1990 San Marino Grand Prix - Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari

May 13, 1990

By his own admission it was not a story that Riccardo Patrese liked much to remember.  It was a certain race victory, lost due to a lack of concentration and a simple mistake. “Imola in 1983 was a race I should have won. I led, then my pitstop was slow and Patrick Tambay’s Ferrari went ahead. Six laps to go, I get the lead back. And then I relax a little, I say to myself, OK, I have won this Grand Prix. At the Aqua Minerale corner the surface was breaking up, I put a wheel a few centimetres off-line, and I crash. There were many races when I was in the lead, when the car broke down.  But in this case I had a crash that was purely my mistake. You were going to win …… and then you lose and you know that it’s all on your shoulders. You made a mistake.  It’s even harder to accept.”

1983 San Marino GP: Patrese crashes shortly after assuming the lead.

As difficult as this was to face his mistake, there was another element of this failure that twisted the knife a little deeper into Patrese’s heart.

“The tifosi cheered: they prefer a Frenchman to win in a Ferrari than an Italian to win in any other car. I was so angry with myself I didn’t hear them cheering.  But I saw it on TV when I got home, and it made me feel even worse.”

And while the Italian was able to secure a victory later that season in South Africa, the loss in Imola was a wound that Patrese would carry for seven years.  He spent two seasons driving the hopeless Euroracing Alfa Romeo followed by another stint with Brabham.  Towards the end of the 1987 season, when Bernie Ecclestone decided to give up being a team boss, he recommended Patrese to Frank Williams. “When I went to Williams it was like a camera which had finally come into focus.”  He was very well liked within the team and had an excellent rapport with Patrick Head.  His cause was also aided by the fact that he was much easier to live with then Nigel Mansell and more of a team player as well. “You’d call Riccardo up,” Head would recall “ask him to test at a moment’s notice, and he’d say, ‘Fine. No problem. I’ll be there’. He’s not a selfish man, that’s the point, which is quite rare in a racing driver. His ego’s under control, too. Which is also quite rare.”  The relationship with the Williams team was to be the most productive of the Italian’s career.

Riccardo Patrese 1990:  At home in the Williams team.

The 1990 Formula One season was the second season in which the Williams was powered by the first pneumatic valved Renault V10 engine.  It was a mixed year for the Williams team.  When the cars were running reliably they were able to show well.  However, there were problems with the engine and gearbox which restricted good results on several occasions.  The San Marino Grand Prix was a high point.

The dominant cars at the time were the McLarens and the Ferraris, however at Imola, there was some doubt about the staying power of the McLarens, for on this demanding circuit they were on the limit of their fuel consumption. But if the McLarens were not up to their usual immaculate level of performance. the Ferraris seemed set to have it all their own way after dominating recent testing at Imola. As it turned out the Italian cars flattered to deceive.  In qualifying their times were effortlessly beaten by both the McLarens and the Williams.  Ayrton Senna (McLaren) captured the pole position with a time of 1:23.220, with Gerhard Berger (McLaren) second, Patrese third, Thierry Boutsen (Williams) fourth and then the Ferraris of Nigel Mansell and Alain Prost.

Sunday's warm-up showed that the McLarens had much less of an advantage with race tyres and fuel than they had enjoyed in qualifying.  At the lights, Berger made a tremendous start, but unfortunately missed a shift which allowed first Senna, and then Boutsen to move in front of him.  But just as he did so, Mansell's Ferrari darted on to the grass and sent up such a thick dustcloud that confusion broke out behind him. At the end of the first lap Senna led Boutsen by 1.5 seconds, with Berger third, Patrese fourth, Jean Alesi (Tyrrell) holding an aggressive but short lived fifth ahead of Mansell and Prost.

1990 San Marino GP: Berger fighting hard to maintain his lead.

Senna held on in front for only three laps before he suffered a freak wheel failure which caused his tyre to go flat.  As a result he wobbled out of the lead and into a sand trap.  Berger was already chasing Boutsen hard, but the Belgian seemed capable of holding the McLaren until a missed shift damaged the Renault engine, which gave up on lap 17. Berger was 1.6 seconds ahead of Patrese when he moved into the lead and he was able to increase this only slightly. But Patrese had his hands full with Mansell, who had started the race on the softer  Goodyear "C" tyres that the Ferrari's well-balanced chassis could use most effectively.  Prost, on the harder "B" compound tyres, was also trying to catch Patrese, but it would only be Mansell, in a brave move, who would be able to put a Ferrari in front of a Williams at Imola.  The Frenchman was complaining over the radio of oversteer and on lap 28 he made an unexpected stop for "C" tyres.  This allowed Alessandro Nannini (Benetton) to slip by into fourth place.

With close duels being waged up and down the field, the leading cars were losing time in traffic.  As the race started its second half, though, Mansell had carved Berger's lead down to half a second, with Patrese four seconds behind, followed by Nannini and Prost.  On lap 36, at the fastest point on the circuit, the notorious Tamburello curve, Mansell made his move on Berger with frighteningly spectacular results.  As the Briton came alongside he put two wheels on the grass and almost immediately spun wildly.  Despite raising dust and spreading rubber all over the road, Mansell remarkably managed to regain control of the car and carried on.  Almost four precious seconds were lost, but the Brit was quickly shaving down the gap again.  He had reduced it to just over two seconds when the engine, which had been trailing smoke almost since the beginning, blew up to the disappointment of the tifosi.  

With one Ferrari retired and the other languishing in fourth place one would expect that there was little to hold the attention of the Italian crowd.  It was then that Patrese began to close on Berger. The Italian had been driving an savvy race, holding back after a slow start and saving his big effort for the end.  With 16 laps remaining he was close enough to challenge Berger.

1990 San Marino GP: No mistakes this time. Patrese takes his third F1 victory. 

And this time, unlike 1983, the tifosi were cheering him on .....  

As chance would have it Berger was experiencing a technical issue.  As the team had feared he was having fuel consumption issues, made all the worse by a damaged engine piston and this meant that he was unable to richen the mixture to compensate for the loss of power.  Patrese made his first attempt to get past the Austrian at Rivazza, but the tight nature of the corner allowed Berger to defend and it took him half a dozen laps to recover.  However, on lap 51, with 10 remaining, he sailed past the leading McLaren, which was being driven on the limit with brakes and tyres obviously past their best.  Ironically the overtake seemed oddly familiar.  "In fact, when I overtook Gerhard today it was exactly the same place where I overtook Tambay in 1983" he recalled.  "And because of that, when I  overtook Gerhard my first thought was about 1983. I said 'OK, that year I made a mistake - this year I cannot make a mistake.'"  He didn't.  Once past the McLaren he was able to open a gap and took the chequered flag four seconds to the good.  It was the 36 year-old Italian's third victory in a career that then spanned 195 Grand Prix starts.

"It's difficult for me to find the words to express my happiness about this win," he grinned as he spoke in the press conference. "It is a race I really wanted, ever since 1983 when I lost here with four laps to go."  Patrese drove with commendable intelligence, however after the race, surely the least complaining and most gracious of that era's racing drivers typically gave credit  to his team.  A day when something lost had been regained in the finest of fashion.  A ghost vanquished.  A wound healed.  And unlike 1983, the Imola crowd cheered their countryman to the echo.  He deserved nothing less.

1990 San Marino GP: For Patrese, it was lost spoils reclaimed.

        
    

   

2005 San Marino Grand Prix - Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari

April 24, 2005

The beginning of the 2005 Formula One season was quite a surprise. For five seasons Michael Schumacher and Ferrari had utterly dominated the landscape scoring victories and championships seemingly unopposed, but in 2005 the landscape changed.  From early on in preseason testing Renault had shown themselves to be the giant-killer, the team that would take on the might of Maranello.  The only question was did they have the drivers to take on the German ace who had become the most prolific champion in F1 history during his time at the Scuderia.  This task would fall to Giancarlo Fisichella and Fernando Alonso, two very strong and competent drivers. 

Triumphant Duo: Alonso and Fisichella won the first three races of the season.

The Italian was vastly experienced, having driven in F1 since 1997, and had always been looked upon as a driver with the potential to be a world champion if given the proper package.  Now with Renault in 2005, he certainly had that. The young Spaniard had already proven himself a natural talent and himself along with Kimi Raikkonen (McLaren) were viewed as the young generation which could supplant Schumacher as the next champion.  The season certainly started according to plan for the pair with Fisichella winning handily in Australia, and Alonso taking victory in Malaysia and Bahrain.  In fact the talking point during the build-up to the fourth round at San Marino wasn’t whether Renault could beat Ferrari to the championship, rather it was could Ferrari offer any opposition to Renault in the championship.

The start of Ferrari’s 2005 campaign had been less than stellar.  Rubens Barrichello had been able to score a second place podium finish in Melbourne, but apart from that the results were not what one had come to expect from the team.  Schumacher in particular had a woeful start to the season, retiring in both Australia and Bahrain, with only a ninth place finish in Malaysia to his credit. 

2005 San Marino GP: Raikkonen seemingly had things well in hand at the start.

Qualifying for the fourth round at Imola gave the tifosi little hope that the fortunes of their beloved Scuderia had changed, as Rubens Barrichello had only managing to qualify tenth and Schumacher was even further back in an abysmal fourteenth after a mistake at the entrance to Rivazza during the second qualifying session.  With Raikkonen on pole position and Alonso beside him on the front row few could have imagined that Schumacher or Ferrari would play any role in the fight for victory during the Grand Prix.

Raikkonen made good use of his pole position in the race itself, rocketing away at the start and building a two second lead over Alonso after just the opening lap. The Finn was comfortably pulling away, steadily extending his advantage, when his McLaren suffered a driveshaft failure on the ninth lap ending his race. Alonso assumed the lead 7.9 seconds ahead of Jensen Button (BAR) and Jarno Trulli (Toyota). However the Italian did not have the pace to stay with the leaders and soon began bottling up the cars behind him. The Toyota had Mark Webber (Williams) and Takuma Sato (BAR) immediately behind, both looking for a way past. Following them closely was Alexander Wurz (McLaren) substituting for the injured Juan Pablo Montoya, Jacques Villeneuve (Sauber) and Barrichello. However, the Brazilian soon encountered electrical issues and was forced to retire on lap 11. So too was the fate of Fisichella whom on lap 5 suffered a mechanical failure, as he came through Tamburello, pitching him across the sand trap and into the barrier. All the while Schumacher was running twelfth, in the midfield, seemingly unable to move forward. However, Trulli's slower pace and the other's inability to get past him was critical to the German.

The pit stops began on lap 21 with Trulli and Webber, coming in together and exiting in the same order. As the leaders bustled in and out of the pits and generally making very little progress in terms of passing each other, both Wurz and Schumacher were continuing to run on without a stop and getting faster and faster as their cars decreased in weight. Button had briefly made inroads into Alonso’s lead with a couple of fastest laps but it proved only a temporary turn of speed in the run-up to his first stop. Schumacher had the real pace and finally unleashed the dormant potential of the F2005 with a series of ultra-fast laps. Wurz finally stopped on lap 25 and by the time Schumacher pitted two laps later he had stealthily emerged an amazing third – from running twelfth.

Twelfth to Third: Schumacher unleashed astonishing pace to maximise Ferrari's strategy.

The tactic had worked better than Ferrari could have hoped. Schumacher, now 30 seconds behind the leader but with a clear track to attack, set about closing the gap between himself and Button and completely decimated the Briton’s advantage. Schumacher was able to take off 21 seconds in 14 laps, an average of 1.5 seconds per lap, closing right up to the back of Button with a few laps to go before the final round of pit stops. With the Ferrari latched on to the gearbox of the BAR-Honda, the battle became a fight for the lead after Alonso’s stop on lap 42. Schumacher applied plenty of pressure on the Briton, holding station at around half a second behind for four laps before Button finally made a small error, on lap 47, at Acqua Minerali and inexplicably failed to defend at the Variante Alta chicane – Schumacher simply breezed past into the lead for the first time. Button pitted anyway at the end of that lap but with the Briton out the way a little earlier Schumacher was able to set himself up for the fastest lap of the race, setting a time of 1:21.858 on lap 48 that was 0.746 faster than the second best lap of the race set by Button.

On lap 49 Schumacher made a very quick stop, in which he was stationary for little more than six seconds and set an in-out time of 22.170 seconds compared to Alonso's 24.165 seconds total. That advantage, coupled with faster times over the seven laps between the two stops, the German emerged just 1.3s behind the Renault. Again, Schumacher had vastly more speed than Alonso, whose unenviable task was to absorb the pressure of his rival. 

Struggling with an engine that the Renault team later admitted was virtually broken and massively downtuned, Alonso played it clever, slowing and taking unusual lines into the corners he deemed dangerous to his lead protection then accelerating early to keep Schumacher at bay.

Relentless Pressure: Alonso withstands everything Schumacher could bring at him.

For twelve gripping laps Schumacher hounded Alonso without mercy. At one point he was able to draw alongside as they dropped from Piratella to Acque Minerali, but had no space to pass. Relentless though Schumacher’s challenge was, Alonso, to his credit, was able to hold the Ferrari back with an admirable resilience.

That 1.327 seconds came down to 0.376 seconds on the very next lap and fell no further than to 0.465 seconds all the way to the end as Schumacher tried all he could to force the youngster into a mistake.

But Alonso refused to yield and withstood everything Schumacher applied, to the end.

When they took the chequered flag, they were separated by a mere 0.215 of a second – a thrilling display that even the tifosi were satisfied with despite the fact that their hero was denied what would have been and incredible victory on Italian soil.

What made Alonso’s victory even more impressive was the fact that the engine he used for the race was the same power unit used three weeks earlier to win in Bahrain. The searing heat of the desert venue asked more of the engine than usual and, although Fernando’s V10 finished the race, it did not come out of the weekend 100 per cent unscathed and the newly-introduced regulations for 2005 meant it still had to cover the Grand Prix at Imola without the team being able to work on it between the two races. As a precautionary measure, however, Renault restricted the maximum revs.

The final stint of the 2005 San Marino Grand Prix will remain etched in the memories of everyone who witnessed it for a long time to come. That day, Michael met his match in Fernando. The young Spaniard succeeded in warding off the Ferrari driver's pressure to claim a victory he would savour in two ways: first the pure satisfaction of coming out on top in such difficult circumstances that Sunday afternoon at Imola and then later in the year, in Shanghai, where Renault clinched the Constructors' title, beating McLaren-Mercedes by nine points. A title achieved in no small part to those ten points scored in San Marino.

Parc Ferme: Alonso and Schumacher congratulate each other after a titanic battle.