Thursday, September 13, 2007

10 Questions For Max Mosley and the FIA

I am writing this post of 13th Spet, 2007 before the WMC meeting in Paris. I do not know what will happen in the meeting, but according to news reports and rumors Mclaren will be sanctioned.

Plantf1 asked following 10 questions to Max and FIA, I wanted to share them with this blogs readers.

McLaren look almost certain to be sanctioned at the WMC meeting in Paris on Thursday. Taking this as a 'given', there are 10 questions we'd like Max Mosley and the FIA to answer - in the interests of "sporting fairness" of course.

1. You say this is not a witch hunt and that it is all in the interests of "sporting fairness". Will you promise to follow up other examples of cheating within the sport with the same vigour?

2. If sporting fairness is your aim, will you now remove Super Aguri and Toro Rosso from the Constructors' Championship as they are clearly running 'customer cars'?

3. If McLaren are found guilty of cheating why should they just be removed from the Constructors' Championship? Surely the drivers in the cars have benefited from increased speed thanks to this information gained and their positions within the respective tables are also false?

4. In your letter to the McLaren drivers, the FIA promised not to punish them if they forwarded relevant information. Both Alonso and Hamilton have long term contracts with McLaren that are lodged with the contracts recognition board. If you prevent McLaren from competing in 2008, you are punishing them, so presumbaly this is not a sanction you can make?

5. In the interests of sporting fairness will you reveal who told you about the McLaren e.mails? It is too important to gloss over

6. Also in the interests of sporting fairness, and to prevent F1 sliding into further disrepute, would it not be wise to ask the members of the World Motorsport Council with links to either McLaren or Ferrari not to sit on this highly sensitive council?

7. Can you let us know how everyone voted afterwards. Also, publish the names of the stewards for each race on the data screens. In football we know who the referee, linesman, fourth official and referee assessor are for each Premiership match, every week.

8. If the information passed to McLaren relates to getting Bridgestone tyres to work properly, would you consider this to be partly the fault of the FIA. Your decision to switch from two tyre suppliers to a sole tyre supplier gave an unfair competitive edge to the previous Bridgestone runners. In the interests of sporting fairness surely everyone should have been made aware of the data.

* We note that you intervened in 2003 to change the tyre rule after the Hungarian GP, you intervened in 2005 to change the single tyre rule that was helping cut cornering speeds and you intervened in 2006 to allow only a future single tyre supplier in the sport. Bridgestone were the beneficiaries of such changes in all cases.

9. Under EU legislation are you sure that the letter sent to the McLaren drivers doesn't breach their fundamental human rights?

10. Will you take action against teams leaking information to the press and will you acknowledge that this more than anything else has aggravated the situation and brought the sport into disrepute? How is it that we know about the correlation between Coughlan/Stepney phone calls and Alonso/de la Rosa e.mails on the Wednesday before the hearing...?

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Why McLaren Got Off The FIA Charges

Interesting article by Andrew Davies.


A look through F1's recent history books provides an answer as to why McLaren emerged from their Paris FIA summons and their trial-by-media without sanction.


http://www.planetf1.com/story/0,18954,3261_2625548,00.html

Though McLaren's FIA hearing in Paris is over, the Stepneygate spying row is far from finished. And judging from Ferrari boss Jean Todt's subsequent 'Cold Light of Day' statement put out by Ferrari, the Italian marque are certainly not finished with it.

So why did the FIA find McLaren guilty yet fail to impose a sanction? The answer may lie back in the events of 1994.

For those yet to get their heads behind the row a brief summary. Long-time Ferrari employee, Englishman Nigel Stepney was passed over for promotion when his boss, Ross Brawn, the highly successful technical chief of Ferrari decided to go on a year's sabbatical. Stepney vented his frustrations in an Autosport interview early in 2007- something rarely heard in F1 (yet heard all the time in football).

Then news hit the press of a sabotage attempt within the Ferrari team involving a "strange white powder" that had been found near the cars prior to them being shipped off to Monaco. What has come to light subsequently is that McLaren chief designer Mike Coughlan was caught in possession of a 780-page technical dossier on the Ferrari 2007 car - believed to have been supplied by Stepney.

Though the majority of the information could only be applied to building a 2008 car from scratch, Ferrari allege that certain aspects of it, such as the brake balance system and knowledge of their movable floor device have assisted McLaren's championship challenge. The Maranello-based team had found a way of circumventing the flexible floor test - allowing it to move and become more aerodynamically efficient when put under load. It was an effective cheat on the principal behind the rules - i.e. it broke the rules but passed the test put in place to prevent moveable floors.

After a highly successful opening grand prix a suspicious McLaren asked the FIA for a clarification of the rules. The FIA realised that the test they used wasn't strenuous enough, and at the next grand prix all of a sudden Ferrari's car was significantly slower. Jean Todt maintains that the McLaren team were given a tip-off from their estranged employee in March and subsequently Mike Coughlan was handed the 780-page dossier in Spain.

These details would have remained hidden had it not been for the fact that Coughlan's wife took the dossier to a photo-copying shop in Woking and an eagle-eyed employee realised what was happening and contacted Ferrari.

An important element is that Nigel Stepney and Mike Coughlan had already approached embattled Honda boss Nick Fry with a view to working for the team in 2008. When Coughlan's name was put in the public domain in connection with the leaked dossier it took Fry two days to come forward and admit that he had talked to them both. Whereas before it had looked like a case of a disaffected Ferrari employee tring to help his rivals, now it looked like a new move for the pair of them.

McLaren's hearing in Paris this week has been to find out how much the team knew about Coughlan's possession of Ferrari technical data, when he had it, and if they have used that knowledge to their advantage. McLaren have already invited the FIA to inspect their car and see if any of the technology from the 2007 Ferrari has been incorporated into their car.

Jean Todt believes that McLaren were given documents which allowed them to challenge the validity of his car in Melbourne - i.e. that they dishonestly obtained evidence against a dishonest device. Facing a World Motor Sport Council which rules across a number of motorsport disciplines it's difficult to understand why he thought this was a winning argument. Jean comes from a rallying background and will have known about the Toyota 1995 air restrictors, where the 1995 Toyota WRC team deliberately machined parts to give them an advantage but disguised that advantage so the cars passed scrutineering. They were thrown out of the 1995 championship and banned from racing in 1996. Had another team got that information from a Toyota mole there was no likely action going to be taken against them, such was the FIA anger at the subterfuge. So why was it going to change given the same FIA president?

Ferrari themselves have managed to get McLaren technical equipment banned thanks to other people's intervention. In 1997 Darren Heath's sensational photographs of the McLaren brake/steer device gave Ferrari the evidence they needed to have it banned (after it had been passed as legal by the FIA technical delegate). To get these he went on track to the retired McLaren of David Coulthard and stuck his camera into the footwell.

And Ferrari, it now turns out, are not above spying themselves. Former Ferrari driver Mika Salo told Finnish newspaper Ilta Sanomat: "When I was driving for Ferrari (in 1999) we always spied on McLaren, listening to their radio traffic. After every practice session I had in front of me, on paper, all the discussions Mika Hakkinen had had with his engineer." (Though Ferrari have prompted him to amend this quote to emphasise that all the eavesdropping was accidental due to radio interference).

Going into the FIA meeting a great many motorsport fans around the world knew some of the content of Mike Coughlan's sworn High Court affidavit. Coughlan is not what legal counsel would call an independent witness to the events, he's antagonistic. The minute he decided to team up with Nigel Stepney and go and speak to the Honda team about a job he revealed that - despite his senior position - he was not particularly happy at McLaren. The fact that he didn't dare take the 780-page dossier to work to have it photo-copied points to the fact that either McLaren had seen it and told him to get rid of it, or that they never saw it in the first place. (But probably the former).

Coughlan's evidence about McLaren has been undermined by his desire to go and work for somebody else, just as Stepeney's would have been if he revealed (or goes on to reveal) embarrassing secrets about Ferrari's past after his ominous quote to the Sunday Times; "I know where the bodies are buried."

Prior to the hearing and in advance of all the court action in England and Italy, there have been constant, almost daily leaks to the Italian press revealing details and allegations surrounding the story. The worst of these has been from Mike Coughlan's sworn affidavit to the High Court - the document should be highly confidential.

It seems that the desire to get the facts out into the public domain and put McLaren in a bad light has run ahead of the desire to individually punish the two men involved. Because now there must be a serious risk that Stepney and Coughlan cannot get fair trials because of all the prior media coverage - details that should only have been revealed in court.

Max Mosley has never been someone to be steered into a decision. Countless officials at the European Union commission will attest to that. If the FIA have given McLaren an easy ride over 'Stepneygate' then the constant leaking of information to fuel the story will not have been to Ferrari's advantage. It appears that rather than keep quiet and prosecute the individuals concerned the Scuderia have been keen to publicise the case and embroil McLaren as much as they can. They have been active publicists of the affair, which has cast F1 in a bad light.

This is where 1994 comes in. At the end of Michael Schumacher's first World Championship season his Benetton car was found to have illegal traction control software on it. So what was that doing there? The logical process would have been to sling the team, the technical staff and the car out of F1. The FIA decided that they could not prove it had been used through the season - despite complex photographic evidence from the French GP - and hence team boss Flavio Briatore and tech director Ross Brawn were allowed to continue in F1. What the FIA didn't want in the year that Ayrton Senna was killed and there was an alleged deliberate accident, Schumi taking Damon Hill out of the final race in Adelaide, was more bad news.

So they said the case was not proven and left it at that. Had they applied the same argument as they did a year later to Toyota in the WRC, then who knows where we would have been.

It's interesting to hear Flavio Briatore play up to an Italian media and say he is "baffled" by the decision not to punish McLaren when they had been found guilty. Yet in 1994 his team were found to have done something far more pro-active than receiving unsolicited documents, the Benetton team had put software on the car that was illegal. And nothing much happened then. So it's hard to know why he's so baffled. The neat irony of course is that both Nigel Stepney and Mike Coughlan worked together at Benetton.

McLaren have received a severe warning - a suspended sentence - and they'll have to be good boys for the rest of this season and a fair few to come. For Ferrari to say that their possession of Ferrari documents has helped McLaren substantially, is open to a very large debate.

The loss of Ferrari's handy rule bend/illegal car (depending on which viewpoint you come from) has made a difference, but by how much? The post-Melbourne press releases put out by teams who had to change their floors said the change would have very little effect. So were they all lying?

Whether Todt and Montezemolo are justified in calling for another team to have sanctions brought against them for receiving that tip-off remains to be seen. On past evidence Max Mosley doesn't react well to someone flying in the face of carefully considered FIA deliberations and there may well be further ructions to come. He doesn't take being called "dishonest" lightly.

Ferrari's biggest bugbear this year has been reliability and the points they lost from two Raikkonen retirements, a Felipe Massa stall in GB and his Canadian GP disqualification. These have all been self-inflicted. However no-one doubts their supreme technical ability and the tide of progress (the tight twisty Hungaroring aside) of the 2007 car's development still looks likely to give them the last laugh.

Even if laughter is the last thing on their minds right now.

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Formula One schedule announced

The Australian Grand Prix will kick off the 2008 season, contrary to reports in recent weeks that Bahrain would get the nod for the curtain-raiser.

The FIA today unveiled the provisional schedule for next year with new events at Valencia and Singapore included on the calendar as expected, while the US no longer has an event following the failure of a new agreement between Formula One and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Magny Cours remains on the schedule despite expectations earlier in the year that there would be no French event next year, before a return in 2009 at a possible new venue.

Suzuka officials had hoped that it would host the Japanese event next year after losing the race to Fuji this year, but Fuji again is included on the calendar.


2008 Formula One calendar

Mar 16 Australia (Melbourne)
Mar 23 Malaysia (Sepang)
Apr 6 Bahrain (Sakhir)
Apr 27 Spain (Barcelona)
May 11 Turkey (Istanbul)
May 25 Monaco (Monte Carlo)
Jun 8 Canada* (Montreal)
Jun 22 France (Magny Cours)
Jul 6 Britain (Silverstone)
Jul 20 Germany (Hockenheim)
Aug 3 Hungary (Hungaroring)
Aug 24 Europe (Valencia)**
Sep 7 Italy (Monza)
Sep 14 Belgium (Spa Francorchamps)
Sep 28 Singapore**
Oct 12 China (Shanghai)
Oct 19 Japan (Fuji)
Nov 2 Brazil (Interlagos)


* Provisional
** subject to circuit approval

Thursday, July 19, 2007

The realms of rumours and whispers

More high-ranking figures of the McLaren team face being dragged into the 'Stepney-gate' spy scandal.

In his supposedly confidential sworn affidavit provided to Ferrari by English lawyers, the Woking based outfit's suspended chief designer specifically named F1 CEO Martin Whitmarsh as well as engineering director Paddy Lowe.

According to apparently leaked details published in the Italian daily sports newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport, Coughlan also confided in Whitmarsh - who is outranked only by team boss Ron Dennis - and Lowe, and was told by both of his superiors to dispose of the nearly 800-page secret Ferrari dossier.

Team Manager Jonathan Neale had already been flagged as being potentially involved both by Coughlan and Ferrari's Italian lawyers.

Even La Gazzetta dello Sport, however, had to admit that 'we are into the realms of rumours and whispers'.


Nevertheless, the revelation could turn out to have serious implications for McLaren - if proven, after the team vehemently declared on Monday that Coughlan's illegal possession of the material 'was not known to any other member of the team prior to the 3rd July 2007.'

Not informing the FIA of suspected espionage is also contrary to the rules.

F1's governing body will examine all of the evidence in an emergency meeting of the World Motor Sport Council in central Paris next Thursday.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Race analysis - McLaren still on top

Kimi Raikkonen set the fastest lap of the US Grand Prix, which was a source of encouragement for Ferrari. But it was the McLarens which finished first and second and the red cars that could not better third and fourth, some 13 seconds adrift.
Given their past record of six victories from the seven races held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Ferrari came here full of confidence that they would be closer to McLaren than they were in Montreal. And they were, but at the vital stages of the race the silver arrows had the edge and that proved crucial.

Raikkonen’s fastest lap, 1m 13.117s, was set on the 49th lap as he chased after team mate Felipe Massa while he was running on Bridgestone’s softer tyre and the Brazilian was doing his final stint on the harder compound. Massa’s best lap was 1m 13.380s, set on lap 50. By contrast the McLarens did their quick times - 1m 13.222s for race winner Lewis Hamilton on lap 20 and 1m 13.257s for Alonso on lap 21 - on soft tyres just before their respective first pit stops. Had it been necessary, it is likely that each could have gone faster later. It was not.

Ferrari proved that their reliability is back to what it used to be, but need to find a little more of everything, whereas McLaren have their car operating right in its sweetest spot. And it is beginning to tell in the chase for the constructors’ world championship. McLaren have 106 points, Ferrari 71.

Renault led a race for the first time in 2007, courtesy of Heikki Kovalainen’s stint between laps 22 and 26, and the fact that he did not refuel until lap 27 put his sixth-place qualifying performance into even better perspective. The Finn rued being stuck behind Nick Heidfeld after his stop and thought he should have been more aggressive, but on a day when team mate Giancarlo Fisichella marred his homework with his spin on lap two, and also when BMW Sauber netted only one point, the four that he brought home were important. “The result is the maximum we can achieve at the moment. We cannot beat McLaren and we cannot beat Ferrari, but I think we can fight with BMW,” he said, and that about summed it up.

BMW Sauber showed strong potential again and Nick Heidfeld was sure they could have competed for a podium finish after getting ahead of Kimi Raikkonen’s Ferrari at the start. But he lost ground on lap 21 just before his pit stop, when he ran wide and lost a place to Kovalainen, and later retired when a hydraulic problem progressively affected the power steering, gearshift and then throttle. Courtesy of rookie Sebastian Vettel the team maintained their record of scoring at each race, but he lost four places in the first corner that he was unable to recover fully, and inevitably the second car did not realise the potential it might have in Robert Kubica’s hands. Nevertheless, Vettel made a good impression and was generally four- to five-tenths of a second off Heidfeld in his first real Formula One run. BMW Sauber have 39 points, while Renault now have 25.

Having lost Ralf Schumacher on the opening lap Toyota had to rely totally on Jarno Trulli, and the Italian did them proud with a strong run to a sixth place that he had trouble believing. His scrap with Mark Webber’s Red Bull was a feature of the closing stages of the race, and three points helped to close the gap to Williams, who failed to score. That was a shame for the British team, as Nico Rosberg was a strong contender for points all afternoon after another aggressive performance in the FW29. With six laps to run disaster struck when an oil leak started a fire at the rear of the car, and the visibly disappointed German pulled off just beyond the pit lane. With Alex Wurz unable to find a way past Tonio Liuzzi’s low-downforce Toro Rosso for the first 36 laps, Rosberg was their only realistic hope for points. They still have 13 for fifth overall, but Toyota are now only four adrift in sixth.

Webber’s feisty run to seventh brought Red Bull two more welcome points on a day when David Coulthard was savaged from behind and forced into retirement after a lap. The Australian called for “more downforce, more reliability, more speed,” but at least they moved ahead of Super Aguri and into seventh overall.

This time there was no magic from Takuma Sato, who spun his Super Aguri into retirement in the Turn Four gravel after 13 laps, but after getting delayed in the first corner debacle Anthony Davidson had the satisfaction of catching and passing Jenson Button’s Honda, and overtaking several other cars, on his recovery to an eventual 11th place finish. Encouragingly, the Briton’s fastest lap - 1m 14.066s - put him firmly in Red Bull, Renault, Williams and Toyota territory.

Honda had a tough time, losing Rubens Barrichello in the first lap melee, and then having Button delayed by a fuel rig malfunction during his pit stop. In that incident too much fuel - between 15 and 20 kilos too much - was put into the tank, not only losing him pit stop time but subsequently hampering the RA107 further out on the track. The best the Englishman could do was 12th.

For a while, when Liuzzi was running ahead of Wurz in 11th place for the first 28 laps, Toro Rosso looked as if they might be up for points, even when Fisichella subsequently found a way past his fellow countryman on lap 29. But then Liuzzi had a disastrous stop on lap 37 when his refuelling rig malfunctioned, and dropped behind team mate Scott Speed. Whereas the American made it home, Liuzzi retired in the pits with five laps to go when the telemetry said his water temperature had reached the danger zone. Both drivers found that their low-downforce set-ups were a real handful on a slippery track, and the lap times were very slow.

Spyker finished both cars, and for a while Adrian Sutil ran as high as 13th after the first corner kerfuffle, but inevitably he slipped back as faster cars recovered. Nevertheless, the German described it as a “perfect race.” Team mate Christijan Albers, who was on a single-stop strategy compared with Sutil’s two-stop, blamed leader traffic for upsetting his chances of beating the German.

Faultless win for Hamilton at Indy

In retrospect, his Canadian win came with relative ease. But in Indianapolis on Sunday Lewis Hamilton had to work every inch of the way for his second consecutive triumph as he beat McLaren team mate Fernando Alonso by just 1.5s after a gripping, race-long fight.
Hamilton just got the drop on Alonso from pole, and as they sped away from Ferrari’s Felipe Massa, BMW Sauber’s Nick Heidfeld and Renault’s Heikki Kovalainen were both able to leap ahead of Kimi Raikkonen in the second red car.

Further back, Ralf Schumacher lost control of his Toyota and collided with Honda’s Rubens Barrichello, who was in the process of running into the back of David Coulthard’s Red Bull. Jenson Button in the second Honda and fellow Briton Anthony Davidson in the Super Aguri were also delayed, while Schumacher, Barrichello and Coulthard became the first retirements.

In that first stint Hamilton did enough to eke out a lead that enabled him to pit on lap 21 and then stay ahead of Alonso once the Spaniard had followed suit a lap later. They went back to first and second as Kovalainen pitted from the lead on lap 27.

Now Alonso turned up the wick, however, as Hamilton’s front tyres grained when he really pushed hard. On lap 38 they went down to Turn One side by side, but Hamilton had the inside line and was able not just to defend against his partner’s attack, but to open a small gap again.

When the next stops came, Alonso came in first, on lap 50, and when Hamilton did so a lap later he retained his advantage. Over the final stint he was able to maintain a two-second gap, as the two silver arrows circulated 13 seconds clear of the battling Ferraris of Massa and Raikkonen. They were on different fuel strategies, and with softer tyres in his final stint the Finn was able to close in as the Brazilian was using Bridgestone’s harder tyre. However, Massa did not leave him any openings and they crossed the line in the same positions, only feet apart, after the 73 laps.

Fifth place was sound reward for a gritty drive by Kovalainen, who was always a points contender, but the late retirement of Nico Rosberg with engine failure in his Williams (which had earlier been delayed slightly by a sticking fuel nozzle) made life a little easier for the Finn.

Rosberg’s sad demise was also a bonus for Toyota’s Jarno Trulli, who had a feisty scrap with Red Bull’s Mark Webber in the closing stages as they took sixth and seventh. Right at the end, BMW Sauber rookie Sebastian Vettel closed in on them, and as the trio crossed the line a second apart, the young German scored a point on his debut.

That was a small reward for BMW Sauber, as Nick Heidfeld had been heading for a possible fourth until power steering and gearbox problems intervened to drop him to fifth, and then to prompt his retirement with hydraulics failure on lap 59.

Giancarlo Fisichella fought back strongly for Renault after spinning on the second lap, and his side by side dicing with the Toro Rossos and Alex Wurz’s Williams was a highlight of the race. He finished ninth, ahead of Wurz, while further back Davidson recovered to catch and pass his old kart sparring partner Button for 11th. Toro Rosso’s Scott Speed was 13th after a fight with Spyker’s Adrian Sutil, who ran as high as 14th initially after the first corner incidents. Christijan Albers was 15th in the second Spyker, ahead of the non-finishing Rosberg and Tonio Liuzzi, who kept his Toro Rosso ahead of Wurz for the first stint but later retired with water temperature problems.

The other retirement was Takuma Sato, who fell off in Turn Four immediately after diving past Sutil in the first corner on lap 14. By then Sato had already picked up a ten-place grid penalty for the next round after passing Button under yellow flags, a charge the Japanese driver subsequently denied.

Hamilton’s second North American triumph increases his lead in the drivers’ championship to 10 points over Alonso, while McLaren are now 35 points clear of Ferrari in the constructors’ title chase.

Monday, June 11, 2007

Hamilton claims maiden Formula 1 triumph

LEWIS Hamilton claimed his first Formula 1 victory at just the sixth attempt in an incident-packed Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal yesterday.

With five podium positions in his first five races, Hamilton made the next step in his sensational rookie season by claiming the first pole position of his short career on Saturday at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve.

Yesterday, the Briton led from green light to chequered flag to regain the lead in the World Drivers Championship from McLaren team-mate and reigning world champion Fernando Alonso.

Alonso finished seventh, as McLaren's dominance shown at Monaco in the previous race and in practice and qualifying was broken. Germany's Nick Heidfeld claimed second place for BMW Sauber, with Alexander Wurz of Williams in third.

Yet as Hamilton drove to success there was drama in his rear-view mirrors throughout the 70 laps. Poland's Robert Kubica was involved in an horrific crash in his BMW Sauber, Ferrari's Felipe Massa and Renault's Giancarlo Fisichella were both thrown out of the race, while the safety car was as busy as the F1 machines.

Hamilton, accused earlier in the week of over-aggression off the grid by former world champion Jacques Villeneuve, got the perfect start from his first pole position.

The 22-year-old held his lead as Heidfeld stole a march on Alonso and tried to run down the inside of the young Briton heading into turn one.

Alonso added the drama this time, running wide at the first turn and cutting across Hamilton to return to the track before rejoining the race in third behind Heidfeld.

Jenson Button saw his problems with the Honda this season reach disastrous levels when he was left on the grid, pushed to the pit lane by marshals before finally giving up hope of getting into the race when his mechanics failed to start his car as his rivals started lap two. Honda later cited transmission failure as the cause of Button's demise.

All the time, Hamilton was building his lead at the front, up to 10.3 seconds on Heidfeld by lap 14 with Alonso losing ground as he once again went off the track at turn one - and again on lap 19.

Hamilton went into the pits on lap 22, ceding the lead briefly to Massa, but then the safety car came onto the track as Spyker's Adrian Sutil made heavy contact with a wall and came to a stop on the kerb unable to reach a run-off area.

When the pit lane re-opened with the yellow flag still out, Massa led the charge into the pits, leaving Hamilton back in front with Heidfeld second and Alonso third.

The safety car was barely back in the pit lane however, when it was redeployed after an horrific crash for Kubica as he headed towards the L'Epingle hairpin on lap 28.

The Polish driver appeared to clip the Toyota of Jarno Trulli which sent his own car airborne and ploughing nose first into a wall before barrel-rolling across the track and sliding on the car's side along the opposite wall.

There were very nervous moments as Kubica was attended to in his car, after a crash which sent vast amounts of debris from the BMW Sauber flying across the track.

As the Pole was being extracted from his car and taken to the track medical centre, stewards were handing out 10-second stop/go penalties to both Alonso and Rosberg for entering the pit lane as the safety car was on the track.

When the race finally got under way again on lap 33, Hamilton was left with the task of rebuilding his lead over Heidfeld.

Incidents continued aplenty as Rosberg and Trulli spun out, before Scotland's David Coulthard suffered his fourth retirement of the season on lap 38.

Anthony Davidson was the last driver into the pits for the first time but he caught his team napping as he came to a halt outside his garage with no mechanics in sight.

The Super Aguri crew eventually scrambled to attend to their lonely driver, who emerged at the rear of the 17 remaining cars.

Kubica, meanwhile, was being airlifted by helicopter to Montreal's Sacre Coeur hospital for further investigations, with a BMW Sauber spokesman claiming the driver was "okay and talking to doctors".

Tonio Luizzi brushed a wall to end his race and, with the safety car back out, Trulli crashed his Toyota into a safety barrier, just as he was re-entering the race from a pit stop.

That left just 12 cars left in the race with 10 laps remaining.

Thankfully for Hamilton, they were relatively uneventful and the British rookie took his first chequered flag to thunderous applause from the sell-out crowd and the delight of his McLaren crew.
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