Fight to the Finnish

In an astonishing turnaround, Kimi Raikkonen came from behind to take the title from Lewis Hamilton. NIGEL ROEBUCK recalls an eventful season

Through most of the 2007 grand prix season, four drivers were in contention for the world championship, and three were still at it when the clans gathered for the final race, in Brazil. For this first year following the retirement of Michael Schumacher, two of them - Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen - had been very much the pre- season favourites, but the third was a rookie, a rookie who had led the point standings since May.

In the end it didn't quite come right for Lewis Hamilton at Interlagos: fifth place would have won him the championship, and he finished seventh, after a messy race in which both he and McLaren made mistakes. It didn't come right for team-mate Alonso either, third place leaving him a point shy of Raikkonen - the least favoured to take the title, and who actually broke into a smile on the podium. Who could have imagined that he would score 20 points in the last two races, and Hamilton only two?

Pre-season testing suggested that McLaren and Ferrari would be the leading lights in 2007, and such proved to be the way of it. This was the first year of Bridgestone being the sole tyre supplier, with two compounds to be taken to each race, both to be used in the course of it: while some teams, like Renault, struggled to make the switch from Michelin, McLaren adapted without particular problem. Ferrari, already supplied by Bridgestone for countless years, was expected to benefit and, when the team produced its unexpectedly long-wheelbased car, there were those who had their dark thoughts about bespoke tyres.

In fact, this proved wide of the mark. Felipe Massa insisted that the new breed of Bridgestone was way different from anything gone before, and it was a steep learning curve for everyone. Massa then proceeded to set blistering testing times everywhere, but for his new team- mate it was a slightly different story. Raikkonen may have won the opening race, in Melbourne, but a long fallow period came afterwards, and it was not until mid-season that Kimi finally found a set-up - on the new tyres - that suited his style. Then he began to fly.

New, too, for 2007 was the 'frozen'-engine rule, together with the rev limit of 19,000. Not surprisingly, engine reliability proved remarkable, but, if the manufacturers' suits liked the reduced costs, the engineers were necessarily frustrated by the handcuffs.

After a season with not a victory on the board, McLaren went into the new one in the highest of spirits, and Ron Dennis looked to have his dream team at last: the reigning world champion, and the rookie in whom the company had invested so much. Within McLaren there was considerable debate before it was decided to put Hamilton in with Alonso, but, as Dennis said, which of the available drivers could do a better job?

It was a fair point, but one or two had words of warning - for Alonso. Juan Pablo Montoya, who had himself left McLaren a few months earlier, felt sympathy for Fernando: within the company, he said, Lewis was a special case, looked upon by Ron almost as a son. And Jackie Stewart put it this way: "Alonso's a great driver, and Hamilton's a rookie - but it's Fernando who's got to make his mark in the team, because he's the new boy and he knows that the McLaren romance with Lewis is a very big one."

Initially, though, all seemed well. Perhaps, at a press lunch in Melbourne, Alonso looked faintly irritated that all the focus seemed to be on his team-mate, but it was early days.

Not so early, though. In two of the practice sessions, Hamilton was the quicker of the two, and in qualifying was less than a tenth shy. Food for thought for the world champion - and there was more of it on race day, when Lewis's scintillating start took him into second place, behind Raikkonen. At this opening race there was nothing to be done about the Ferrari, but for most of the afternoon Hamilton's was the leading McLaren, and Alonso jumped him only at the final stops after the Englishman had been delayed by a backmarker. On the podium Lewis looked ecstatic, Fernando a tad bemused.

It was in Australia that McLaren asked for FIA clarification as to the legality of the floor of the new Ferrari. Soon afterwards Charlie Whiting declared that it did not conform to the rules, and it was not used again - but Raikkonen's victory stood, and that would become significant at the far end of the season. Significant in another way was that McLaren had raised the subject in the first place. We would hear more - much more - of that later in the year.

Taking stock of that first race, the signs were that Ferrari had a slight advantage over McLaren, but not one which couldn't be bridged, that BMW-Sauber (with Nick Heidfeld third in qualifying, fourth in the race) had taken a quantum leap forward, that Renault, world champion in 2005 and '06, had moved in the opposite direction, that Honda's 'Earth Car' was set to be an embarrassment to a great name.

Before the next race, in Malaysia, there was welcome news from Paris, where a World Motor Sport Council meeting confirmed the introduction of a standard ECU for 2008, which meant that traction control was indeed to disappear, as Max Mosley had long promised.

Having dominated pre-season testing, Massa had a setback in Melbourne, finishing sixth after a gearbox problem restricted him to 16th in qualifying. After years of metronomic Ferrari reliability, that was a surprise, and rather set the tone for the season: it wasn't that mechanical failures were frequent, just that occasionally they were there when they hadn't been in Michael Schumacher's time, when Ross Brawn had been technical director - and Nigel Stepney chief mechanic.

Raikkonen may have won the opening race, but he was by no means fully at ease in his new car (and, more to the point, the new-generation Bridgestone tyres). At Sepang he qualified third, but almost half a second from Massa, who took the pole, with Alonso second, Hamilton fourth - and, again, the BMW of Heidfeld next up.

In many ways, the Malaysian Grand Prix was the high point of McLaren's season, for Alonso passed Massa into the first turn, and Hamilton somehow dealt with both Ferraris! As in Melbourne, Lewis's moves were like sleight of hand, and drew ecstatic reviews from one and all. He finished second to Alonso, and perhaps the atmosphere at McLaren was never better than on this day, when the drivers embraced in parc ferme, and Ron Dennis spoke of a new spirit in the team.

This had been the way it was supposed - expected - to be: the imperious double world champion winning, the amazing rookie a respectful distance behind him. And if it had stayed that way, all would have been well.

Problem was, it couldn't. Hamilton was simply too good for that. At press conferences, he maintained his altar-boy image, but behind the smile was granite ambition - and quite rightly so: from the day he first drove a kart, Lewis had never gone racing to make up the numbers. The ambition had always been to win the world championship - and maybe it wasn't going to take very long.

Before the season began, most of the doubts seemed to surround Ferrari, rather than McLaren. Not only was Schumacher gone, after all, but so was Brawn. This was a seismic change, no less, and if some were sceptical about the surprising replacement of Brawn by Mario Almondo, more had their doubts that Raikkonen could take over the reins from Schumacher. It wasn't that Kimi lacked the pace - most believed him fundamentally the quickest driver on earth - but would he have anything close to Michael's application and work ethic? And how would his renowned 'leisure activities' sit with Jean Todt?

At the European races Schumacher began showing up on a regular basis - and that included attendance at the debriefs. During their season as team-mates, Michael had an excellent relationship with Massa, and his presence now fostered the belief that he was helping Felipe more than Raikkonen, the man whose signing, after all, had led to Schumacher's decision to retire before he wished to: 'Massa and Schumacher on pole' ran the front page headline of one German paper on the morning of the Spanish Grand Prix.

Massa was indeed on a roll at this point: he had won in Bahrain, and now he did it again in Spain. Raikkonen, reputedly the highest paid driver in history, was beginning to look very expensive - indeed, it wouldn't be long before rumours surfaced that Ferrari was taking a long, close, look at Nico Rosberg, the most improved driver of the season.

At Monaco Ferrari was comprehensively outpaced by McLaren, but, while Massa finished a decent third, Raikkonen - at this, a track where he had previously excelled - goofed in qualifying, started 16th, and finished eighth after a drive pale by comparison with Schumacher's, in similar circumstances, the previous year. Kimi, out of sorts with a car not really talking to him, was in some strife.

Speaking of strife... McLaren may have finished 1-2 in Monte Carlo, but already cracks were starting to appear in the relationship between the drivers. In Bahrain Hamilton, second, had beaten Alonso for the first time and - far more significantly - at Barcelona it happened again. A wild move by Fernando to take the lead from Massa at the first corner did not come off, while Lewis smoothly took over second place and stayed there. It was not what the enormous crowd had paid to see, and Alonso, the original proud Spaniard, was only too aware of that.

Certainly, though, he made amends in Monaco, where he was perfect all weekend - and Hamilton passed up a very good opportunity to keep quiet. Certainly it was true that Lewis was not allowed to race Fernando, Ron Dennis conceding that he hated suspending McLaren's philosophy of letting the two drivers fight each other. But this was Monaco, Ron argued, and different rules applied. Had the silver cars tangled, Massa would have won, and how clever would McLaren have looked then?

Indisputably Dennis was right, but Hamilton - in only the fifth F1 race of his career, after all - made his discontent abundantly, if politely, clear afterwards: "It's something I have to live with - I'm the number two driver..."

His remarks were inevitably seized upon, one headline fatuously suggesting that McLaren had 'ushered' Alonso to victory. All of this went down well with neither senior personnel nor Fernando himself, who felt patronised, his victory belittled. Not good.

Even worse was that Hamilton then went and won both the North American races - and on each occasion pinched pole position from his team mate at the last second. In Montreal there were signs of a loss of perspective by Alonso, who lost time with another all-or-nothing first corner, and ultimately finished seventh, worn tyres leaving him unable even to fight off Takuma Sato's Super Aguri! At Indianapolis the McLarens ran the race together - but Lewis had started first, and that was the difference.

By now Hamilton, who had taken the championship lead at Barcelona, was 10 points clear of Alonso, 19 ahead of Massa, 26 of Raikkonen. Kimi, at this point, looked out of the title reckoning, but that was all about to change. At Indianapolis he had been on Massa's pace: at last he had found a Ferrari/Bridgestone set-up that suited his driving style. Back they came to Europe, for Magny-Cours and Silverstone, and in the space of a week Raikkonen added 20 points to his score.

In France the Ferraris were unstoppable, and perhaps Kimi was fortunate to get ahead of pole man Massa at the second stops, when Felipe was delayed by traffic. He will remember the moment well: without it, he would not have won the world championship.

It was the day after the French Grand Prix that word first surfaced of the spy scandal which was to so disfigure the most closely-fought season in a generation. 'A Ferrari employee' (Nigel Stepney) had colluded with 'a McLaren employee' (soon revealed as chief designer Mike Coughlan), handing over a huge dossier of confidential Ferrari material.

The suggestion was that the two disaffected men had hit upon the idea of offering themselves as a highly-paid rescue package to Honda, whose calamitous season continued without respite, and Honda team principal Nick Fry - eventually - allowed that discussions had indeed taken place, at the same time stressing that 'documents' had never been mentioned.

Question was: how much had McLaren gained from the Ferrari dossier? At the end of July, the World Motor Sport Council decided that, while indubitably the material had got into Coughlan's hands, there was insufficient evidence that McLaren had materially benefited, and that therefore there would be no punishment. 'Not proven', in other words.

Ferrari, while poorly placed to complain about decisions taken in Paris over time, reacted with outrage, Todt going into full Lady Macbeth mode and suggesting that, if Ferrari had been accused of anything like this, the team would not have got away with it. In many of us, that raised the ignoble thought that not many, either, would have got away with publicly impugning the integrity of the FIA, but hey, who's counting?

At all events, Ferrari appealed the decision, and a new date was set to hear it. Worse, though, was to come, and the beginnings of it stirred on the morning of the Hungarian Grand Prix.

A fortnight earlier, at the Nurburgring, Alonso had memorably won, passing Massa on a treacherous track in the late laps. Fernando's joy was compounded by the fact that neither Hamilton (for the first time) nor Raikkonen scored any points, that now he was back within a couple of Lewis. The pair of them went off to Budapest in very resolute frame of mind, and it was soon clear they would have the place to themselves.

Then came the foolishness of qualifying, in which each tried to scupper the other, Hamilton denying Alonso the opportunity to pass during the fuel-burning laps, and Fernando retaliating by delaying Lewis in the pits, thus denying him one final chance to take the pole. Neither subtle nor adult, their behaviour infuriated Ron Dennis, but it affected no other team, and should have been settled in-house.

As it was, curiously, the FIA stewards chose to get involved; curiously, they punished only one of the drivers (Alonso, who was moved from pole to sixth on the grid); curiously, they decided also to punish the team, announcing that McLaren would not be eligible for points this weekend.

Alonso, not surprisingly livid, made his feelings clear to Dennis next morning, and such was his right, perhaps. But unforgivably he then threatened that unless the team began to treat him as the unequivocal number one (in other words, restrain Hamilton), he would be informing the FIA of new evidence in the spying affair.

Dennis, horrified to learn that there was new evidence, at once informed Mosley - whereupon the FIA president lost no time in requiring Alonso and test driver Pedro de la Rosa to reveal everything they knew. And soon it was announced that what was to have been an appeal hearing would now be a complete re-trial.

Hamilton, with Alonso trapped in traffic, won as he liked in Hungary, but in Turkey the pendulum swung Ferrari's way, Massa narrowly beating Raikkonen, with Alonso third and Hamilton - delayed by a delaminating tyre - fifth. It was bunching up at the top of the table, but Lewis still held sway - and Kimi was still 16 points adrift.

It was at Monza, with the WMSC meeting only days away, that the atmosphere in F1 became truly toxic, with Ferrari people muttering about the depths of McLaren's duplicity, and pretty well everyone else suggesting that the whole affair had got wildly out of proportion, that this sort of thing had been going on for ever, and like that. Incalculable damage, more than one luminary suggested, was being done to the sport, and about that there was no disagreement at all.

Ironically, in this cauldron of anger and strife, the McLarens - in a class of their own over Monza's high kerbs - dominated the Italian Grand Prix, with Alonso, at his very best, comfortably beating Hamilton, whose passing manoeuvre on Raikkonen in the late laps was the best of the season.

Five days later, everyone was at Spa - and in shock. On the Thursday evening came the announcement of the WMSC's decision: McLaren would be stripped of all constructors' points in the 2007 season - and fined $100,000,000. What was this? Enron?

Undoubtedly, not everything had come out at the original hearing, and certainly more McLaren people than Coughlan had been involved (although none suggested that Dennis was among them), but most thought the punishment draconian, ludicrously out of proportion to the offence. Renault's Pat Symonds, as balanced an individual as you will find in F1, was asked if he considered McLaren guilty. He said yes, he supposed so. And guilty of what? "Not very much!"

Mosley came to Spa and - remarkably - appeared taken aback by the paddock's response to the decisions taken in Paris. What else could account for his inflammatory remarks in a TV interview, during which he said that McLaren had "polluted" the 2007 world championship - and might well "pollute" the '08 season as well. Later, Jackie Stewart was one of many to express opinions which did not sit well with the FIA president - who dismissed the three-time world champion as "a certified halfwit".

The FIA has, of course, always been very tough on those who 'bring the sport into disrepute'.

Last word on the wretched affair: if McLaren was obliged to accept responsibility for Coughlan (and it should have been), why was Ferrari not held responsible for the actions of Stepney, a Ferrari employee - and the man who instigated it all? It was not, after all, as if anyone had broken into Maranello.

Not for the first time, Ferrari was thus handed the constructors' title, but the drivers' championship was unaffected, and Hamilton still narrowly led from Alonso. After the Belgian Grand Prix, where Raikkonen and Massa had another 1-2, and Alonso and Hamilton a 3-4, Lewis was but two points ahead of Fernando.

At Fuji, though, he appeared to put the issue almost beyond doubt, winning magnificently in appalling conditions - which brought Alonso to grief. Two races remained, and Lewis now had 12 points over Fernando, 17 over Kimi: it wasn't easy to see how he could lose.

Ah, but this is F1. If Hamilton had put all thoughts but the championship out of his mind, he would have settled for a good, safe finish at Shanghai, but the boy is a racer incarnate, and wanted to wrap things up with another victory. Thus, in wet-dry conditions, he raced hard with Raikkonen, and screwed his tyres. As the car became increasingly undriveable, his team dithered over bringing him in, fearful of putting him on the wrong tyres at just the wrong moment. A big tactical error, without a doubt - but, in all truth, Hamilton should have told them he was coming in.

What followed - as Lewis slid slowly into that pitlane gravel trap - was frustrating beyond belief, but there was nothing to be done. And the real nightmare was that Raikkonen and Alonso finished first and second. Now, with only Brazil to come, Kimi and Fernando were only three and seven points behind. And we all know what happened at Interlagos.

For all that, Hamilton, for me, was still the driver of the year, more consistently competitive than anyone else - and, beyond doubt, the most remarkable rookie the sport has known. Thus, it was remarkable to hear Max Mosley say that, in his opinion, "There's a tendency exaggerate the importance of Lewis Hamilton".

It's true that Lewis is less than the flavour of the month in Spain, where they believe that poor little Fernando was badly treated by his horrid team, but across most of the globe there has been a welcome resurgence of interest in F1 (amply reflected in TV figures), and be in no doubt that the arrival of Hamilton has been largely responsible for that. This is a phenomenal talent.

That said, it would a flinty heart that tried to deny Raikkonen his due. Undoubtedly Kimi was the star of the second half of the season, and his drive at Fuji - where he came through the field to finish third in dreadful conditions - was not less than stunning.

With six victories, Kimi had two more than anyone else, and it's always pleasing to see wins rewarded with championships. Throughout the year, too, he remained resolutely apolitical, as he always has, and in today's world that makes him pretty well unique.