwardly, Alonso not seeming keen to greet him as warmly as Ron might have wished - personal chemistry definitely lacking. There was humour as Michael Schumacher was the chosen dignitary to present the winning constructor with his cup, congratulations through gritted teeth. The time came to spray the champagne. Massa quickly made his excuses and left.

A dramatic end to one of the most dramatic of grands prix. Thanks to the weather. As it played its first trick in the opening minutes, Spyker's Mike Gascoyne made the inspired call to bring debutant Markus Winkelhock into the pits for intermediates as everyone else lined up on the grid on their dry-weather rubber.

A dramatically black rain cloud was about to dump its load on the southern tip of the circuit. But off the dry grid it was Kimi Raikkonen into the lead from Massa, the Ferraris way quicker off the clean side of the grid than Alonso on the dirty side.

From 10th Lewis Hamilton was off like a rocket, dirty side or no, instantly past the Toyotas and the clutch-dragging Mark Webber, inside Heikki Kovalainen even before the braking area and up with the two BMWs into Turn 1.

The two F1.07s were side by side through there, Robert Kubica holding Nick Heidfeld out wide, forcing him to back off. Nick appeared irritated at the move and stuck his nose aggressively inside into Turn 2, but from too far back. The gap was always going to be gone by the time he got there and, as they touched, Nick's front wing was damaged and Kubica looped into a spin.

Hamilton tried to get by on the outside of the rumpus, but his left rear was collected by the spinning BMW, puncturing the tyre and leaving him with a long, slow drive back to the pits. Before the lap was out the heavens opened. Only Winkelhock, starting from the pits, was now on the right tyres.

The dry-shod cars slid gingerly around. All except Jenson Button, that is, who - as ever when the going gets really slippery - was flying. From 17th on the grid, he'd dropped to 20th after a bad start but was ninth as he pitted at the end of the lap! Both Ferrari drivers had intended pitting too, but Raikkonen slid wide as he rounded the kink in the pit-entry road, forcing him to retake the track to avoid spinning.

So Massa led the pitters, with Alonso, Webber and Button following him in. All were re-shod with intermediates. Raikkonen continued carefully onwards, unintentionally forced into another dry-shod lap, but was easy meat for the correctly-tyred Winkelhock - who now led the race. "I led on my F1 debut," he beamed afterwards. "No-one can take that away from me." Manfred, his late father, would have been very proud.

Conditions were now appalling as the inters-shod Massa and Alonso concentrated on closing down Winkelhock's big lead. Markus pitted at the end of the lap and had a set of extreme wets fitted, rejoining still in the lead. Of those who had pitted on the first lap, Button was, by a huge margin, the fastest when they were back on track. He was 1.8sec faster than the next quickest guy, and by the end of the lap he was fourth and taking whole chunks from Alonso. "It was like the others were standing still," he said afterwards.

But that was as far as he got. The downpour had moved north and had left a lake at Turn 1. Winkelhock, 20 sec ahead, missed the worst of it. But, as Massa and Alonso arrived there, they each had major sideways moments. Button skated straight off into the gravel trap. "I just touched the brakes and all four wheels locked. It's a real shame because I had a lot of fuel on board."

It wasn't long before Button's car had some company. Hamilton, Adrian Sutil, Nico Rosberg, Scott Speed and Tonio Liuzzi all joined him there, the Italian's visit hastened by a rear-suspension failure on the approach. By this time the safety car had been deployed and Bernd Maylander had it positioned at the first corner, waiting for the leader to arrive.

Watching his mirrors, he did well to see the out-of-control Liuzzi approaching at huge speed and smartly accelerated the Merc out of the way. A big side-on impact was thus narrowly avoided, though Liuzzi's momentum carried him lightly into the side of the tractor that was in the gravel trap trying to remove stranded cars.

Throughout all this, Hamilton sat with his engine running, guided by the team over the radio. After radio discussion with Charlie Whiting, McLaren informed Lewis that he was about to be craned out of the gravel and, once unhitched, was free to continue.

The race was red-flagged and suspended on the fourth lap. Things started to get a little confusing at this point. There is a red-flag line around 200 metres past the timing-beam line on the start/finish straight. This is where cars should line up in the event of a red flag. Winkelhock, the leader, was first to arrive here. He was followed by Hamilton, who had lost a lap while sat in the gravel, then Massa, Alonso, Webber, David Coulthard, Heikki Kovalainen, Raikkonen, Alex Wurz and the rest.

Some of these cars had been pushed up to the collection point over the timing-beam line, others had been driven. Those that had been pushed were too slow to trigger the timing beam. As a result of this the official timing screens briefly said that Hamilton was not lapped, but was an unlapped 17th.

McLaren accordingly pushed Hamilton's car back down the field. Whiting had realised something was amiss with the positions showing on the timing screen, investigated it and had the timing staff manually input the correct positions and laps completed of those cars that hadn't triggered the beam. This put Hamilton back in his lapped position, even though McLaren was adamant that he hadn't been lapped.

After a half-hour wait the race restarted behind the safety car, in the order they were when the red flag was shown, and with everyone free to change tyres on the grid. The rain had stopped by this time but the track was still wet. Everyone opted for inters.

The FIA informed McLaren and the other teams that, as a lapped car, Hamilton was free to unlap himself and rejoin at the tail of the field on the lead lap. So Hamilton began charging through. McLaren felt that, had it simply left Hamilton in his original position of second on the road, this would have been a much simpler task. But Whiting was adamant this would not have been the correct procedure.

Given the situation it was in, McLaren decided to gamble Hamilton on a tyre change to dries at the end of the lap. Originally the safety car was going to stay out for as long as it took Hamilton to get to the back of the queue, but when he came in there was no longer any need to keep the safety car out. It came in at the end of the seventh aggregate lap.

Winkelhock, who would retire a few laps later with hydraulics failure, was immediately swamped as Massa and Alonso led the charge. Hamilton rejoined, but the track was still way too wet for his dry-weather tyres and he spun at Dunlop, managing to rejoin from the gravel trap. It would be another five laps before the track came to him, by which time he was well down the field, his afternoon ruined.

Massa and Alonso quickly pulled away from the battling Red Bulls of Coulthard and Webber, with the lighter car of Webber soon getting the upper hand, leaving DC to fend off Kovalainen and Raikkonen. Hamilton went a lap down and ploughed through the Turn 7 gravel.

But the track had turned incredibly quickly. On the very next lap Hamilton set the race's fastest lap so far, signalling to the rest of the field that it was time to change. Raikkonen kicked off the flurry of changeover stops at the end of lap 11. Massa, Alonso, Webber and Kovalainen followed next time through, everyone taking the opportunity to fuel up too. This left Coulthard briefly leading before he too came in for his dries at the end of 13.

There was a problem with the wing-adjustment tool at Alonso's stop, meaning the team couldn't reduce the angle of the front wing - a typical change made as the track dries. It made Alonso's stop last 2sec longer than Massa's, and furthermore left him with a more oversteery balance than ideal. So, as the dry phase of the race got underway, Massa began to gradually ease away at the front.

Webber had found a dire lack of grip on cold tyres as he left the pits and slid wide at Turn 1, letting Raikkonen pick him off and set off in pursuit of Alonso. Kovalainen's stop had been slow, allowing both Raikkonen and Alex Wurz's Williams to leapfrog him. Behind the sixthplaced Heikki, Coulthard was soon holding up a queue comprising the BMWs - once Heidfeld had punted Ralf Schumacher's Toyota out with an over-optimistic lunge. The delayed Hamilton was running all on his own at the back, trading fastest laps with leader Massa.

By the 34th of the 60 laps, Massa had pulled out more than 8sec on Alonso, whose compromised pace had badly delayed Raikkonen. But that became academic as Kimi's Ferrari stuttered its death throes, a victim of a hydraulic leak in the differential.

The trouble had began manifesting a few laps earlier. But until that time, despite Alonso delaying him, he was on course to have been fighting out the win with his team-mate, being fuelled considerably longer. Had he been able to maintain the gap to the lead at 8sec, he might just have been able to run long enough after Massa pitted on lap 38 to leapfrog him.

It was too close to call according to the team. In championship terms, this was of course a very significant retirement, and news of it cheered Alonso considerably. Fernando had pitted the lap before Massa, and this time the wing-adjustment tool was working.

After each had rejoined, Massa led by 7.6sec. Alonso began to chip little bits out of that, but Massa was adamant he had him under control. On the 43rd lap Massa lapped Hamilton, the latter being shown blue flags. A few laps later Lewis was instructed to allow Alonso past as he continued his chase of the leader.

Kovalainen had pitted as early as lap 27. This was because no fuel had been added on his lap-12 stop for dry tyres - because it was felt that they wouldn't stand up to a long, heavily-fuelled stint without graining. So, although he was running fifth by lap 48, pressuring Wurz, he needed to stop again for fuel. A few minutes earlier there had come information that rain was expected within the next three laps. So Renault took a gamble and fitted intermediates at his fuel stop. The rain didn't come soon enough to rescue him.

It arrived on the 52nd lap, with just eight to go. The leaders pitted. In the rush to chase Massa, Alonso was released right in front of Giancarlo Fisichella's Renault. It was a very close call, particularly for the Honda mechanics standing outside the pit next door.

In the wet, Massa suddenly had a problem: "My tyres were vibrating like crazy, like they were just completely unbalanced. It made the car very difficult." That was all it took to switch Alonso's perspective from eight points to 10.

"He's a passionate individual," said McLaren's Martin Whitmarsh, "and if we give him the car and position on the track, he sniffs a win and, like all great, great drivers, he can find something from within himself. We could just tell that he was going to catch Massa and get past him. When great drivers are going for it they just make it happen. He was always going to make it past."

The move when it came was dramatic, the climax of a fantastic contest. Webber did a great job to take the final podium place, but was on the limit of his engine braking at the end, not helped by heavilygrained rear tyres. He almost lost the place to Wurz on the last lap at the chicane, but didn't. Some way behind Wurz was Coulthard, making it a great day for Red Bull.

Heidfeld and Kubica were next, their first-lap collision almost certainly having cost one of the BMWs a podium. Kovalainen hung on from a last-lap Hamilton onslaught to take the final point.

So Alonso heads to Hungary just two points adrift and with the scent of victory fresh in his nostrils. Suddenly the momentum seems with him - Hamilton has a real job on his hands now.