Alonso Drives Race of a Champion

In a tough weekend for his team, the double world champion led home a Mclaren one-two at Monza. By MARK HUGHES

McLaren-Mercedes one-two, a resounding defeat of Ferrari in its own backyard, and the team went into its well rehearsed victory mode. As Fernando Alonso - the faster McLaren man all weekend - stood on the top step of the podium and Lewis Hamilton took satisfaction from a stunning pass on Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen, the silver team gear was replaced by the bright orange outfits, their special winners attire.

But such were the political overtones of the weekend that the paddock celebrations were distinctly muted, even if those in the garage in the euphoria of the moment were far from that. Paranoia was all around - understandably so with the team in the midst of preparing for the Thursday FIA world council meeting.

"Obviously if you come first and second it's a good feeling," said Ron Dennis, "but I don't want to put any greater emphasis on this. Perhaps the emphasis is best placed on the performance of our team under a lot of pressure."

The best work was done well before the weekend began, with all that went into preparing the MP4-22's Monza package. Taking advantage of the downforce the car naturally generates from its big front wing package, the team had the luxury of being able to retain a lot of that wing, giving them the braking and front-end bite so crucial for the chicane approaches.

Like everyone else they deleted a few aero appendages), but such was their car's efficiency they were able to get the more rearwards centre of aero pressure needed for this circuit without taking off whole swathes of front wing area. Instead, they were able to simply run the car a little more nose-up than normal, the higher front ride height in turn aiding its already phenomenal kerb performance.

To see the McLaren jumping the crucial chicane kerbs, and how undisturbed it was upon landing, was to doubt what you'd just witnessed. As a consequence, every place the circuit had a turn in it, the McLaren gained whole chunks of time over every other car. The Ferrari, with its stiffer structure and less compliant suspension, didn't appear to be in the same league. And in order to get the required aero efficiency, it had to surrender more downforce than its rival.

Slower than the McLaren through Parabolica it was still slower at the end of the long, long pit straight despite its smaller wings. But McLaren wasn't convinced, not even after sewing up the front row. It knew it had gone relatively light with both cars, committing to a two-stop race in order to guarantee track position.

But what had Ferrari done? One-stopping at Monza is in theory faster over a race distance. All that top-gear running down those long straights means that weight doesn't hurt lap time as much as at other tracks. Tyre degradation is not very high - and the pitlane is very long.

All these things conspired to make one-stopping a faster option by around 8sec, according to McLaren's computer analysis. So if one or both the Ferraris were one-stopping, they just might be a threat. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that weight-corrected the Ferraris were around 0.5sec per lap slower than the McLarens in qualifying.

But McLaren was very aware we've seen many times this year that the Ferrari's qualifying pace can be deceptive, as they often don't warm up their front tyres quickly enough to show their true pace until they're a few laps into a stint. If their true pace once into a race situation was a couple of tenths closer than that, then a one-stopping Ferrari might just beat a two-stopping McLaren. As such, McLaren was very suspicious of Kimi Raikkonen, given his relatively slow qualifying pace.

Felipe Massa, third on the grid, seemed too close to the McLaren qualifying times to be one-stopping, but Kimi wasn't. A pitstop at Monza costs around 22sec, plus the stationary time - meaning that if Kimi was one-stopping, and not just slow as an after-effect of his Saturday morning accident, the McLarens needed to be half a minute in front of him when they made their second stops.

McLaren's worst fears were confirmed as everyone removed their tyre warmers - and Raikkonen was revealed as the only front-runner on the soft tyre. The soft was significantly slower over a stint than the medium and the implication was that the first stint was going to be his shortest - and therefore he was one-stopping. Probably stopping on lap 25-28, rather than 18-20 of the McLarens.

McLaren was never in a position to consider one-stopping: during testing the week before and in Friday practice too, it suffered a lot of blistering on the outside shoulder of the left-rears. The more aggressive way the McLaren works its tyres made the high fuel load necessary for a one-stop too risky.

With the Turkey tyre failure still fresh in their minds, it wasn't a strategy they were tempted by. These were the conundrums hanging in the air as the lights turned green and Alonso blasted from pole into a clean lead. On the dirty side of the grid Hamilton had slanted his car towards Alonso's even as he lined up, aiming to get onto Alonso's gearbox before Massa could get there.

That part of his plan didn't work: Massa's fast-starting Ferrari from the clean side of the grid was quick enough away to get alongside Lewis on the outside. It took a bit of no-compromise ballsyness from Felipe to keep coming but he's not short of that quality and it was briefly all Lewis could do to keep Raikkonen at bay on his right as Massa went by on the left.

So as they came to the first part of the chicane, Massa looked like he'd done enough to turn in there next after Alonso. But that was to reckon without Hamilton's never-say-die racecraft. As Massa turned in he was surprised to see Hamilton come around his outside. Not one to be bullied, Massa held firm and as Lewis cut across his bows, the Ferrari's front-left made contact with the McLaren's right-rear, spearing Hamilton across the inside of the kerb.

Had it not been for the collision Hamilton may even have been able to squeeze out Alonso at the second part of the chicane as Fernando had yet to turn in to it. "I was briefly thinking I might be able to get past [Alonso], but then Felipe hit me, and I was just fighting then to stay in front of him," said Lewis.

It was another display of his wonderful intuitive racecraft, of how he always seems to be able to put himself in the right place. In one moment it had looked as if he was about to be fifth out the first corner and a second or so later he seemed on the verge of taking the lead! As it was, his compromised exit meant he was forced to defend from Massa all the way up to the second chicane, through there and up to the Lesmos, before it all settled.

All this played into Alonso's hands and the champion crossed the line for the first time 1.1sec ahead, with Hamilton, Massa, Raikkonen, the BMWs of Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica and the battling Heikki Kovalainen (Renault) and Nico Rosberg (Williams) in pursuit. But already the safety car was accelerating out of the pitlane.

Red Bull's David Coulthard had suffered a big off first time through Curva Grande. He'd made up five places from his lowly grid slot but then tagged the back of Giancarlo Fisichella's Renault at the first chicane. "That broke my front wing," he reported, "and when I accelerated the downforce pushed the wing underneath the car and broke the steering."

Over 150mph with the road curving right and no steering... can't have been a nice feeling. The gravel trap took some of the sting out of his speed, but he still impacted very deep into the tyre wall, though thankfully he got out suffering no ill effects. The safety car was due in at the end of the sixth lap and as the pack came down the straight between Ascari and Parabolica in preparation for the restart, Alonso and Hamilton were jockeying for position.

Alonso made the break but Hamilton was ready and went with him. The Ferraris had visibly less grip through Parabolica - a function of their tyre warm-up bugbear - and were no threat. Down the straight they screamed, with Hamilton trying to get into his team-mate's 215mph slipstream, but not quite close enough to make a move.

Once it was clear he was ahead into the first turn, Alonso appeared to slow up, looking for all the world as if he was trying to back Hamilton into Massa's clutches. It didn't work, but Alonso then got his head down, reeled off the hard laps and began easing out a small gap over Lewis who in turn was pulling clear of the Ferraris.

All weekend Alonso had looked to have a small but consistent edge. He'd given up trying to beat Hamilton by doing something different - this time he made the same tyre choices, used the same brake disc and pad material.

From the start of the weekend he committed to the team's standard Carbone Industrie brakes, rather than the Hitcos he has been experimenting with. This time he simply dialled himself into their different feel and from the moment Friday practice began, he was revelling in the low downforce challenge of this very special track, with the fastest car in the field at his disposal.

Although McLaren was in the midst of a horribly stressful time, with all sorts of frightening possible scenarios in the days ahead, Alonso was the calm in the middle of it all, head down, working with his engineer and saying next to nothing. It was as if, with the pressure on and the stakes high, he simply took command of his destiny and put together a devastating weekend's work, like someone who has been in this position before.

Massa was around 2.5sec behind Hamilton on lap nine when coming through the Ascari chicane he felt the car suddenly begin to drag its rear end on the ground. He radioed in and was called into the pits. Suspecting a rear puncture, all four tyres were changed but even as he drove back out of the pitlane Massa could feel the problem was still there.

He returned a lap later and parked in the garage. The third damper of the rear suspension had broken, this the vital component that holds the rear suspension upright. It tends to get an extra-hard workout at Monza, given that the teams run softer springs than usual, often with more travel, in order to deal with the kerbs.

This gives the central damper a lot of work to do. In this case, too much. The retirement leaves Massa 23 points behind with just four races left. This brought Raikkonen up to third, but on his heavy fuel load he was lapping around 1sec slower than the McLarens and only just keeping clear of Heidfeld's lighter BMW.

But a heavy fuel load was the least of his problems. His neck, after withstanding the impact with the Ascari tyre barriers the day before, was now very painful - particularly as he braked. After a while he was struggling even to keep his head properly upright when he hit the brakes and triggered 5g of deceleration.

To make matters worse, he then received a radio instruction from the team to stay off the kerbs - as they weren't sure what had triggered Massa's suspension failure. Not the ideal sort of news as you push on at 215mph down a narrow track with heavy braking zones. But McLaren knew nothing of this - and was still deeply worried about the threat he represented.

Could they pull out enough time over him to pay for their extra pitstops? Hamilton, 1.1sec behind Alonso and 10sec clear of Raikkonen, was first in - at the end of the 18th lap. Alonso banged in two hard low-fuel laps and emerged with his advantage over Hamilton slightly enhanced. Raikkonen stayed out in the lead for a further five laps, stopped for 10.9sec, and got under way now on the medium-compound tyres - fuelled to the end, in third place, and 17sec behind the leader.

The McLarens now needed to stretch that out to over 30sec in the next 17 laps - quite a tall order - if they were to stay ahead at their final stops. Kubica had dropped a lot of positions, having been delayed around 10sec at his stop. He missed his marks, coming to a halt about a metre too far forward. This was a contributory factor in the front jack becoming jammed in the underside of the car.

As they wrestled to free him from it, the train of one-stoppers that he would have cleared - Nico Rosberg, Jenson Button, Mark Webber, Rubens Barrichello and Jarno Trulli - as well as Heikki Kovalainen's two-stopping Renault, all passed him, restricting him to their pace until they pitted. "I had a lot of oversteer through Parabolica," he said, "and that meant I wasn't able to enter the straight fast enough to tow past anyone."

Before they each stopped, Kubica had been running just 5sec behind team-mate Heidfeld. Running two laps longer and then fuelled four laps longer to the second stops, he might conceivably have leapfrogged Nick and taken the fourth place that was eventually Heidfeld's. As it was, he had to wait until the second stops to leapfrog Kovalainen and only then was he able to give chase to the only one of that train of one-stoppers to have stayed in front after they made their stop - Rosberg.

Nico had enjoyed a frantic first-stint scrap with Button, finally getting ahead with a well-judged move into the second chicane, the two having run inches apart for lap after lap. Once past, he was able to pull quickly away and was effectively then running in fifth, the Williams working very well with its latest aero updates and significantly quicker than the chasing Hondas, Red Bull, Renault and Toyota.

Into the McLarens' second stint, Alonso began to edge decisively clear - 3.5sec ahead by lap 30, then 4.0, 4.3, 4.6 on each subsequent lap. It wasn't that Fernando had upped his pace, more that Lewis was dropping his. At this rate, Hamilton wasn't going to have enough time in hand over Raikkonen not to get jumped at his final stop.

"I had a problem," he revealed. "I'd flat-spotted a front tyre quite badly. I had some vibration and I wasn't sure it wasn't going to be something like what happened in Turkey." He radioed the pits, requesting an early second stop. The team - which since Raikkonen's spectacular flat-spotted tyre failure at the Nurburgring in 2005 - had simulated the situation on test rigs, analysed the data and reckoned the tyre would be fine.

All the same, he was brought in a couple of laps early - at the end of lap 40. He was still accelerating back down the pitlane on his fresh softer tyres as Raikkonen surged by on the pit straight. McLaren's fears had been confirmed - though Alonso now looked safe, 34sec clear on the eve of his stop.

"I knew I had two laps at most on the softer tyres before they started going off," said Hamilton, "and I knew that with Kimi on his harder, more worn tyres, I would be a lot quicker. But I had to make the move soon."

It came sooner than Kimi was expecting. As they completed lap 42 Lewis was gaining on the Ferrari but was still a significant distance behind as they arrived at the turn-one braking zone. But not for a moment did he hesitate, slicing down the inside bold and decisive, not giving the other guy a chance, and only then wrestling to get the car under control.

Both cars locked their brakes before Lewis simply threw the McLaren dramatically sideways in order to scrub off the necessary speed to make the corner. It was a classic Hamilton move, and second place was back in his possession.

"The problem for me was because of my neck I couldn't do my maximum speed through Parabolica and that made me slow on the straight," said Kimi. "When Lewis came by I fought, but once he was past, I just backed off and saved the engine for Spa." A lap later Alonso made his final The tifosi wave their flags, but a stop and exited still leading, 7.5sec clear of Hamilton.

For a time Lewis gave chase, but then surrendered to team instructions to both drivers to cruise to the finish. Heidfeld was no threat to Raikkonen and that left only fifth place still up for grabs, a fight between Rosberg and the recovering Kubica. As they headed down to turn one to begin lap 46 they were coming up to lap Sakon Yamamoto's Spyker.

As Rosberg defended the inside, Kubica simply went round the outside, braked later than late - and slotted in between the Williams and the Spyker. "I thought for sure I was going to go straight on," said Robert, "but I just made it."

Rounding out the points finishers behind Rosberg were Kovalainen and Button - chased hard by Webber, Barrichello and Trulli. Although Heikki's drive was typically clean, hard and consistent, Renault felt in hindsight that they simply didn't have the pace to make a two-stop work against a one-stopping Williams.

In contrast to McLaren, which had the pace even to beat a one-stopping Ferrari. The world champion, meanwhile, had just put in a perfect champion's drive. Just three points clear with four races to go, Lewis has got a job on his hands - but we can never write him off.

Kimi Raikkonen could tell you that.