It’s rare in the history of Formula One that you get a moment that so clearly marks the passing of the torch from one generation to the next. Transitions usually go beyond one moment, taking place gradually over a period of months or even years as drivers decline and others rise to replace them. Dramatic changes have only previously taken place when the sport’s leading drivers retired or died, such as the death of Jim Clark in 1968 or Jackie Stewart’s retirement in 1973.
The 2005 San Marino Grand Prix was such a stark moment in the modern history of the sport that it was recognised as a landmark even at the time it happened. Its significance goes beyond the fact that it was a thrilling race – this was a race that effectively marks the definitive end of the Michael Schumacher era, a decade in which the sport’s most successful driver became the focal point of everything that happened. While he raced on for another seven years, this was the moment where the sport finally became defined by so much more than its greatest name.
For five years before this, Schumacher had been imperious in F1. Since claiming his third world championship – and first with Ferrari – in 2000, the German had dominated the sport with few challenges to his status. The retirement of Mika Häkkinen, Schumacher’s rival of the late 1990s and the only man who could match him on pure pace, at the end of 2001 left a vacuum of capable drivers behind him, with those trailing lacking the consistency or experience to mount a title challenge. At the same time, the Ferrari team entered a realm that few other F1 teams have ever gone into – with a seismic budget, the team had cherry-picked some of the best technical talent and team principal Jean Todt had moulded them into an outfit that won 57 of the 85 races between 2000 and 2004. The 2002 and 2004 seasons in particular saw Ferrari crush all opposition, where the most notable races were the five that they didn’t win rather than the 30 that they did.
For the first time, a team’s dominance cast serious questions about the future of F1 itself. While teams had had dominant spells in years gone by, none had ever been quite as extended as this, leading to polarised views. While some audiences tuned in to races specifically to see Schumacher and Ferrari win, far more voted with their remotes and chose not to bother watching races that were considered foregone conclusions. A significant backlash emerged during 2002, particularly after the Austrian Grand Prix when Schumacher’s team mate Rubens Barrichello, who had dominated the race, was asked to move aside for Schumacher to help his championship challenge – a rather laughable idea considering Michael led the title race by 21 points going into the race weekend having won four of the first five events, and would go on to win the championship after just 11 of the first 17 races. To exaggerate this further, Barrichello pulled over on the run to the line after the final corner, leading to a hostile response from the Austrian crowd.
The official response to this event and Ferrari’s general superiority was a series of rushed rule changes introduced at short notice by the FIA for the 2003 season. The result was a much closer and more entertaining championship, though Schumacher and Ferrari still narrowly prevailed over Kimi Räikkönen and Juan Pablo Montoya, two of F1’s leading young talents. Hopes were high of Ferrari’s run coming to an end in 2004, and early signs from pre-season testing suggested another competitive season, only for Ferrari to annihilate their opposition in the Australian Grand Prix, perhaps the most dispiriting, anti-climactic season-opening race in F1 history. Ferrari would win 12 of the first 13 races, and Schumacher was crowned champion after the 14th – his seventh title overall. His domination of the sport, both in terms of results and everything around them, now stretched to a decade. It seemed no one could get close to him – only Father Time could stop him, and at 35, it seemed he had several years at the top to come.
The prognosis for F1 was bleak, and FIA president Max Mosley was once again forced into action in an attempt to level the playing field. He pulled off a political masterstroke. When the teams couldn’t agree on any rule changes for the 2005 season, the FIA imposed their own, including restrictions on the aerodynamics and the banning of tyre changes in races. At the time, there were two tyre manufacturers in F1 – Bridgestone, who were closely tied to Ferrari, and Michelin, who supplied the remaining leading teams: Williams, McLaren, Renault and BAR. The fundamental differences in tyre philosophy meant that Michelin and their teams were quite happy to allow the rule change to take place, in the knowledge that Ferrari and Bridgestone would face a significant challenge to prepare a car-tyre combination that could work to the new rules at short notice – as had been shown in 2003, the Ferrari machine worked well until they were surprised by changes to the game that they had mastered.
Even so, with the 2004 season-opener still fresh in the memory, when F1 arrived in Melbourne to start the 2005 season, the expectation remained that despite rumours of Ferrari struggling during winter testing and a delayed launch of their new car, they would still emerge to blitz the field. However, a rain shower during first qualifying session left a mixed-up grid, with Barrichello 11th on the grid and Schumacher 18th. It seemed that little could be read into the team’s pace; while Schumacher struggled in the race, eventually being eliminated after a collision with Williams’ Nick Heidfeld, Barrichello came through to finish an impressive second, which seemed to be a positive sign.
Instead, it soon became evident that this was an illusion. The Ferraris qualified 12th and 13th in Malaysia, with Schumacher going on to finish 7th and Barrichello retiring due to a complete loss of grip. Tyre performance and wear were clearly the cause, with any issues being exacerbated by the Sepang circuit’s long sweeping corners. In response, the team rushed their new car to Bahrain for the third race of the season in a bid to limit the damage being caused by the poor results. While Schumacher went on to qualify in an improved second place, hydraulics failure early in the race – his first retirement due to car unreliability for nearly four years – left him with just two points from the first three rounds.
Ferrari’s domination of F1 had been brought to a shuddering halt. Instead, the team making the running was Renault, who had won the first three races. While Giancarlo Fisichella – the main beneficiary of the dry-wet qualifying – had won in Australia, it was his team mate, the young Spaniard Fernando Alonso, who had cruised to victory in Malaysia and Bahrain to lead the championship by ten points after three races.
Alonso had been regarded as a future world champion for two years, having become the youngest driver to win an F1 championship race in Hungary in 2003 at the age of 22, but that had seemed unlikely any time soon while Schumacher and Ferrari were still in command. But the remarkable turn of events in 2005 had left him out front with what seemed to be the best package in the championship, and a team mate who was unlikely to be consistent enough to mount a major challenge.
Toyota had emerged as the surprise package behind Renault, with Jarno Trulli finishing second in the races Alonso won, but it was unclear if they would be able to convert this to winning races. McLaren had produced a quick car, but hadn’t been able to get close to the front in the races due to ill fortune, and Montoya, a new arrival at the team from Williams, was out of action for two races after fracturing his shoulder in what he later revealed to be a motorbike crash. Meanwhile BAR and Williams, who had finished second and fourth in the constructors’ championship in 2004, had clearly regressed and looked unlikely to be major players in the title hunt.
F1 arrived in Italy for the start of the European season with eyes firmly fixed on Alonso and Renault, to see if he could deliver a third consecutive win. But alongside this, there was also focus on Ferrari. The Imola circuit has long been regarded as the team’s home circuit, being the closest major racing venue to the team’s factory in Maranello, and named after its founder Enzo Ferrari and his son Dino. After the improved pace shown in Bahrain, it seemed the team’s season rested on whether the new car could deliver a strong performance on home soil in its second race. While Schumacher was now some 24 points behind Alonso in the standings, the situation was not irretrievable if the F2005 turned out to be a winner. Parallels could be drawn with the situation from eleven years earlier, when Ayrton Senna arrived at Imola 20 points behind a young Schumacher, enjoying a similar breakthrough season to Alonso. It was a race that ended in Senna’s tragic death, when he suffered a high-speed crash while being chased by Schumacher.
However, both Alonso and Schumacher were upstaged in qualifying. 2005 had seen the introduction of a new qualifying format, in which drivers ran in reverse order from the previous race in Q1 on Saturday and times from both were combined after a Q2 run on Sunday that included race fuel and tyres. This provided Schumacher with a major disadvantage, as he had to run early in the first session due to his retirement in Bahrain. Even so, he set the third-fastest time, once again suggesting the new car had promise. However, a mistake under braking for Rivazza left him briefly in the gravel trap and a lowly 13th on the grid. With the Imola circuit affording few overtaking places, he had left himself with a lot of work to do to pick up a points haul.
But this didn’t leave Alonso with a clear run to pole position. Instead, a brilliant Q2 lap landed Räikkönen his first pole position of the season for McLaren ahead of the Spaniard. Jenson Button lined up third, marking an improved performance from the BAR team, while Mark Webber qualified fourth for Williams ahead of Trulli, Takuma Sato of BAR, and Alexander Wurz, standing in for Montoya at McLaren in his first race for nearly five years. Heidfeld, Barrichello and Ralf Schumacher in the second Toyota rounded out the top ten places on the grid. Fisichella, once again demonstrating his inconsistency in the second Renault, was also disappointing, stumbling to 12th in between the only two former world champions on the grid, Schumacher and Sauber’s Jacques Villeneuve. Behind them, Red Bull’s Vitantonio Liuzzi, competing in his first F1 race in place of Christian Klien as part of a drive-share, fell narrowly short of outqualifying team mate David Coulthard, with the pair lining up 14th and 15th.
Adding to the tension ahead of a competitive race were questions about reliability. 2005 was the first season where an engine had to last two races. Being the fourth round, a number of cars were powered by engines that had already been raced in Bahrain, including that of Alonso. The night before the race, Renault had raised concerns about potential issues with his engine, but in the end chose to retain it, though it would be a nervous 90 minutes for the team as they managed its performance to protect its reliability.
The opening lap was fairly undramatic at the front, the highlight coming from Mark Webber, who dropped two places but then magnificently repassed Sato around the outside of the tricky left-hander Piratella. Räikkönen was able to quickly pull away from Alonso, as the cars strung out in the early laps. Further back, Fisichella’s race ended as early as lap six, as he had a clumsy crash on his own in the Tamburello chicane. It was another demonstration that Alonso, lying in a comfortable second place, had little to fear from within his own team. Instead, the pace the Flying Finn at the front was showing suggested he might have a new rival for the title.
However, any fear of McLaren lasted until lap nine, when Räikkönen slowed to a crawl with driveshaft failure. It would be the first of a string of costly reliability issues with the MP4-20 that would ultimately destroy the Finn’s title challenge. While the car would prove to be the fastest in the field over the course of the year, Räikkönen would frequently find himself sat on the side of the track from a mechanical failure in the race, or at the back of the grid as a result of penalties for engine changes. Here, he probably lost 10 valuable points for a likely win, and there would be many more down the drain in the months ahead.
But that was all in the future. For now, Alonso inherited the lead, keeping Button at arm’s length, and the rest of the field formed a queue behind Trulli, who, as was often the case through his career, had taken his car much higher up the grid than it deserved to be with a great performance in qualifying, and now struggled to sustain it in the race. Webber, Sato, Wurz and Villeneuve were all sat behind the Toyota, with Sato repassing Webber into Tamburello on lap 22. A lap later, Trulli and Webber were the first front-runners to head for the pits for fuel, releasing Sato. A lap later, when the Japanese driver pitted, he rejoined comfortably ahead of Trulli to move into what appeared to be a net third place behind his team mate.
However, it quickly became apparent that there was another threat on the horizon. Schumacher had made little ground in the early laps while stuck in traffic, but with drivers ahead pitting and his fuel load reducing, he was now able to unleash the pace of his Ferrari. By lap 26, he was closing rapidly on Alex Wurz, who pitted and emerged ahead of Sato – Schumacher’s pace was so much faster than the Austrian’s that it was becoming increasingly clear that he was going to vault into third place. On lap 28, he re-emerged from the pit lane comfortably ahead of Wurz, Sato and the remaining drivers behind. As the Ferrari rounded the Tosa hairpin, the tifosi in the stands were on their feet for the first time. They could smell something special in the air.
Michael had come alive. After emerging from the pits, he upped his pace again, lapping two seconds faster than everyone else. Not only was he hunting down Button, but suddenly it appeared that he could feasibly win the race. The only problem was that the Imola circuit, with its tight chicanes and narrow track, was not an easy place to overtake. By lap 43, with Alonso making his second and final stop from the lead, Schumacher had caught the new race leader Button, but soon found himself staring at the rear wing of the BAR with seemingly little opportunity to pass even with a car that was much faster.
The opportunity came on lap 47. Both Button and Schumacher had caught the struggling Williamses of Webber and Heidfeld, who were squabbling further down the order, on the run up the hill from Acque Minerali to the wonderful Variante Alta, a tricky medium-speed chicane with an undulation in the middle. Button was considerably faster than the Williams and seemed to catch them faster than expected. As they approached the chicane, he hesitated. Schumacher pounced, diving up the inside. It was a classic piece of forceful opportunistic driving, demonstrating all the racing nous that had taken him to his seven world titles.
The Ferrari was now released, needing to make time on Alonso prior to the second stop on lap 50, with just 12 laps left in the race. Schumacher emerged from the pits close behind Alonso, and very quickly eliminated the gap. What followed was 12 pulsating laps, as the old master stalked the man already being lined up as his successor. The Ferrari was clearly superior under braking, but the Renault, as always, had excellent traction, allowing Alonso to draw a gap leaving each of the chicanes.
Lap after lap, his corner exits were flawless, and his precision over the kerbs was metronomic – all under arguably the most intense pressure any F1 driver has ever faced in a race. This was a track that had seen many dramatic spins and crashes in the past, from Riccardo Patrese’s catastrophic error at Acque Minerali while leading in 1983 to Hakkinen’s own race-ending mistake exiting the Variante Bassa in 1999 – it would have been so easy for Alonso to put the power down a fraction of a second early on a kerb, spin the rears and plunge into a concrete wall. It would have been totally understandable if he had – after all, he was being hounded by Michael Schumacher, in a Ferrari, in Italy. But he didn’t.
No matter how close Schumacher got, no matter which unusual lines he took to try and force openings, Alonso was able to place his car perfectly every single lap and draw away from him under acceleration. Into the final lap, Michael began to get desperate, lunging up the inside of Tosa to no avail – Alonso simply used the superior traction of the Renault to drive around the outside of him. Michael then ran wide coming out of the Variante Alta, leaving him well behind coming into Rivazza, and as the Ferrari locked its brakes into the Variante Bassa, Alonso was far enough ahead to round the final chicane and cross the line 0.215 seconds ahead. It was his fifth career win, but clearly his most significant so far.
Behind the pair, Button finished a lonely third place, 10 seconds adrift but 17 seconds ahead of Alex Wurz, who had a solid outing and demonstrated he was still a capable racer. Sato, Villeneuve, Trulli and Ralf Schumacher completed the point-scoring places, until Ralf was penalised 25 seconds for an unsafe release in the pit lane, dropping him to 10th and allowing Heidfeld to take the last point.
However, there would be more controversy in the days that followed, as both Button and Sato would be disqualified for the BAR’s illegal fuel system, which effectively used fuel as ballast and allowed the cars to run underweight. BAR would be handed a two-race ban, at the time the stiffest penalty to hit an F1 team for an offence since Tyrrell were excluded from the sport for a season 22 years before. The disqualifications handed Wurz a surprise podium finish, while Liuzzi would be handed a point on his debut for eighth, just behind Webber.
But beyond the short-term controversy of BAR’s shenanigans, the 2005 San Marino Grand Prix would have an intriguing legacy. In the aftermath of the race, pundits tipped Schumacher and Ferrari to mount a strong challenge to Alonso and Renault, based on the pace the F2005 had shown in Michael’s hands at Imola. However, it proved to be a one-off, and the car never lived up to its promise. While Schumacher would win the US Grand Prix at Indianapolis, this was after the withdrawal of the 14 Michelin-shod cars. Michael would also take pole at the Hungaroring, but would finish second, his fifth and last podium of the year.
After winning three of the first four races, Alonso would go on to win four more over the rest of the season. While the McLaren MP4-20 would prove to be much faster than Renault’s R25, those reliability issues would mean that Alonso was always two or three steps head of Räikkönen in the standings. He would be crowned the sport’s youngest ever champion at Interlagos, with two races to spare, and Renault would seal the constructors’ championship at the season finale in Shanghai.
A year later, a rejuvenated Schumacher and Ferrari returned to Imola to battle Alonso and Renault again. This time, the Ferrari 248 F1 was a much more competitive package – tyre stops had been reintroduced, saving Bridgestone’s blushes, and the team had understood the deficiencies of the F2005 much better. In an emotional qualifying session, Schumacher scored his 66th pole position, breaking the long-time record held by Ayrton Senna, who had scored his 65th and final pole at the same circuit. Japan’s Fuji TV helped set the scene for the race in dramatic fashion.
In a role reversal of a year before, he found himself holding off a charging Alonso late in the race to take a narrow win. But history cannot be undone. Schumacher retired at the end of the 2006, narrowly missing out on an eighth world title. Instead, Alonso won his second consecutive championship, officially confirming him as the man to inherited Michael’s mantle as the greatest driver in the sport. However, it was the race at Imola a year before that had already seen him anointed as Schumacher’s successor – few could have sustained pressure like that, from a driver like Michael in a much faster car.
At the end of 2006, with Alonso heading for McLaren, many expected the next decade to be dominated by the Spaniard now that he had definitively seen off Schumacher. However, things are rarely that simple. Fernando’s career never fully lived up to his early success, as drivers like Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel emerged to challenge his status. He developed into one of the most engaging and combustible personalities the sport has ever seen, burning bridges at McLaren, Ferrari and Honda has he fought to retain his place at the top. Like his predecessor as the youngest F1 champion, Emerson Fittipaldi, he made poor career choices, wasted his enormous talent and became tired of the circus around him. By the end of 2018, as he left McLaren for the second time, it seemed we were saying adios for the last time after 17 years.
Since I started writing this, Alonso has been announced as a Renault driver once again for 2021, marking a surprise return to the sport just at the moment it seemed to have been written off. Fernando remains a divisive figure even as he approaches his 40th birthday, and many F1 fans are frustrated to see him return, taking a place on the grid that could have gone to a younger driver.
However, to dwell on whether Renault academy driver Guanyu Zhou is a better bet in the seat than Alonso is to miss the point. Fernando remains one of motorsport’s biggest stars, and a huge draw for the media. Spanish television ratings have plunged since his departure, even with Carlos Sainz Jr impressing for McLaren. He retained a Twitter following of 2.6 million, over 400 times larger than that of Zhou, who is yet to win a race in Formula 2 and remains unproven. From a brand perspective alone, for a huge manufacturer team like Renault, Alonso is clearly a huge draw and his signing helps cover the cracks in another disappointing start to the season for the team.
From a racing perspective, he is a hugely experienced two-time world champion who knows the team well, remains the only Renault driver to win the F1 title, and has kept sharp for racing through his exploits with Toyota in sportscar racing and with McLaren at Indianapolis. The team desperately need results very quickly, in order to demonstrate to the board in France that it’s worth continuing to sink large amounts of money into F1. A team led by the inexperienced Esteban Ocon and a young rookie like Zhou or a midfield-level driver like Nico Hulkenberg. They don’t have time to nurture someone for the long term – Alonso was, and always has been, their Break Glass In Case of Emergency option, but in some ways it’s quite a safe bet for short-term performance compared to the realistic alternatives.
How he will do remains another question. By the time he returns, he will have been away from F1 for less time than Schumacher before his ill-fated return and for the same amount of time as Räikkönen prior to his comeback in 2012. But he remains exceptionally driven, and has always been a brilliant natural talent, capable of destroying the F1 careers of talented team mates on one-lap pace alone as Nelson Piquet Jr and Stoffel Vandoorne can testify.
Maybe many younger fans have forgotten or aren’t aware about just how good Alonso could be when he was in a race-winning car. The 2005 San Marino Grand Prix was perhaps the finest example of what he was capable of. Not only was he always able to extract the maximum from the car with a mixture of stunning pace and intelligent race management, but he was also an aggressive overtaker, a resilient defensive driver, and was absolutely relentless in chasing great results. Has he got one last trick up his sleeve? I can’t wait to find out.
Histor's Eye 