Letter to the Editor: Zanarini responds to Dodgins

Dear Tony,

Having read your autosport.com article The defining move (issue 44, November 2nd 2005), I feel it is only fair that I respond. Fair to Giancarlo Fisichella and fair to autosport.com's subscribers.

You write about the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka, an amazing race for sure, but you focus to a certain degree on Kimi Raikkonen's move on Giancarlo during the last lap; a great move for Kimi but unfortunate for Giancarlo. It was well reported, especially within the F1 paddock, that Giancarlo had problems with his rear tyres and the telemetry showed a 13km/h speed difference on the main straight in Kimi's favour.

You mention an alternative for Fisico, and that was to consciously collide with Kimi, something that has been done on a number of infamous occasions in the last 15 years, the fallout from which was enormous and less than positive and hardly an attractive alternative for Giancarlo or Renault F1 - especially as the team was fighting for the constructors' title.

However, I will concentrate on an extract from your piece where you say: "Would Schumacher or Mark Webber have been passed by Raikkonen on the last lap? No chance..."

I would like to draw your attention to two relevant occasions this year where Giancarlo stylishly overtook the two drivers with "extraordinary powers", and both during the last lap or so of each respective race.

Try to remember the pass on Webber in Spain, with less than two laps to go in the same circumstances that Kimi took Giancarlo but with a lesser difference in speed... then turn your memory to the fantastic pass that Giancarlo made on Michael Schumacher in Germany, with only one and a half laps to go.

Surely your deep focus on the Japanese race made you commit the most common of mistakes: you forgot to look at existing data....

Would Raikkonen fit well with your league of extraordinary gentlemen? I am afraid not, as Kimi was taken by Giancarlo in Brazil in 2003, two corners from the end...

Dear Tony, nobody is invincible in Formula One, especially if he is driving an inferior car. Ask Schumi.

Enrico Zanarini
Driver Manager
Zanarini Management