Michael Schumacher Wins 2006 German GP

Ferrari’s comeback continued today with Michael Schumacher’s win at the German Grand Prix. With teammate Felipe Massa, polesitter Kimi Raikkonen and Jenson Button between him and Renault’s Fernando Alonso he chipped another six points off the Spaniard’s dwindling lead. Schumacher is now just 11 points behind Alonso and, with six races to go, he could well pull off a surprise before the season is over.

Complete GP of Germany results.

Posted: Sunday, July 30th, 2006

Michael Schumacher Wins 2006 French GP

Michael Schumacher won today’s French Grand Prix from the pole and, in so doing, became the first driver ever to win the same event eight times.

Renault and Michelin had been hoping to make some history of their own on the 100th anniversary of the first Grand Prix which was coincidentaly won by a Renault using Michelin tyres but it was not to be. Felipe Massa–starting alongside Schumacher on the front row for the second time–did a great job of driving just slowly enough to keep Fernando Alonso’s Renault behind him while his team leader tried to build up a lead. Unfortunately for him, when Alonso did finally get by him during refueling stops he wasn’t close enough to put up a fight for second place.

With seven races left the fight for both championships could be very close if Schumacher and Ferrari keep taking a few points from Alonso and Renault in each of the remaining events.

Complete GP of France results.

Posted: Sunday, July 16th, 2006

Montoya Out, de la Rosa In

Following Sunday’s news that Juan Pablo Montoya was leaving Formula 1 and heading to NASCAR next year, McLaren announced today that they had mutually decided that Montoya should sit-out the remainder of this season’s races.

Montoya’s seat will be taken by Pedro de la Rosa who previously drove for Arrows (1999-2000) and Jaguar (2001-2002) before becoming a test driver for McLaren. In his only prior drive for McLaren, de la Rosa finished 5th in the 2005 Bahrain Grand Prix while filling in for Montoya during his infamous “tennis” injury.

Various reasons were given for this decision including letting Montoya prepare for his new challenge and the fact that his wife Connie is expecting their second child in September.

Chip Ganassi had already expressed an interest in getting Montoya into a few Nextel Cup races at the end of this year after the Formula 1 season ends so perhaps this will now be a possibility sooner than they had anticipated. Montoya will be driving a Dodge next year and parent company DaimlerChrysler also owns Mercedes so maybe there was a certain amount of strategy in play?

Posted: Tuesday, July 11th, 2006

Montoya Headed To NASCAR In 2007

At the USG Sheetrock 400 in Chicago this morning, Juan Pablo Montoya announced that he will be leaving Formula 1 next year and returning to America to drive for Chip Ganassi in the NASCAR series.

Montoya previously drove for Ganassi’s Target CART team when he won the championship in 1999 and the Indy 500 the following year.

This ends the speculation about Montoya’s future as he was unlikely to be re-signed by McLaren for next year and there are no apparent vacancies at any of the other major teams.

Posted: Sunday, July 9th, 2006

Michael Schumacher Wins 2006 United States GP

Michael Schumacher dominated today’s United States Grand Prix at Indianapolis from the pole to the podium and he also set the fastest lap of the race for good measure. To add the icing to the cake his teammate Felipe Massa, who led the race until the first round of fuel stops, finished second to score maximum constructor points for Ferrari and help keep Schumacher’s rivals in the title chase at bay.

Giancarlo Fisichella took third for Renault with teammate Fernando Alonso in fifth. This ended Alonso’s streak of four wins and five poles and was the first time he missed being in the top-two all year long.

Jarno Trulli finished an incredible fourth after starting [last] from the pit lane after his rear suspension collapsed during yesterday’s first round of qualifying.

A first corner collision took out eight cars including both McLarens and U.S. favourite Scott Speed. No sooner had the safety car period ended five laps later than Monteiro and Sato got together in the same spot and two more cars were out of the race.

Three more, unconnected, mechanical retirements later and by the end of the race only nine cars were still running… and three of those were a lap down.

After last-year’s farcical non-race there have been questions as to whether this would be the last USGP at Indy but, judging by the large crowds, it seems that F1 fans are a forgiving lot. Today’s race wasn’t really anything to write home about but it was OK and, unlike yesterday’s NASCAR race in Daytona Beach, the fans got to see the “big one”, complete with a barrel-rolling BMW courtesy of Nick Heidfeld.

Last week Bernie Ecclestone diplomatically announced that Formula 1 doesn’t need America and, of course, he was quite right. However, quite a few of his sponsors do sell quite a lot of their products in America and they would rather like to be here so I expect that, in the absence of many other options, the contracts will eventually be signed for F1 to return to Indianapolis next year.

Complete GP of United States results.

Posted: Sunday, July 2nd, 2006