F1/ Canadian Grand Prix: A week before yesterday's Canadian Grand Prix, Renault boss Flavio Briatore reckoned his team "unbeatable". Yesterday in Montreal, two-time world champion in waiting Fernando Alonso proved the Italian right.
From the moment that Alonso rocketed to pole position on Saturday with two flashing laps that left his rivals marvelling and with his team-mate Giancarlo Fisichella lining up beside him, there was hardly a doubt that the Spaniard would notch up his sixth win from nine races this season.
Hardly any doubts, for in the run-up to the drivers' first stops during yesterday's race it looked momentarily like McLaren's Kimi Raikkonen might have been shaping up for a shot at Alonso's lead.
The Finn had stuck with Alonso since a nervy start that saw his own team-mate smash Williams's Nico Rosberg out of the race and the twin Midlands of Tiago Monteiro and Christijan Albers tangle at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve's hairpin.
As the leading duo approached the window for their first pit stops, Raikkonen seemed suddenly the quicker car, closing in on Alonso and nosing for a chance to make a move.
Alonso's response was to dive for the pits for fuel and tyres in the hope of avoiding the fight. Raikkonen strode on, a small hope flickering through the watching crowd that there might be an epic battle on the way. It didn't materialise.
When Raikkonen pitted for his own fuel and rubber stop soon after, his pit crew erred, being unable to remove the rear right wheel of Raikkonen's car. It cost the Finn dear as he was forced to watch Alonso's car arrow past the pits and back into the lead. There seemed little hope of another chance and as a processional race ground tediously down that hope dimmed to almost nothing.
But then on lap 58 local hero Jacques Villeneuve made a mistake. The Canadian had just been passed, in the pits, for seventh by his team-mate Nick Heidfeld, and in a desperate attempt to regain lost ground he overcooked a corner, understeering heavily into the wall and forcing the safety car out.
That let Raikkonen back in. He closed to within five seconds of Alonso but it was a vain pursuit and in the final moment he too made a mistake, running wide at the hairpin to let the fast-approaching Michael Schumacher through to claim second place.
"This is one of the races we should have won in previous years but didn't because of mistakes and technical difficulties," said Alonso of his first win in Montreal.
"All victories are nice but this is fantastic. It was not easy to keep the concentration while leading the race with such a large gap."
Schumacher was left to rue the fact that he had spent a large part of the early phase of the race lodged behind the slower Toyota of Jarno Trulli and that when he was finally presented with a chance to challenge Alonso's lead, it was too late.
"It's just a shame there weren't 10 more laps, it could have made it interesting," said Schumacher. "We just managed to keep the damage to as little as possible."
After his error, Raikkonen stayed in third, the Finn being followed home by Fisichella, whose race had been marred by a jump start that brought a drive-through penalty, which wrecked the Italian's chances of a podium finish.
Giancarlo Fisichella took a creditable fourth after he clawed his way back after a drive-through penalty.
Michael Schumacher's team-mate Felipe Massa gathered more points for Ferrari in fifth while Toyota's Jarno Trulli claimed his first points of the season in sixth.
The points places were rounded out by BMW-Sauber's Nick Heidfeld in seventh, who finished just ahead of Red Bull Racing's David Coulthard, who had begun the race last after being sent to the back of the starting grid for a last-minute engine change.
Another Alonso win, another Schumacher second. If the Ferrari driver is a contender for the title, he is a second-rate one.
With Canada out of the way, the season has cleared the halfway mark.
If Alonso needs more than another quarter of the season to claim his second world title it would be a surprise indeed.
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