Fernando Alonso Wins 2006 Canadian GP

After Fernando Alonso won today’s Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal he actually looked like he had worked for it. Even though this was his fourth straight victory–and he was starting from his fifth straight pole–it was not the usual Sunday afternoon drive that we have all become accustomed to.

Alonso quickly built up a decent lead over all of his followers apart from Kimi Raikkonen but an early incident brought out the safety car and his lead was gone as the field bunched up behind him. As the race neared the end the same thing happened and again his lead disappeared but he was able to hang back behind the safety car and then speed away from the rest of the pack as soon as it pulled into the pit lane.

The most significant factor in the race were the “marbles”, small pieces of balled up rubber and dust that wore off of the tyres and collected just off the racing line. Many parts of the track, notably the already tricky hairpin, were like glass and none of the leaders were immune to the odd slip and slide as they went around the turn. Ralf Schumacher must have the record with four or five spins on the exact same section of the track.

Raikkonen went wide with just a couple of laps to go allowing Michael Schumacher to slip by and take second place but there wasn’t enough time left for him to think about challenging Alonso.

With a single tyre supplier next year it is unlikely that there will be so many marbles as tyre manufacturers always seem to provide harder tyre compounds when they don’t have any competition.

Complete GP of Canada results.

Posted: Sunday, June 25th, 2006

Fernando Alonso Wins 2006 British GP

It’s Sunday so it must be time for Fernando Alonso to win another Grand Prix. This week it was the British GP at Silverstone.

Fortunately, this weekend was free from the on-track controversy of two weeks ago–although not from people still wanting to talk about it.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much else to talk about with another processional race unfolding on an unusually warm English afternoon in June. Once local favourite Jenson Button parked his Honda in a cloud of smoke it was all over.

Perhaps no one noticed as apparently everyone else in the world is watching the [football/soccer] World Cup at the moment anyway.

Complete GP of Great Britain results.

Posted: Sunday, June 11th, 2006