from www.itv-f1.com:
Imperious Alonso rides waves of chaos
Sunday, 02, April, 2006, 19:27
The 2006 Australian Grand Prix will go down as one of the most
eventful, turbulent and downright bizarre races in the long history
of the world championship.
But Fernando Alonso was cheerfully oblivious to the bedlam that was
going on behind him as he judged every crunch moment to perfection
and romped to a flawless second win of the season.
Kimi Raikkonen was the only man to put the world champion under any
sort of pressure, but his challenge was dented by a damaged
nosecone and he had to settle for second place.
Ralf Schumacher lifted Toyota out of the doldrums with a fine
performance that secured the final podium spot, while Nick Heidfeld
delivered on BMWs potential with fourth.
For Jenson Button, the race that had promised so much was an
unmitigated disaster.
Having claimed pole position with a sublime lap in qualifying, the
Briton lost the lead early on and fell ever further down the order
on the numerous restarts.
He looked set to salvage three points only for his Honda engine to
blow up yards from the chequered flag.
The non-stop drama began on the warm-up lap.
First Juan Pablo Montoya spun while warming his tyres coming out of
the last corner, dropping to the tail of the field, and then
Giancarlo Fisichella stalled his Renault on the line, triggering an
aborted start.
The Italian was forced to take the delayed start from the pit lane,
but Montoya picked his way through the traffic and resumed his
original third-row grid position.
Button just held off a locked-up Alonso into the first corner,
while the McLaren duo gave no quarter as they engaged in a
thrilling wheel-to-wheel tussle through the first half of the
lap.
But a collision at turn 2 between Felipe Massa (Ferrari), Christian
Klien (Red Bull) and Nico Rosberg (Williams) brought out the safety
car for the first of four appearances.
Rosberg and Massa were eliminated on the spot, while Jarno Trulli
also had to retire following a skirmish with the other Red Bull of
David Coulthard.
The restart gave Button the first taste of a problem that was to
become a recurring theme of his afternoon.
Unable to generate sufficient front tyre temperature to get a
decent shot off the final corner, Button fell prey to Alonso even
before they got to turn one.
The Spaniard took off like a scalded cat, pulling out a massive
2.7s cushion after one flying lap as Button struggled to fend off
Raikkonens McLaren.
The race didnt have time to settle into a rhythm before the safety
car had to be deployed again to retrieve the battered Red Bull of
Klien.
The Austrian had survived his earlier shunt and was minding his own
business when the car turned sharp left under braking for turn nine
and speared into the wall.
Raikkonen took advantage of Buttons tyre temperature problems to
slice past into second place at the restart, but locked up badly
into turn one as he did so.
Initially that didnt seem to present the Finn with too many
problems and he even began to close on Alonso, trimming his lead to
1.9s on lap 12.
But soon afterwards the vibrations caused a piece of his front wing
endplate to break off and his pace promptly disappeared.
Alonso soon re-established some breathing space and, thanks to a
blistering sequence of fastest laps, got the lead out to over eight
seconds before his first pit stop on lap 20.
After unaccountably falling to sixth during the first safety car
interlude, Montoya had been marching back up the lap chart with
some feisty overtaking and was hounding third-placed Button prior
to the stops.
When Jenson emerged from the pit lane only just in front of him,
and on cold tyres, the Colombian snatched the place around the
outside of turn two as if stealing candy from a baby.
Meanwhile Mark Webber had sent the Australian crowd into raptures
by taking over the lead as he stretched his first fuel load longer
than most of the other front-runners.
Alas, he never made it to the Williams garage as his FW28 ground to
a halt on the grass a real shame as he was on for a podium
finish.
BMWs Heidfeld was another to use a long first stint to his
advantage, vaulting to fourth place ahead of Button.
Jenson once again struggled to extract any speed from his Honda on
cold tyres, enabling Michael Schumacher to catch him hand over
fist.
The German, in fact, was now one of the fastest men on the circuit,
shrugging off an embarrassingly poor opening stint in which he
suffered the ignominy of being passed by Tonio Liuzzis V10-powered
Toro Rosso.
His Ferrari apparently miraculously transformed, Schumacher was now
matching leader Alonsos times but looking increasingly ragged as
he did so, running off the road out of turn 14 and skating across
the grass at turn one.
On lap 33 Schumachers exuberance caught up with him, as he
attempted to ride out some mid-corner understeer in the final turn
and tattooed the wall on the exit in full view of the teams along
the pit wall.
The impact destroyed the left side of the Ferrari and the
seven-time world champion trudged back to his pit via the Toyota
garage.
The ensuing safety car period triggered the final round of pit
stops, which effectively put paid to McLarens hopes of challenging
Alonso for victory.
The chrome-liveried cars were separated by just a couple of seconds
when the SC was called, forcing Montoya to queue up behind his
team-mate as Raikkonen was serviced.
Worse still for JPM, Raikkonens stop took much longer than usual
as the team elected to replace his damaged nosecone, the effects of
which had hampered Kimi badly in the races middle stages.
The delay allowed Heidfeld to leapfrog Raikkonen for second place,
while Montoya fell to sixth behind Button and Ralf
Schumacher.
The restart could not have gone better for Alonso if he had
scripted it himself.
With two slow-moving Midland cars acting as a buffer between him
and Heidfeld, the Spaniard simply left his pursuers for dead,
pulling out something like six seconds in the space of one
lap.
That margin was negated, however, when the safety car was deployed
yet again following a colossal accident for Liuzzi, from which the
Italian was fortunate to emerge unscathed.
In the frantic half-lap before the SC was declared, Button had been
demoted by both Schumacher and Montoya, although the McLaren driver
got a bump from Jenson at turn three for his troubles.
Three corners later, Heidfeld undid some of his good work with a
grassy excursion that promoted Schumacher and Montoya to third and
fourth respectively.
The next man to err was Montoya, who in a virtual carbon copy of
Michael Schumachers incident understeered onto the rough grass
coming out of the final corner.
He somehow caught the resulting tank-slapper only for his McLaren
to mysteriously lose all drive almost instantaneously.
Meanwhile Alonso continued on his merry way; so comfortable was he
that he even radioed in to his race engineer that he was just
relaxing.
Im feeling pretty chilled myself, mate, was Rod Nelsons amused
reply.
As ever, Raikkonen didnt give up, proving both his spirit and his
underlying pace by setting the fastest lap of the race on the very
last tour; but the damage for McLaren was done.
Schumachers third place was a real fillip for the beleaguered
Toyota team, which just two races ago was mired in the lower
reaches of the midfield.
Heidfeld was impressive again en route to fourth, although he would
have made the podium but for his minor faux pas.
Button should have come home fifth, but as he turned into the final
corner his Honda engine detonated, engulfing the close-following
Fisichella in an oily cloud of smoke.
Whether Button could have coasted across the finishing line quickly
became a moot point, as he was instructed over the radio to pull to
a stop to allow Honda to make a penalty-free engine change before
the San Marino GP.
His demise handed fifth to Fisichella, whose earlier lack of pace
relative to Alonso had caused consternation in the Renault pit and
led to a very public dressing-down over the team radio.
The high attrition rate promoted Jacques Villeneuve (BMW Sauber),
Rubens Barrichello (Honda) and Scott Speed (Toro Rosso) to the
final points-paying positions, but the American rookie was later
penalised for passing under yellow flags, handing a welcome gift to
David Coulthard.
Australian Grand Prix result - 57 laps
1. ALONSO Renault 1h34m27.870s
2. RAIKKONEN McLaren +1.8s
3. R.SCHUMACHER Toyota +24.8s
4. HEIDFELD BMW Sauber +31.0s
5. FISICHELLA Renault +38.4s
6. VILLENEUVE BMW Sauber +49.6s
7. BARRICHELLO Honda +51.9s
8. COULTHARD Red Bull +54.0s
9. BUTTON Honda +1 lap
10. ALBERS Midland +1 lap
11. SPEED Toro Rosso +1 lap*
12. SATO Super Aguri +2 laps
13. IDE Super Aguri +3 laps
R. MONTOYA McLaren +11 laps
R. MONTEIRO Midland +18 laps
R. LIUZZI Toro Rosso +20 laps
R. M.SCHUMACHER Ferrari +25 laps
R. WEBBER Williams +35 laps
R. KLIEN Red Bull +53 laps
R. TRULLI Toyota +57 laps
R. ROSBERG Williams +57 laps
R. MASSA Ferrari +57 laps
Fastest lap: RAIKKONEN 1m26.045s
*Speed penalised 25s for passing under yellows
