Following several years of Ferrari domination at Monza, McLaren will be the team to beat in Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix. Renault may be forced to adopt a conservative strategy and Michael Schumacher will be eager to salvage some pride for the Scuderia.
Following several years of Ferrari domination at Monza, McLaren will be the team to beat in Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix. Renault may be forced to adopt a conservative strategy and Michael Schumacher will be eager to salvage some pride for the Scuderia.
At the back-to-back Italian and Belgian Grands Prix, the rivalry between Renault’s championship leader Fernando Alonso and McLaren’s Kimi Raikkonen, which has really been less of a battle and more of an impasse up to this point of the season, will come to a head. Alonso gained his advantage early in the season and it’s an advantage that’s so far held up without any drastic change. However, Monza and Spa Francorchamps are high-speed tracks and speed is certainly one thing McLaren-Mercedes does not lack.
Monza is a circuit with the lowest downforce settings of the season combined with a need for top-end engine power. Teams build aerodynamic parts just for this race because the setup needs to be specific to Monza’s requirements. Minimizing drag is also a vital element of the overall package and a high-speed track doesn’t just need power: it required good braking and brake cooling.
With about 70 per cent of the lap spent at full throttle and an average lap speed of 260 km/h, a smooth power delivery is needed for the slower sections and, of course, the engine has to be reliable under pressure – generally one of Renault’s strengths but not necessarily one of McLaren’s so far this season…
“As long as we finish the races, we are okay,” said Alonso. “If we are competitive and can get on the podium, then it will be hard to lose my advantage. The advantage we have is that I can still afford some bad races and not lose the lead. McLaren have pressure to be perfect until China, and if they are not, we will be there to punish them.”
Renault’s engineering director Pat Symonds this week denied that Renault was focused on securing Alonso’s drivers’ world championship and that Giancarlo Fisichella, who is out of the title race, would become the forgotten man at Enstone.
“The focus really has to go on the second car and trying to get the constructors’ championship,” Symonds said, adding that the majority of teams were more interested in winning the constructors’ than the drivers’ championship title. “If we can win the constructors’, then I think we will almost certainly also win the drivers’.”
After his dominant victory in the Turkish Grand Prix, Raikkonen was bullish about his prospects at Monza: “The situation in both the Drivers’ and Constructors’ championships is still open and nobody knows what’s going to happen until the last race in October,” the Finn said recently. “The car has the pace to win, and I am not giving up the fight, so we shall see.”
Raikkonen’s team-mate, Juan-Pablo Montoya, had a more sober outlook on the outcome of the championship… “I think (winning) the drivers’ is a bit unlikely,” Montoya said at Monza, “but we’ve got the quickest car and we’ve got to try to win the constructors’.”
McLaren’s advantage over every other car, including the Renault, is about one full second per lap at the moment. With that in mind, McLaren chief executive Martin Whitmarsh believes the Woking team could finish one-two in every race, including the final grand prix in China. And he told Autosport: “A single DNF could cost us the championship.”Meanwhile, Michael Schumacher has hung on to third place in the drivers’ standings, but one would have to say that his title hopes are over. Mathematically it’s still possible but he would have to win every remaining race and have Alonso and Raikkonen not
