Chinese Whispers

The Chinese Grand Prix was a race that promised so much, and yet in the end it failed to deliver. After the awesome contest that was Suzuka it seemed logical to expect a fiercely fought showdown for the Constructors' Championship between Renault and McLaren but, with a two-point lead in the bag, Renault were in charge from the start of the race at Shanghai. Within a dozen laps the outcome was, pending any unexpected dramas, a foregone conclusion. And when trouble did strike, it was McLaren that suffered.

The two teams were evenly matched throughout practice, and with China noted for a paucity of overtaking opportunities, qualifying was everything. McLaren had one hand tied behind their back as Juan Pablo Montoya's Suzuka shunt ensured that he was out first on the dirty track. Nevertheless, his time was still good enough for fifth, better than McLaren had expected.

But Kimi Raikkonen was not supposed to be third, behind the two Renaults, after what looked like a scrappy lap. There's no question that Renault regarded two front row spots as something of a bonus, and it gave Pat Symonds and his boys plenty of options for the race.

They weren't dropping any hints about strategy, but it seemed obvious that as usual, Fisichella was heavier than Alonso, and that with the grid the way it was, the Spaniard could make a break leaving his teammate to ride shot gun. When I mentioned this likely scenario out to McLaren's Martin Whitmarsh on Saturday night, he gleefully pointed out that Fisichella's record of keeping Raikkonen behind wasn't too great...

The R25's ability to get off the line ensured that they had a pretty good chance of getting to the first corner in the lead, and with McLaren a two-point disadvantage, there was no fear of a kamikaze move from either of the opposition drivers.

"It was a clean start," said Whitmarsh. "Obviously we would have liked to have got past both Renaults, and certainly Fisichella, but we didn't quite manage it. Kimi took a sensible decision to be there for the rest of the race and not doing anything silly at the first corner. But we reasoned that we were on more fuel, we could use that to some advantage at the first stop."

It was no great surprise when Alonso began to edge away, leaving his teammate to fend off the McLarens. But what was perhaps not expected was the size of the advantage he was able to build up. His lead increased at almost exactly a second per lap, as he drove what appeared to be a succession of flat out qualifying laps. As he noted later, he was also using the engine to the full extent of its ability.

And this was a special engine by current standards. Renault's Rob White explained that some weeks ago it became apparent that, assuming no retirements, China could become a 'standalone' race with a new engine that was needed for only one weekend. So plans were put in hand for a 700kms rather than 1200kms spec that had a little extra oomph. Montoya had the same opportunity - I assume Mercedes made a similar effort - but Kimi was stuck with his Suzuka engine, which had clearly been well used.

The really significant thing at this stage is that Fisichella, lambasted for the way he let Raikkonen through a week earlier, didn't appear to have too much trouble keeping the Finn behind this time. Whether the Italian was going as quick as he could have, is another question.

"He wasn't blocking them, he was racing them!," smiled Symonds. "He wasn't as fast as Fernando in those first stages, and there was a lot of fuel on. Of course it helps, it's all part of it, but he wasn't blocking them..."

At no point did Raikkonen even look like he might have a go, and at times he actually dropped back. Behind him, Montoya was becoming visibly frustrated, showing his nose now and then and clearly eager to get by and get on with things.

Now it's obvious that at times when you get caught behind someone, the sensible thing is to hang back and try and save a little fuel to use later on, but Alonso was going away at such a rate that an economy run was not going to be of much use.

"Do you think that Kimi had the performance?" wondered Symonds. "The car looked a little bit difficult, honestly I don't think there was anything left there. I think we had the legs on them this weekend."

So what was up with Kimi?

"You'll have to ask him," noted Adrian Newey with a wry smile. So hanging back behind Fisichella was not part of the plan? "No..."

"If you look at the lap times once he had clear air, then he went," said Whitmarsh, somewhat unconvincingly. "In that situation we were quite a few laps later than them. By leaning off and just taking it easy you can grab another lap, and every lap you can gain is another opportunity to get the advantage, in such a situation you can either reason on - are you going to get past and take that risk, or do you just gain extra strategic advantage."

Whitmarsh admitted that Montoya was getting a little frustrated behind: "Yes, he was, and at one point we looked at letting him through, and that was the point where suddenly there was a spurt from Kimi, when we said how are you and how's it going? And he said basically I can go quicker if I need to. At that point we kept the order. So we obviously considered that. Again, I think it was strategy, if he had got past Fisi and things had panned out with a longer range in the second stop, he may have been able to have a go at Alonso as well."

Of course, the first safety car turned the race on its head. It was pure bad luck that saw Montoya rather than any of the other cars hit the dislodged drain cover, although it's interesting to note that Raikkonen had spotted the beginnings of trouble on the previous lap and had deliberately steered clear - an example, perhaps, of how the truly great drivers have so much extra capacity to take in what's going on around them.

As soon as he hit it, Montoya's quest for serious points was over. He came straight into the pits, but could only use the stop to replace the punctured tyre. He had to come in again on the next lap to refuel, along with everyone else. But by then he'd lost even more ground as, in common with Jenson Button and David Coulthard, he'd got caught behind the safety car.

By the time things settled down, Montoya was almost last. From there he was never going to be able to make a big contribution to McLaren's score, but that became academic when he was told to come into the pits and retire after an engine problem developed while running behind the safety car. On Sunday night Mario Illien still couldn't say whether it had anything to do with the earlier incident. But was the first Mercedes race failure of the year connected with the effort to create a one-race special?

With Montoya out, McLaren's title chances were all but over. Renault could still win the Championship with a second and third, and the only thing that could scupper them was a retirement.

The safety car cancelled out Alonso's lead, but since everyone refuelled well before their first stops were due, it also cancelled out any advantage that Kimi might have had on strategy. The team insisted that he would have stopped significantly later than both Renaults, although the opposition disputes that.

"We knew with some degree of confidence that we would run longer than Renault," said Whitmarsh, "And that we would therefore be able to leapfrog certainly Fisichella at the first stop, and in such a situation you have to take a view. We decided to conserve fuel, and every lap extra fuel that you can save increases the margin by which you can use that strategy.

"We were working that clear strategy when Juan Pablo had the problem with the drain cover, which was a double whammy for us because obviously it ultimately saw Juan Pablo come out of the race, but the fact that it resulted in a safety car negated our strategic advantage at that point, as everyone had to come in and fuel. At that point we fuelled we believe longer than Renault, so that we had the opportunity at the second stop to do the same thing."

So in an attempt to make up for losing any supposed advantage, and give him a second chance of getting ahead of the Renaults, Raikkonen took on a relatively heavy load at the first stop. When the track finally went to green he again sat behind Fisichella, but this time Alonso didn't disappear into the distance.

There was good reason for that, as he knew that with Montoya out, second and third would be OK, so he took less out of the engine to foster reliability. Indeed, Raikkonen was close enough that there seemed to be a genuine chance that, if he really was able to bang in a significant number of extra laps, he might just get into the lead. But we were still a long way from finding out when the safety car came out for a second time.

"We regrouped from the first safety car," said Whitmarsh. "We believed we fuelled longer again from Renault, so we had the same opportunity at the second stop. Then the [Narrain] Karthikeyan incident threw the safety car out. Again, the second safety car negated the advantage. So we found ourselves in a situation where we weren't able to exploit the fact that we were running most of the time with more fuel than the Renault, and when we got to the last stop we were held up by Fisichella coming in - it cost him three cars getting in the way..."

This was one of the most intriguing aspects of the race. The trick of holding up rivals on the way into the pits under safety car conditions has been a regular feature in recent years and was used most blatantly by Raikkonen himself at Spa.

By the next race in Brazil, race director Charlie Whiting had decided to put a stop to such gamesmanship. A press statement was issued at noon on race day to the effect that any blocking on the track, pit entry or pitlane might lead to a penalty.

Fisichella's protestations of innocence after the race suggested that he didn't know about this 'clarification', or if he did, he's a good actor. But the team most certainly did know about this, so it seems pretty clear that they knew he might get a penalty but were prepared to make the sacrifice for strategic gain. By the time the stewards decided to give him a drive-through penalty, though, things had moved on, and he lost only one place on the track.

"I'm not complaining about it," said Symonds. "It's grey. We knew after Spa that Charlie wasn't happy with Kimi. Our rules of engagement in the team are that we tell the driver what the gap is, and we try and let him manage it to arrive just as the other one is leaving, so it's just the way we do it. There's never been a real definition, and I don't think you can define it, I'm not criticising Charlie... I might not be so magnanimous if it had affected the Championship outcome, and I'm particularly disappointed that Giancarlo didn't get on the podium, because he deserved it so much."

Back to the race. Fisichella might have held up Raikkonen on the way into the pits, but the Finn managed to jump out ahead of the Italian, in part because Raikkonen had more fuel in the car and thus spent less time at rest. In normal circumstances that would have put him onto Alonso's tail in the queue, in what would have been a very threatening position.

However, Ralf Schumacher, Christian Klien and Felipe Massa had chosen not to stop and, helped by Raikkonen being slowed into the pitlane, all got ahead of the Finn. So Alonso had a priceless cushion of three quick and very determined drivers between himself and Kimi, and a clear run at the restart. With all those cars in the way, there was nothing Kimi could do, even though he eventually found speed in that final stint.

"He managed to get Fisi at the stop," said Whitmarsh. "Which was a good effort by the team, because that was obviously one of the focuses and goals at that point. We then, having been held up, collected those three cars in front, and they performed the same function. By the time they'd peeled away, he was 14 secs behind. Kimi did a great job to set the fastest lap of the race on the last lap, there wasn't much we could do at that point."

Of course even if he had got past Alonso, it would have been academic for, as noted, Renault would still have won the title. Even the late penalty that dropped Fisichella from third to fourth would not have made any difference.

But perhaps the key point was that Renault won the title not with a careful points gathering exercise, but a resounding victory gained on pure pace and aggressive strategy, one that turned the season on its head in terms of the perception that since Imola they have just been picking up the pieces when McLaren slipped up. It was also important for Alonso to win another race and equal Kimi's score.

Clearly luck didn't go the Surrey team's way in China, but Renault got their sums right, and the team deny McLaren's assumption that things would have been different had the safety cars not ruined their fuel strategy.

"I really don't think that's the case," says Symonds. "We played this whole weekend rather differently to normal but tried not to give that away. In fact the opposite, we were being rather pessimistic, but we knew what we were doing. We weren't making too much of where we were, but we were running a lot of fuel all weekend. I'm very, very convinced that in a straight race, without safety cars and everything, we would have beaten them."

"We came into the season with a strong car and two very competitive drivers, nd the clear intent to win Championships," said Whitmarsh. "We've come out of China with a whole range of incidents during the race that didn't go our way. We should have won this race, but we didn't. That's not particularly the fault of people within the team, that's the circumstances that unfolded during the race that didn't allow us to use our strategy to have got past the Renaults and got the results that we needed.

"It's disappointing. You can always focus on what went wrong today, and we've got a fair bit to focus on under that heading, but the reality is we don't win or lose Championships in the last race. You do that over the course of the season.

"We've got positives, we got a pretty competitive car, we've got 10 Grand Prix wins, more than anyone else, and both drivers have done a great job. We set out to win both World Championships, and they both slipped out of our fingers. There are at least eight teams up and down the pitlane that wouldn't have minded the season we had, but for us it wasn't good enough."

We want to hear from you!

Let us know what you would like to see from us in the future.

Take our survey

- The Autosport.com Team

Read and post comments