Both of these events resulted in the use of the safety car which threw pit stop strategies out the window. The initial running order was Trulli, Raikkonen, Barrichello, Ralf Schumacher and Michael Schumacher. Enter the crazy man and the return of the safety car on lap 11! This is where the running order went all astray seeing championship leader Schumacher fall to 15th spot with Montoya dropping to 13th.

For the 1st time in his career Toyota’s Cristiano Da Matta led a Formula One™ race and did so until lap 30 when the McLaren of Raikkonen took the top position when Da Matta pitted. Barrichello ran 2nd with Ralf Schumacher in 3rd until the Finn had to pit again on lap 42 allowing Rubens to retake the lead. Ruben’s pole start fell to as far back as 7th then back to the lead in this impressive drive.

Meanwhile the reigning World champion worked his way back up to 4th spot just behind fellow title contender Raikkonen. Michael was too far back with too few laps left to overtake the McLaren, but his 4th place finish insured that he would retain the points’ lead losing 1 in the process.

Montoya managed to finish 2nd which was an excellent effort considering his loss of track position due to the mad man incident earlier in the event.

The top 8 points’ paying positions are: 1 Barrichello/Ferrari, 2 Montoya/Williams, 3 Raikkonen/McLaren, 4 M Schumacher/Ferrari, 5 Coulthard/McLaren, 6 Trulli/Renault, 7 Da Matta/Toyota, and 8 Button/BAR.

Evidently Jaguar was sufficiently dissatisfied with Pizzonia’s performances thru the year to dismiss him and hire Justin Wilson away from Minardi. Pizzonia declined a test role with Jaguar and his future remains unclear.

Next race is the grand prix of Germany in 2 weeks time.

Article by: Tony Moffett