BRAZILIAN GRAND PRIX

Two races down, and still no more clued-up about who’s looking best, Ferrari or McLaren. Qualifying was extremely bitty due to advertising hoarding falling onto the track causing the session to be red-flagged. Jean Alesi came very close to having one land on his head. It was very amateurish and could have been very dangerous. What it meant was that we missed some good qualifying laps (when the session was restarted it was raining). Therefore, we were robbed of seeing whether Michael Schumacher could have matched the McLaren’s quick pace.

Jensen Button did very well to out-qualify Ralf Schumacher. It was especially impressive when you realise that he lost a lot of track-time on the Friday – and he hadn’t driven the track before. Sauber had an interesting weekend. Mika Salo had a rear-wing failure pitching him off the circuit at around 180mph. A fault was also found on Pedro Diniz’s car, so Sauber decided to withdraw from the race altogether, as they couldn’t guarantee the safety of their cars.

It was nice that the race itself finally had me screaming at the television. Both McLaren’s were fairly tardy off the line, which enabled Schumacher to get right under the rear wing of Mika Hakkinen. Michael was fantastically aggressive throughout the first lap, showing Mika the nose of his Ferrari into almost every corner. He eventually out-dragged him down the start-finish line and ducked down the inside into turn one – fantastic.

At the same time, Ruben’s was taking Coulthard – passing him with millimetres to spare. Our man Jensen didn’t have such a good first lap, losing several places. This isn’t too surprising considering his inexperience at this level of the sport. Michael pulled away at about a second a lap, it was becoming apparent that he was on a different fuel strategy to the McLaren’s – two stops, as opposed to one.

This was irrelevant, however, as Mika drove straight into his garage and retired. It’s not yet known why he retired, he left the circuit immediately. Eddie Irvine put his Jaguar into the wall after losing the back end under braking. Jonny Herbert also retired, yet again. Someday his luck will change.

Quietly behind Coulthard and Schumacher, Fisichella was putting in an impressive drive. Benetton have just been bought by Renault, and Flavio Briatore has been put back in charge – he was at the controls when Schumacher won his two titles. The Jordan’s were also going well. Mid-way through the race, Jensen put a fantastic overtaking manoeuvre on Jos Verstappen – braking really deep into one of the circuits hairpins, a place where overtaking is not normally an option.

So, in the end Michael won from Coulthard, Fisichella (fantastic), the two Jordan’s – Frentzen from Trulli, and then Ralf Schumacher’s Williams (followed by Jensen – a good day for Williams BMW). However, five out of the top six finishers’ cars were found to be illegal under the rules – they all had their wooden planks worn too thin. Wooden planks are bolted to the underside of the chassis to reduce aerodynamic performance by raising the ride-height of the car, they are only allowed to wear down by a couple of millimetres during a race. This would have put Fisichella in first place, but the cars weren’t disqualified as it was blamed on the circuits wash-board surface.

Poor old David Coulthard’s car was disqualified, though. The front-wing end-plates were found to be 5mm too low. McLaren are challenging this ruling, stating that it was again the circuit to blame, as it rattled the car so much that the end-plates rotated. This put Jensen into sixth place – the youngest driver ever to score a world championship point. However, I don’t think it will last long as I believe McLaren will win their appeal and David will be re-instated into second place.

So, from here we go to Imola in two weeks – this one should really be a peach. Get your snacks and comfy seats ready.

Tristan