British Grand Prix, Silverstone

The safety car was deployed for the first two laps after Takuma Sato stalled his BAR Honda before he even got to the grid; Montoya quickly opened a lead over Alonso. On the first lap he made the decisive move overtaking Alonso round the outside at Copse, and was ahead by Maggotts. Montoya was the first to refuel on lap 22, earlier than planned but his team had calculated that Alonso may hit traffic on the next lap, followed by the Spaniard a lap later who had indeed hit traffic. As Alonso exited the pits, Montoya swept back into the lead through Copse. It was the second decisive move of the race.

Throughout the second stint Alonso again chased Montoya hard, Alonso seeming to be faster in the first section and Montoya in the rest. This time Montoya stopped on lap 44, but Alonso went a further five laps. Crucially, however, Alonso was blocked by Jarno Trulli as he lapped the Toyota, and once again the McLaren went round the outside of the Renault as Alonso resumed the race. The Spaniard was later critical of the lack of blue flags.

Now Alonso pushed even harder and closed to within a second of the lead, but as Montoya withstood the attack the Renault driver kept the pressure on from a two-second distance clearly happy to take his eight points.

The only other drivers in contention for the podium were Giancarlo Fisichella and Kimi Raikkonen. The Italian appeared to have third place in the bag as he made his second and last pit stop on lap 46, but then the engine stalled again as it had in Magny-Cours, and the crucial delay helped the Finn through to snatch another great podium finish after his second 10 grid place penalty due to an engine change.

Raikkonen was one of the stars, leaping from 12th to eighth at the end of the opening lap, but then he got stuck behind Michael Schumacher's Ferrari and had to wait until the German refueled on lap 24 before he could start to make up more ground. The damage to his chances of better than third was done then, but by the time he refueled for the first time on lap 26 he had climbed as high as second. He did this with a spectacular lunge down the inside of fuel-heavy Alonso at Stowe, and that in itself would prove to be a great help to Montoya even though Raikkonen pitted at the end of that lap. Subsequently he resumed in fifth behind Montoya, Alonso, Fisichella and Jenson Button, whose hopes of a home win disappeared virtually straight away. Raikkonen hunted down the BAR and took over fourth when Button made his second stop on the 43rd lap. It only took Fisichella's latest bout of misfortune three laps later to promote the McLaren driver to third.
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Fisichella was a disappointed fourth ahead of Button, who did the best he could in a car that was not in the same class as either McLaren or Renault, Button appears able to get an odd fast lap out of the car for qualifying but not in race trim. Schumacher finished a distant sixth, just ahead of Rubens Barrichello who was the only driver to adopt a three-stop strategy on his way to seventh. Ralf Schumacher took the final point for Toyota, ahead of team-mate Jarno Trulli whose fourth place qualifying slot couldn't be sustained at race pace.

Felipe Massa's long first stint proved useful in getting him ahead of the pack from his lowly 16th starting position. He finished 10th, chased home by Mark Webber who found the BMW Williams FW27 an inconsistent handful. Team-mate Nick Heidfeld found the same and had his mirrors full of Red Bulls all afternoon. Over the last 20 laps there was a great scrap between the German, David Coulthard, Jacques Villeneuve and Christian Klien for 12th. Villeneuve got distracted and left his pit prematurely after his first stop, running over refueler Silvan Ruegg's foot (fortunately without lasting injury to the mechanic), and that delay left him down among the traffic. Whatever happened to the promising young driver who, when first in f1 overtook the great ‘schumi' round the outside?

Tiago Monteiro, Christijan Albers and Patrick Friesacher had lonely races to the flag, two, three and four laps down respectively, while Narain Karthikeyan was the sole retirement, stopping his Jordan in Turn 6 on lap 11 with electrical failure.

While he didn't win, Alonso did extend his championship lead over Raikkonen from 24 to 26 points, McLaren did claw back three points from Renault, but the happiest man of all was undoubtedly Montoya. This was a great win and must come as a great relief to Montoya. Montoya explained that his driving style is very different to Kimi's so the cars have to be developed differently, a set-up that suits one is almost undriveable for the other.

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British Grand Prix, Silverstone