Spa master Kimi Raikkonen withstood an astonishingly strong race-long challenge from Force India’s Giancarlo Fisichella to claim his first win in 26 races, and Ferrari’s first of the 2009 season, in the Belgian Grand Prix.
Raikkonen had to rely on his KERS system and slick Ferrari pit work to deny Fisichella a fairytale first victory for Force India after the Italian veteran showed the team’s pole position was no fluke and its VJM02 was a force to be reckoned with around high-speed Spa.
In fact Fisichella’s Force India was quicker than the winning Ferrari, and but for a three-lap safety car period — triggered by a first-lap shunt that eliminated points later Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton — might have won.
Instead, the restart allowed Raikkonen to use his KERS power boost button to get a run on Fisichella and breeze past on the uphill Kemmel straight.
Thereafter Fisichella gave spirited chase, shadowed both of Raikkonen’s pit stops, but was unable to break through the wall of turbulent air emanating from the F2009.
He ultimately missed out on what would have been one of the most unlikely wins in F1's history by a mere 0.9s, but second place was still a remarkable result for a team which had never even scored points before in its two seasons on the grid.
While Fisichella and Force India’s amazing performance was the major story from a fascinating race, the title fight took another intriguing twist.
Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel claimed the final podium position after using a long first stint, and strong pace over the remainder of the race, to pick off rivals during the pit stops and move up from ninth.
Button, meanwhile, was left breathing a sigh of relief as his team-mate and chief title rival Rubens Barrichello trailed home seventh after his Brawn almost stalled at the start and tumbled down the order, consigning him to an afternoon playing catch-up.
Vettel’s team-mate Mark Webber missed out on points altogether for the second straight weekend after being handed a drive-through penalty for an unsafe pit release at his first stop, which dropped him out of fifth.
The upshot was that Barrichello trimmed Button’s title lead by two to 16 points, while Vettel kept his title hopes alive, now back ahead of Webber in the standings and 19 points adrift.
Fisichella made a textbook start to lead into La Source hairpin. Behind him, however, there was the predictable chaos.
In what appeared to be a premeditated move, Raikkonen wisely ran out onto the wide Tarmac apron to avoid it.
Front-row starter Jarno Trulli was not so lucky. Pinched on either side, his Toyota’s front wing was tweaked against Nick Heidfeld’s BMW and he was forced to pit.
Fernando Alonso was another to suffer. His Renault’s left-front wheel crunched the front wing of the sideways Force India of Adrian Sutil.
He appeared to have got away with it, only for it came back to haunt the Spaniard at his only pit stop.
Alonso had been running strongly in third, albeit out of sequence with Raikkonen and Fisichella, but the damage to his wheel shroud caused him a long stop and his eventual retirement when the team, mindful of what happened in Hungary, called him in to retire.
Raikkonen, third after his diversion, charged around the outside of the fast-starting Robert Kubica to take second on the climb to Les Combes.
He ran wide again, however, and the Pole nudged him up the rear, thankfully without damage, while Heidfeld locked up and slid across the grass.
The ensuing concertina effect caused mayhem in the midfield.
Button had made a good start and gained four places when Renault rookie Romain Grosjean, running heavy, outbraked himself at Les Combes and tagged the Brawn’s right-rear wheel.
Both men spun out, Hamilton backed off to avoid them and his McLaren was punted hard from behind by Jaime Alguersuari’s Toro Rosso.
All four cars were out on the spot.
“I don’t think he [Grosjean] was trying to overtake,” lamented Button. “It’s frustrating, but that’s what happens when you start from 14th on the grid.”
Fisichella’s good work was undone by the safety car’s arrival, and there was an air of inevitability — something that has stalked Fisi’s career — as he accelerated out of the chicane at the restart.
Sure enough, Raikkonen almost ran into the back of the Force India on the main straight before jinking out to pass at Kemmel.
And that, many people thought, was that.
Not so. Fisichella refused to be shaken off, and despite being fuelled lighter than Raikkonen, pitted at the same time as the Ferrari, on lap 14, when both men switched from soft to medium Bridgestones.
The pair stopped again on lap 31. Both fitted mediums. Both were stationary for 7.1 seconds. It was nip-and-tuck – until Kimi pressed his button and increased his gap on the out-lap.
The ease with which Fisichella got the margin back below one second again underlined his potentially superior pace, but barring a mistake, victory was Raikkonen’s.
None came. And it was.
Vettel was the heaviest of the front-runners going into the race and lost some time behind Nico Rosberg in the first-lap shenanigans.
He made short work of repassing the Williams after the restart but lost too much time in the first stint to challenge for victory.
He moved past Heidfeld’s BMW during the first pit stop cycle and Kubica in the second, but that was as far as he would progress.
In the final stint he closed on the leaders at a rate of half a second per lap, but ran out of laps.
Heidfeld was catching team-mate Kubica, too, as the latter struggled with front wing damage from his first-lap contact with Raikkonen, but the Pole held on by just over a second to head up BMW’s best result in months.
Heikki Kovalainen drove a strong one-stop race to take sixth for McLaren, soaking up pressure from Barrichello in the closing stages until the Brazilian was ordered by his team to back off when his Brawn sprang an oil leak.
Oil vapour trailed the Brawn to the end, but Rubens was able to nurse it home in seventh place ahead of Rosberg, who finished in the points for the eighth consecutive race.
Toyota’s Timo Glock might have scored some points but for a slow first pit stop caused by a malfunctioning fuel rig, which restricted him to 10th behind Webber.
Team-mate Trulli also suffered a slow stop — his new left-rear tyre was still snoozing its blanket — but damage discovered at this stop persuaded his team to call him in after 21 laps.
Sutil, another man forced to pit because of first-lap damage, was 11th, ahead of the Toro Rosso of Sebastian Buemi, who for a while delayed the charging Vettel, the Williams of Kazuki Nakajima and, of course, Luca Badoer.
Ferraris first and last: a weird symmetry for a strange day.
Belgian Grand Prix result (44 laps)
1. RAIKKONEN Ferrari
2. FISICHELLA Force India +0.9s
3. VETTEL Red Bull +3.8s
4. KUBICA BMW +9.9s
5. HEIDFELD BMW +11.2s
6. KOVALAINEN McLaren +32.7s
7. BARRICHELLO Brawn +35.4s
8. ROSBERG Williams +36.2s
9. WEBBER Red Bull +36.9s
10. GLOCK Toyota +41.4s
11. SUTIL Force India +42.6s
12. BUEMI Toro Rosso +46.1s
13. NAKAJIMA Williams +54.2s
14. BADOER Ferrari +1m42.1s
15. ALONSO Renault +18 laps
16. TRULLI Toyota +23 laps
17. BUTTON Brawn +44 laps
18. GROSJEAN Renault +44 laps
19. HAMILTON McLaren +44 laps
20. ALGUERSUARI Toro Rosso +44 laps
Fastest lap: VETTEL 1m47.263s (lap 38)
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