Fernando Alonso Wins Controversial 2006 Monaco GP

Fernando Alonso won today’s 2006 Monaco Grand Prix–his first win on this circuit–from the pole, but that wasn’t where he qualified.

In the last few seconds of qualifying yesterday, provisional pole-sitter Michael Schumacher ran wide and stopped just short of the barrier on the outside of the already tight, double-righthand Rascasse corner. With half of the road blocked and a local yellow flag in effect all of the cars behind him, including Alonso, had to slow at the corner and no one had a chance to better Schumacher’s time.

Immediately the conspiracy theorists and rival teams started suggesting that Schumacher had stopped there on purpose to make sure that he would win the pole. The stewards announced that they were looking into it and eight hours later they disallowed all of his qualifying times, sending Schumacher to the back of the grid. They also docked Giancarlo Fisichella his three fastest laps for “impeding” David Coulthard, moving Fisichella back to 10th on the grid.

The first half of the race was fairly uneventful but then the attrition started and within a couple of laps Mark Webber and Kimi Raikkonen had dropped out of third and second place respectively with engine problems.

As is usual at Monaco, there wasn’t much passing but Schumacher made some good moves and the combination of attrition, a single stop strategy and some well-timed blue flags let him make it all the way to fifth place by the end of the race. Schumacher might even have finished higher but there was no way that ex-teammate Rubens Barrichello was going to move aside for him today.

Complete GP of Monaco results.