This weekend marks 20 years, by event, since one of the most impressive drives of the current century in Formula 1.
While the Japanese Grand Prix now forms part of the early-season schedule as F1 seeks to be smarter in its travel blocks, the Suzuka race was traditionally a high-stakes event towards the end of the championship – as was the case in 2005 as McLaren and Renault went to battle at the high-speed venue in the Mie Prefecture.
Qualifying puts McLaren on the back foot
Two weeks before the race, in Brazil, Fernando Alonso had secured his first World Championship victory after a season-long battle with McLaren’s Kimi Raikkonen.
The Renault man had enjoyed greater reliability than Raikkonen, with McLaren hemorrhaging points through a series of engine failures, penalties, and an infamous suspension failure at the Nurburgring. By rights, this was a title Raikkonen should have won but, in a team sport, McLaren had fallen short of what the Finn needed to land his first title.
Alonso, who had been no less impressive than Raikkonen but had been without the benefit of the fastest car for most of the season, thus headed to Suzuka in jubilant form as the sport’s then-youngest F1 World Champion.
With two races remaining, Suzuka marked the battleground for Alonso’s next task – securing Renault’s Constructors’ Championship. Between he and Italian teammate Giancarlo Fisichella, the job wouldn’t be easy – McLaren was looking to salvage something from its season and Raikkonen, together with Juan Pablo Montoya, was out to restore pride.
In those days, qualifying ran on a system of every driver getting a one-shot qualifying effort by themselves on track.
In qualifying itself, the drivers each went out in reverse order of the results of the previous race to go put it all on the line for one lap while, to add a strategical element, you had to qualify on your race fuel load. Essentially, retiring from one race would carry over a compromise into the next weekend as a driver would have to qualify early in the hour with sub-optimal track conditions.
The major disadvantage with this format for expected front-runners was that, if rain came or track conditions changed, there was nothing that could be done about it – drivers towards the end of the session could be completely compromised relative to those who went out on track early.
At Suzuka, this was exactly what happened. Rain towards the end of the session meant Michael Schumacher qualified his Ferrari in 14th, Alonso in his Renault in 16th, Raikkonen’s McLaren in 17th (some eight seconds off Alonso’s time!), and Juan Pablo Montoya failing to set a time.
But while McLaren was massively on the back foot, Renault could be happy – Fisichella had qualified in third and, given the inherent pace of his car over the front-row cars of Toyota’s Ralf Schumacher and BAR’s Jenson Button, could be optimistic heading into Sunday’s race.
From bad to worse for McLaren
When the lights went out to get the 2005 Japanese Grand Prix underway, McLaren’s hearts sank further as Fisichella cleared Button to move up into second behind Schumacher and strengthen Renault’s case even further.
Not only that, but Alonso made a lightning getaway and put in an electrifying first lap to slice his way up to eighth by the end of the first lap.
Raikkonen, who made a mistake into the final chicane as he out-braked himself battling with Montoya, crossed the line in 12th, looking in his rear-view mirrors to watch his teammate climbing out of his crashed McLaren.
Montoya was out of the race after attempting to overtake Jacques Villeneuve’s Sauber, only to find himself running out of room on the exit of the final corner and speared into the barriers.
McLaren’s tenuous two-point championship lead looked set to be blitzed as both Renaults were ahead of the sole remaining McLaren, with Fisichella second, Alonso eighth, and Raikkonen 12th.
With Michael Schumacher quickly getting past Red Bull’s Christian Klien to move sixth, Alonso attempted to follow suit but ran wide over the chicane. Allowing the Austrian back through, Alonso managed to clear Klien but a bizarre miscommunication between Renault and the stewards resulted in the team instructing Alonso to allow the Red Bull driver back through once again.
“We sent a message back protesting that he’d already given it back but had re-passed him at the next corner,” then-Renault tech chief Pat Symonds would later explain.
“But we got no response. So, rather than losing more time by letting him go on and then having to give it back anyway, we got Fernando to do it as soon as possible.
“Only then did we get the message back from Charlie cancelling the previous instruction and saying it was okay to retain the place.”
This resulted in Schumacher scampering five seconds up the road from Klien and Alonso, with Raikkonen latching onto the back of Alonso after getting past Jacques Villeneuve and Felipe Massa.
By Lap 12, Ralf Schumacher had dived into the pits in his light-fuelled Toyota, freeing up Fisichella to move into the lead.
Four laps later, the trio of Schumacher, Alonso, and Raikkonen were circulating together in fifth through seventh places, with the Finn showing remarkable pace in his McLaren – but stuck behind similarly-paced cars as Alonso attacked Schumacher over fifth.
On Lap 20, Alonso produced the famous overtake around the outside of Schumacher through 130R, a pass he later would explain as knowing Schumacher would back off from due to him “having a wife and two kids at home”. With Alonso scarpering up the road, Raikkonen attacked Schumacher but hadn’t cleared the Ferrari by the time he pitted on Lap 26.
Kimi Raikkonen’s attack begins
All the pieces were falling into place for Renault, with Fisichella leading – but the complexion of the race would change rapidly in the second half. Fisichella hadn’t been pushing particularly hard and, indeed, was only 10 seconds up the road from Alonso – who had been carving his way through the pack and backing off for Klien – when the Spaniard pitted.
With Alonso pitting earlier than Schumacher and Raikkonen, coming in on Lap 22, he emerged behind the quarreling duo. The four extra laps on light fuel for the Ferrari and McLaren had got them in front of Alonso and, with Raikkonen passing Schumacher in a move which he would replicate on Fisichella later, it was the Finn who was now at the head of the trio, with Alonso back behind Schumacher.
Alonso would pass Schumacher with 21 laps to go to set off in pursuit of Raikkonen.
With 15 laps remaining, Fisichella pitted to take on fuel to reach the chequered flag and came out in fourth place – directly behind Raikkonen. With the Finn set to stop again, the enormity of the challenge facing Raikkonen couldn’t have been made more visually clear as he circulated just in front of the Renault driver.
But Raikkonen had smelled blood. Pumping in blisteringly fast times over the next seven laps, often 1.5 to two seconds a lap faster than Fisichella, Raikkonen opened up such a lead that, when he pitted for the final time with eight laps to go, he emerged in second and within visual distance of Fisichella.
Despite having pitted, Raikkonen’s pace advantage continued – he kept reeling in the Italian driver and, with three laps to go, was in range to attack Fisichella for the lead.
Seemingly spooked by how his race had turned from one of sheer comfort with no rivals in sight into fighting for his lead, Fisichella moved to cover Raikkonen with a defensive line into the Casio chicane, defending against thin air as the McLaren man kept to the normal racing line.
This gave Raikkonen a tremendous run down the main straight as the pair started the penultimate lap but the Renault maintained the lead as they swooped into Turn 1. Surely, Fisichella would have learned from how he’d compromised himself into the chicane and wouldn’t repeat the mistake?
Incredibly, Fisichella did compromise himself again. This time, Raikkonen was prepared and, accelerating out onto the main straight, the McLaren latched onto the slipstream of the car in front and he committed to the outside line. With his car screaming against a short seventh gear rev limit, the MP4-20 had no more straight-line speed to give, but it had given Raikkonen just enough – he took the high line and, as he dived into Turn 1, Fisichella backed out.
At the final overtaking opportunity of the 53-lap race, leading for only the last 90 seconds of a 90-minute battle, Raikkonen had snatched the unlikeliest of victories on what had looked to be a day of triumph for Renault.
Showing about as much emotion as the taciturn Finn would throughout what would go on to be a long and successful career, it was the brightest moment of his early career and, even once his 20 years in the sport had passed, marked perhaps the single-most impressive performance of his entire F1 tenure – even against his championship-winning drives in 2007.
For Fisichella, who had conspicuously dropped the ball in what had been a race where he had underestimated the strength of his recovering rivals, it was a conspicuous failure – and his face on the podium showed it.
Some moments had gone against him – the early Safety Car after Montoya’s crash had bunched up the field again when field spread had already opened up some big gaps, while a late block while trying to lap a Minardi as Raikkonen hunted him down had allowed the Finn to get into Fisichella’s slipstream earlier than he perhaps would have otherwise.
Renault team boss Flavio Briatore had been shown on television slamming his fists on the pit wall, but opted against criticising his driver when speaking to media afterward, although rumours abounded afterward that Fisichella had received a dressing-down in private behind closed doors.
The race kept McLaren in contention for the Constructors’ Championship as they fell to two points behind Renault as Alonso recovered to third place behind Fisichella, although there would be no fairytale ending for McLaren as Renault would wrap the title up at the season finale in China.
But, for that afternoon, the unlikelihood of the astonishing achievement even moved the normally stoic McLaren team boss Ron Dennis to tears.
“A lot,” he said, choking back tears as ITV’s Louise Goodman asked what the win had meant to him.
“Eh, I think that was the best race of his career. Very proud for the team.
“A bit of emotion.
“When you qualify so badly, and circumstances are as they were, you really have to dip deep to find the best solution every single lap.
“The strategists did a fantastic job. These things unfold, and nothing should ever take anything away from Kimi, but it was a tremendous team victory.
“I think it was his best race ever. Of course, it puts us back in contention for the Constructors’ – it’s just a phenomenal win for us.”
Raikkonen’s win from 17th on the grid is one of the lowest-ever grid slots for a victor to this day. Last season, it was matched by Max Verstappen at the Sao Paulo Grand Prix and is also matched by John Watson’s 17th-place grid slot at the 1982 Detroit Grand Prix.
The outright record belongs to Watson, who won the 1983 US West GP from 22nd on the grid, with second place to Ferrari’s Rubens Barrichelli for winning from 18th on the grid at Hockenheim in 2000.
All in all, it hadn’t been a bad day’s work for Raikkonen, whose win remains one of the most impressive in contemporary F1 – achieved long before the days of overtaking aids.
“I think that was one of my best races ever with a lot of hard work, and I really enjoyed myself,” Raikkonen said afterward.
“Considering all the problems we have had here to come away with a win is just fantastic.
“There was a lot happening on the first lap, and both Juan Pablo and myself got involved, which is often inevitable when you are starting so far down. I was pushing as hard as I could, and the car just got better and better.
“After the second stop, I had gained enough on Fisichella to go for it, and I did. I got past him on the last lap coming into the first corner, and it was one of those opportunities you have to take.”
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