Double world champion Fernando Alonso led a McLaren one-two in the Italian Grand Prix on Sunday to cut team mate Lewis Hamilton's lead to three points with four races remaining. Hamilton, 22, had another highly impressive afternoon but the British rookie was doomed to follow in the Spaniard's slipstream after his team mate secured pole position on Saturday.
He crossed the line six seconds behind Alonso, who celebrated his 19th career win and fourth of the season in a highly-charged and emotional race against a backdrop of Ferrari allegations against the team. It was McLaren's first one-two finish at Monza but fourth in 13 races.
"It was the perfect weekend for me," said Alonso. "Sometimes everything seems to go in the right direction and you feel in a good way." Hamilton now has 92 points to Alonso's 89 in what looks increasingly like a two-man battle, dependant on the outcome of a hearing of the governing body in Paris on Thursday that could wreck their title hopes.
SORE NECK:
Ferrari, winners four times in the previous five seasons at the temple of Italian motorsport, had to make do with Kimi Raikkonen's third place. The Finn, struggling with a sore neck after a heavy crash on Saturday, is now 18 points adrift of Hamilton and was overtaken by the Briton after briefly taking second place at the rookie's second and final pitstop.
"The car wasn't too bad actually," said Raikkonen, who was on a one-stop strategy. "I couldn't keep my head up under braking. My neck was in not very good shape after yesterday."
On a sunny but miserable afternoon for Ferrari, ever more McLaren's bitter enemies since a spying row erupted between the two in July, Brazilian Felipe Massa was forced to retire with a rear suspension problem with just 10 laps gone. He and Hamilton had banged wheels into the first corner as the Briton reclaimed second place after a poor start from the dirty side of the track.
The failure left Massa's title hopes in tatters, with the Brazilian now 23 points off the lead despite having three wins to his credit. Germany's Nick Heidfeld was fourth for BMW Sauber with Polish team mate Robert Kubica fifth and Germany's Nico Rosberg sixth for Williams.
Finland's Heikki Kovalainen was seventh for champions Renault while Briton Jenson Button took his and Honda's second point of the season in eighth place. The safety car was deployed from the second to sixth lap after Briton David Coulthard's Red Bull made contact with Italian Giancarlo Fisichella's Renault and ploughed into the barriers. The Scot emerged unscathed.
McLaren lead Ferrari by 166 points to 143 in the constructors' championship, pending Thursday's hearing and another appeal by the Mercedes-powered team to try and claim back 15 points lost in Hungary last month.
FERRARI DOWNCAST:
Ferrari's flying Finn Kimi Raikkonen admitted Sunday that his Italian team did not have the speed to win the Italian Grand Prix. And he revealed that strained neck muscles after a crash on Saturday caused him pain the race. But his disappointment after finishing third behind the triumphant McLaren Mercedes-Benz duo of victorious Spaniard Fernando Alonso and Briton Lewis Hamilton was nothing to that of Ferrari's Brazilian Felipe Massa.
He was so downhearted after being forced to retire after only 10 laps with mechanical problems that he conceded his dreams of fighting for the McLaren men for the drivers' title were almost certainly over. "It is not impossible, but it is going to be very, very difficult," he said.
"I am so disappointed. Nothing is worse than this. It is just horrible to see your chances in a race go in the early stages like that - and because of a reliability problem.
"There was something wrong with the rear suspension. At first I thought it might be a puncture but after the tyres were changed and it was still undriveable I had to retire." Raikkonen had opted for a one-stop strategy to try and overcome the pace of the two McLaren drivers, but despite getting past Lewis Hamilton in the pit-stops, he was unable to hold onto that position to the flag.
"The car wasn't too bad," he said. "In the first stint it was pretty okay. We were heavier than the McLarens and we knew that they would pull away. Probably the biggest problem was that I could not keep my head up under braking. "My neck is not in such a great shape after yesterday's crash in qualifying so that was the main issue. But we just didn't have the speed." Raikkonen is now 18 points behind championship leader Hamilton with four races to go.
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