Alla mielenkiintoinen ja vastaansanomaton juttu tapauksesta. (
www.itv-f1.com, James Allen)
Classic McLaren
This was classic McLaren.
Even in a moment of great triumph there is some gigantic cock-up to be explained.
It happened famously in Melbourne in 1998, when the team's new car utterly pulverised the opposition and yet the race is remembered more for David Coulthard meekly pulling over to let Mika Hakkinen win the race, after Mika's race had been ruined by a bad pit stop radio call.
DC never got back on track after that, he was forever in Hakkinen's shadow, because psychologically he knew that the team was centred around Mika's race effort.
What happened in Montreal this weekend might make Juan Pablo Montoya feel the same thing with regards to Kimi. But Montoya is not like DC.
He is not the kind of character to accept that the team is more interested in his team-mate's progress.
He has been here before, remember.
He thought (wrongly) that Williams favoured Ralf Schumacher in a pit call at Magny-Cours in 2003 and decided there and then to sign for McLaren.
Now his new team have done something far worse to him than Williams ever did and I wonder how the relationship will move forward from here.
A passionate racer
Montoya is a passionate character and an alpha male. He plays second fiddle to no-one.
I imagine that Ron Dennis will be working very hard to explain away his team's mistake, but the reality is that there is no sensible explanation as to why Montoya was so disadvantaged.
You could say, as the team's senior management does, that it was a cock -up, or you could take a more cynical view and suggest that, with Alonso out of the race, the opportunity to get 10 points for Kimi rather than eight was too great to pass up.
But I don't think that is the case here.
With the constructors' championship at stake and on a day when Renault were headed for no points, I don't think they would risk the points by trying to screw him like that.
Especially as Raikkonen was dealing with a steering problem so was not the strongest player anyway.
Either way, the crucial point is that the team was clearly more oriented around Kimi's race effort than Juan's, despite the fact that Juan was leading.
Let's look at it in detail.
Juan was leading on lap 47, with just a few laps to go before his scheduled second stop. He had had the upper hand over Raikkonen in the race, as in qualifying, and here he was on the threshold of his first win for McLaren.
He hadn't put a foot wrong all weekend.
Then Button hits the wall and a few seconds later the safety car is deployed.
By my reckoning Juan was approaching the hairpin at this point, some 19 seconds away from the pit lane entrance.
Plenty of time to give him the obvious call to pit. It was well within the pit stop window so it was a total no-brainer, as the management later admitted.
This time there was no text message from Woking or any other divine intervention.
Just good old-fashioned headless chickendom.
Going back to basics
Most serious F1 teams have a pre-arranged plan for situations like this with their drivers.
When a safety car is deployed in a pit stop window, the team's leading car pits immediately, while his team mate behind "stacks", which means he slows down to create a gap of around 15 seconds, so that the lead car can pit for fuel then exit, leaving the pit box clear for the second car to come in and be serviced without queuing up in the pit lane.
The cars behind the "stacking" car are not allowed to overtake him, so there is no danger of him losing track position and once he's pitted the second car will soon find himself behind the lead car in the queue following the safety car, so he has lost no time either.
This is really basic stuff.
Several drivers did it in Montreal; Massa, for example "stacked" Webber and others behind him while Villeneuve pitted.
I checked up with the management after the race and sure enough, "stacking" is a drill in the McLaren handbook. So why didn't it happen on Sunday?
Why did Montoya go past the pit lane entry, while Raikkonen came in?
McLaren's Martin Whitmarsh says that there was a lot of radio traffic and in the noise the message did not get through to JPM. But what if no message was given?
No, says Whitmarsh, he was told to pit, it just came too late.
Meaning that he had already passed the pit lane entrance? Yes, says Whitmarsh.
Well I'm sorry but it doesn't take 19 seconds to tell a vastly experienced Grand Prix driver, who also has a lot of experience of pace cars from his days in America, to pit when the safety car comes out, while his team-mate stacks. It was, as I said, a no-brainer.
The "no time" argument doesn't wash. A few years ago in Montreal, Williams gave Montoya notice to pit just as he was braking for the final chicane and he still made it into the pit lane!
So Montoya lost a whole lap behind the safety car and then pitted. I'm told that the radio traffic at this point was blue.
The raging bull
Montoya was apoplectic with rage.
As he exited the pits, observers tell me that he must have seen the red light at the pit exit and considered stopping because he braked twice before deciding the blast through it anyway.
He could have waited at pit exit for the snake of cars to pass and then rejoin, but that would have put him last.
He had a red mist on and just drove out, earning himself an automatic exclusion from the race.
Ron Dennis tried to plea bargain over the radio with the FIA's Charlie Whiting, offering to bring Montoya in for a drive through penalty, but the FIA said no.
Although the driver made a giant cock-up of his own, for which there is no excuse, it doesn't take away from the fact that Montoya should never have been put in this position in the first place.
He should have pitted while Kimi stacked the cars behind him on the straight and then they would have had a nice 1-2 finish, with Juan winning his first race for McLaren.
Instead of being 13 points adrift of Renault in the championship they would have closed up to five points behind.
Instead McLaren made themselves look pretty stupid and Montoya is left wondering about his position the pecking order.
