RED MIST
Monza’s Haunted AsphaltPaul Simpson looks at the Italian Grand Prix and what makes its near-lethal combination of furious speed, storied history and fanatical fandom Ferrari’s undeniable cathedral of motor racing.
What nobody tells you about the Italian Grand Prix is that, on a hot sunny day, when thousands of Tifosi have been gathering at the circuit since 7am in hope – or more accurately, expectation – of a Ferrari victory, by the time the race starts, the stench of body odour is almost overpowering.
Monza is arguably Italy’s holiest secular shrine. The oldest Formula 1 circuit still in use, this is a place where legends are made. Jackie Stewart, Juan Pablo Montoya and Sebastian Vettel scored their first victories here. The circuit, despite some modifications to make it safer, still lives up to its reputation as the ‘Temple of Speed’. The record for the fastest average speed in a F1 race, 153.84mph, was set here in 2003 by Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher.
Like all shrines, Monza has its revered martyrs, most poignantly two-time Italian world champion Alberto Ascari, the great Swedish driver Ronnie Peterson and the brilliant Austrian Jochen Rindt who crashed in practice before the 1970 race and remains the only driver to win the F1 world championship posthumously. This is all part, as Mario Andretti, who won the 1977 Italian Grand Prix, said once: “The brutal magic of Monza.”
Since 1922, when the Italian Grand Prix was first held at Monza, that magic has also cast a strange spell over the drivers. They have crashed (as Damon Hill and Schumacher notoriously did in 1995, as did Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen in 2021), clashed (in 1965, Stewart triumphed in a race during which the lead changed 42 times) and fumed (even though the legendary Argentinian driver Juan Fangio secured his fifth world title with a second place finish in 1956, he still insisted that his car had been sabotaged).
It took 3000 men 110 days to build Monza to provide a permanent home for the Italian Grand Prix. On September 10, 1922, despite heavy rain, more than 100,000 fans roared in delight as Pietro Bordino, nicknamed ‘Diavolo Rosso’ (Red Devil) for his audacity as a driver, comfortably won the first Grand Prix at Monza for Fiat, and Italy.
At the very epicentre of the Italian Grand Prix’s enduring mystique is Enzo Ferrari, a charismatic, contradictory genius whose racing team have won this race 21 times, more than any other constructor. It was at Monza in 1924 that Enzo rediscovered his passion for motor racing. In the summer, exhausted and possibly depressed, he quit driving for Alfa Romeo, and took the first train home to his family in Modena. After six weeks of reflection, he was photographed at Monza, in his racing overalls, silk scarf and goggles, ahead of a triumphant Grand Prix in which Alfa Romeo’s other drivers took the first four places.
The Tifosi have made themselves integral to this Grand Prix’s appeal. After Charles Leclerc won the 2019 race for Ferrari, he admitted: “It was the first time in my career I looked at the grandstand while driving. Normally, that’s not so good, but I just had no choice. They were jumping and cheering all race long. It was amazing to see.”
The greatest races
Five of the finest Grand Prix ever to be run at Monza.
1953
As the 80th – and last – lap began at Monza, Maserati's Juan Fangio was virtually dead level with Ferrari’s Alberto Ascari and Nino Farina. They were all still in contention on the final corner when Ascari, leading but under pressure from Farina, put his foot down to clinch victory. His car spun and collided with a lapped vehicle, forcing his Ferrari team-mate to drive onto the grass. Fangio seized the opportunity to win his – and Maserati’s – first race of the campaign.
Because there simply weren’t enough Formula 1 vehicles to compete, the FIA decided that the 1953 and 1954 seasons would run on Formula 2 rules, opening the sport up to 2-litre single-seated cars. The change suited Ferrari who won every race they entered until Monza, much to the Tifosi’s chagrin. Having won five Grand Prixs, Ascari was crowned world champion for the second and last time. For Fangio, this victory was the springboard for his second world title in 1954, when he became the first – and only – man to win the championship driving for two teams in the same season (Maserati and Mercedes-Benz).
1965
Jackie Stewart’s first victory in F1 was probably the most competitive Grand Prix ever. The lead changed 42 times between four British drivers – Stewart, Graham Hill, John Surtees and Jim Clark – and 24 of those leads only lasted for one lap. Hill was the last driver to surrender the lead, sliding on to the gravel as he took the parabolica curve for the last time, giving the race to his BRM team-mate Stewart, who won by 3.3 seconds.
By the time the chequered flag flew, only nine cars (out of 23) were still in the race, with engine troubles and dodgy gearboxes ending many drivers’ hopes. Surtees retired on lap 34 because his clutch wasn’t working and, with 12 laps to go, Clark’s fuel pump failed. After that, BRM engineer Tony Rudd waved at Hill and Stewart to slow down and consolidate their lead. They ignored him. The Scot was an instinctive driver, saying once “I don’t know anything about my car, I just get in it and drive it” and he wasn’t sure whether to follow orders and let Hill finish first or put his foot down to win his first Grand Prix. Ultimately, the Englishman made the decision for him.
1971
Peter Gethin and Ronnie Peterson were so close as they crossed the finish line that the English driver put his hand up, explaining later: “I figured if it ever came to a photo finish, they would go for the guy who did that.” His margin of victory was slender - just one tenth of a second – but it was that kind of race. Only 0.61 seconds separated Gethin’s BRM in first from Howden Ganley’s BRM in fifth. This was – until the record was broken at Monza in 2003 – the fastest Grand Prix ever raced, with an average speed of 150.75mph.
The race started with embarrassment for Ferrari when New Zealander Chris Amon, driving a `Matra, won pole position, recording the fastest ever lap in history (at an average speed of 156mph). The lead changed hands several times but, for much of the race, Mike Hailwood, on a superb F1 debut for Surtees, was at the head of a pack of eight drivers who had pulled clear of the field. Four of them – Gethin, Peterson, Francois Cevert, and Hailwood – were still in contention right up to the end. It was only Gethin’s second start for BRM and, although he raced for three more seasons, he would never win another Grand Prix. The speeds were awesome but also, officials concluded, dangerous and, before the 1972 race, they added two chicanes on the most dangerous curves to slow the track down.
1988
Even after Pope John Paul II personally blessed their Ferraris, Gerhard Berger and Michele Alboreto never looked like catching the McLarens driven by Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost. Shamed by this succession of defeats, and fearing popular protests, the team’s founder arranged for his death (of leukemia, at the age of 90) to be publicly disclosed after he had been buried. Four weeks later, practice began at Monza for the most emotional Italian Grand Prix of all-time with the Tifosi praying for, not expecting, a miracle.
For much of the race, it was business as usual with Senna out in front, with Prost just two seconds behind him but the Frenchman retired on lap 35 with engine failure. Berger and Alboreto then gave chase, closing the gap on Senna who, he said later, was pacing himself to ensure victory. With two laps to go, the Brazilian tried to lap another car on a tight chicane, collided with it and spun off the track, letting Berger and Alberto roar on to seal a 1-2 finish for the Prancing Horse. That night, in the parish church in Maranello, where Ferrari was based, the bells tolled in celebration.
1999
In the lead on lap 30, Mikka Hakkenen made a simple rookie error – selecting first gear instead of second – and spun off the track. The furious Finn threw the steering wheel out of the cockpit and went behind a hedge to cry. As he recalled later: “I wanted to win at Monza so badly. I almost tripped while getting out of the car. The emotions came to me like a torrent.” He still retained his world title, pipping Ferrari’s Eddie Irvine by two points, but he retired from F1 at the end of the 2001 season having never won the Italian Grand Prix.
The victor at Monza in 1999 was Heinz-Harald Frentzen, racing for Eddie Jordan’s team. With 11 drivers not finishing the race, it all came down to a contest between two German drivers: Ralf Schumacher and Frentzen, who had inherited the lead from Hakkinen. A naturally gifted driver, Frentzen needed a safe, settled environment to fulfil his potential but he clashed with chief engineer Patrick Head at Williams and was fired in 2001 by Jordan after a string of early retirements. A frustrating fate for a driver touted as a potential world champion. He was, Jordan said, “one of the nicest people ever to drive a racing car”. Was he too nice for his own good?
Driven to extremes
Five drivers who have raced to perfection at Monza
Jim Clark, 1967
Sometimes, it is the races you don’t win that offer the most compelling proof of your genius. That is certainly the case with Jim Clark, arguably one of the most naturally gifted drivers in the history of Formula 1. In September 1967, the Scot had secured pole position at Monza, ahead of Jack Brabham, and led comfortably before suffering a puncture on lap 12. After a 100 second pit stop to change the wheel, he returned to the race one lap behind the leaders.
Conventional wisdom said that gap was insurmountable but Clark had never worried about convention. Accumulating one fastest lap after another, he powered past his rivals, taking the lead on lap 60 and pulling away from the field. On the final lap, when victory seemed assured, his fuel pump stopped working and he literally ran out of gas, having to coast home and finish third, behind Brabham and winner John Surtees. One of the finest races he – or anyone else – had ever driven, this performance showed why many of his competitors felt that his death, in a crash at Hockenheim in April 1968, was such a tragedy.
Niki Lauda, 1976
Four weeks after he had almost died in the fire that consumed his Ferrari during the German Grand Prix at Nurburgring, Niki Lauda was back behind the wheel at Monza. The only person who wasn’t surprised by this was the Austrian world champion. Even Enzo Ferrari, horrified by Lauda’s burns and injuries, had advised him to take his time but changed his mind, realising that “something extraordinary has happened: we have retrieved a man and a champion.”
By his own admission, Lauda was absolutely terrified during the race. Unable to blink, his damaged tear ducts weeping excessively, and his burned scalp bleeding profusely, he wore a specially designed protective helmet. Despite all that, he was desperate not to lose his place in the Ferrari team and determined to protect his lead in the world championship (he ultimately lost out to his friend and rival James Hunt by one point.) With all that going on, it is a wonder that the Austrian even completed the race but he finished fourth, a tenth of a second ahead of future world champion Jody Scheckter.
Stirling Moss, 1956
“A little man, with curly hair and British good looks, (Moss is) the son of a prosperous pig breeder, who also jumps horses and is the foremost exponent of the lead-foot school of racing drivers.” Sports Illustrated’s grudging appraisal of Stirling Moss was prompted by his unexpected, yet accomplished, triumph at Monza in 1956. (‘Lead-footed’, by the way, is a euphemism for speedy, and he recorded the race’s fastest lap: 135.3mph.)
The most remarkable aspect of the Briton’s drive was not his natural ability but his supreme self-confidence. He had come sixth in qualifying, well behind Fangio. Although the Argentinian’s Ferrari was beset by mechanical problems during the race, it still took nerve for Moss to refuel on the 45th lap, only a few miles from the finish. Even though he was racing against the ‘home’ team – albeit in a Maserati 250F – the crowd cheered as he accelerated back onto the track. Finishing runner-up in four successive world championships – 1955, 1956, 1957 and 1958 – he is probably the best driver never to win the title. Such was his fame that, until the end of the 1970s, British drivers caught speeding were routinely asked by policemen: “Who do you think you are? Stirling Moss.
Sebastian Vettel, 2008
Do you remember the Italian racing team Scuderia Toro Rosso? If you do, you can semi-officially count yourself as an F1 anorak. First competing in 1985, the team that was originally called Minardi had cemented its status as one of the sport’s least competitive teams until it was acquired – and rebranded – by Red Bull in 2005. Three years later, in a triumph of man over machine – this was largely the same lacklustre vehicle Minardi had created – Vettel powered home at Monza, finishing 12.5 seconds ahead of McLaren’s Heikki Kovalainen to become at 21 years, two months and 11 days, the youngest Grand Prix winner of all-time. (This record has since been broken: in 2016, Max Verstappen won the Spanish Grand Prix at the tender age of 18 years, seven months and 15 days.)
After a wet start, which required a lap from the safety car, the German driver led pretty much all the way. It was, he said, “a perfect weekend”, possibly made all the sweeter because, weeks before, he had ignored his team’s cries of “You are mad!”, to practice driving in the wet at Michael Schumacher’s go-kart track in Kerpen. This unexpected success led the media to nickname him ‘mini-Schum’ and, although he downplayed the comparison, he did win four consecutive world titles between 2010 and 2013.
Michael Schumacher, 2000
Two-time world champion Michael Schumacher knew that victory at Monza in his Ferrari was essential if he was to catch McLaren's Mikka Hakkinen in the race for the world title. Keenly aware of what was at stake, the rivals virtually matched each other for speed, lap after lap, in a contest Schumacher likened to “constant qualifying”. The Ferrari driver finally broke away after they both took pit stops and, 13 laps from the end, chief technician Ross Brawn radioed him to say: “It’s looking damn good.” So good that Schumacher could afford to take the last two laps more slowly, cautiously, and finish first.
Winning his third Italian Grand Prix for Ferrari, helping them to secure the constructors’ championship for the first time since 1979, while also equalling Ayrton Senna’s record of 41 Grand Prix victories, melted Schumacher’s usual froideur. On the podium, he said: “By now, I could hug the whole world. When you look down and you’re simply engulfed by laughing, cheering and singing, words can’t adequately describe moments like these.”
The ghosts of Monza
Since 1922, 52 drivers and 35 spectators have been killed at Monza which is why some journalists call it the world’s most haunted race track. Here we pay tribute to five greats who died before their time.
Alberto Ascari, 36, 1955
In the last Grand Prix he ever raced, at Monaco on May 22 1955, Albert Ascari, still hailed by many as the greatest driver Italy has ever produced, miscalculated a chicane propelling him – and his Lancia – into the harbour, forcing him to swim to safety. Only four days later, presumably acting on the principle that anyone who had fallen off a horse should get back in the saddle as soon as possible, he watched his friend Eugenio Castelotti test drive a Ferrari at Monza and accepted an invitation to take the wheel. Normally superstitious about driving in his own kit – including his lucky blue helmet and T-shirt – Ascari borrowed Castelotti’s. The car, and the tyres, were unfamiliar to him but, after two steady laps, he put his foot down. Losing control of the car at the fast Vialone curve, he was thrown out of the car and died in the ambulance.
There are many, unproven theories about what went wrong. A now discredited urban myth has him swerving to avoid a labourer who had assumed everyone had stopped for lunch. And yet as Enzo Ferrari noticed when he studied the track: “All we could find were the signs of sudden, violent braking. Indeed it looked as if the front wheels had locked up, just as they would if the driver had braked to avoid something that had just appeared in front of him.” Only two fathers and sons have won the Italian Grand Prix: Antonio and Alberto Ascari and Graham and Damon Hill.
Giuseppe Campari, 41, 1933
Even in the 1920s and 1930s, Giuseppe Campari was an atypical racing driver. Weighing around 16 stone, he loved food (for his first Grand Prix victory, in France, he was rewarded with a sausage) and opera (earning a decent living as a professional baritone) as much as racing. Yet he was no dilettante, as his friend Enzo Ferrari noted: “He was not just an exceptionally skilful driver, he was an indefatigable fighter, for whom risk was part of the act of winning.”
A test driver, whose racing ambitions had been put on hold during World War I, he began competing seriously in 1920, winning some historic races – including the classic Mille Miglia – and, in 1931, became a national hero when he, alongside the great Tazio Nuvolari, triumphed for Alfa Romeo at Monza. The celebrity never went to Campari’s head – Enzo Ferrari said he remained “unassuming, open and straightforward” even at the height of his fame – and, as the 1933 season approached, he announced his retirement – he was 41 – to concentrate on opera. He had intended the Italian Grand Prix to be his last race – and so, tragically, it was. He was vying for the lead with Mario Borzacchini when they both hit an oil patch and lost control of their cars. Campari was killed instantly, while his rival died in hospital later that day. The racing community was still in shock when, on the eighth of 14 laps, Polish aristocrat Stanilas Czakowski burned to death in his crashed car. After such a tragic day, Enzo Ferrari concluded that racing’s golden age was over and a harsher, less innocent era, had begun.
Ronnie Peterson, 34, 1978
The great Swedish driver Ronnie Peterson should probably never have been caught up in the ten-car accident at Monza that ultimately killed him. Racing in their Lotus 79s, he and team-mate Mario Andretti had dominated the 1978 season but after damaging his car in practice, he had to compete in the older Lotus 78. That year’s Italian Grand Prix started shambolically, with many drivers insisting officials lit the green starter light too early, while some cars were being rolled onto the grid. Andretti was too quick to get caught up in the chaos but Peterson was stuck in a crowd of cars on the first lap. The congestion got worse when Riccardo Patrese, who had strayed off course, returned to the track just in front of James Hunt, whose McLaren spun into Peterson’s Lotus which crashed into the barriers, crushing the front of the car, bounced back onto the track and caught fire.
When Hunt and other drivers dragged the Swede to safety, it looked as if they had saved his life. Hospital scans revealed that he had only suffered minor burns although he did have 27 fractures in his legs and feet. One of the rare – and still usually fatal – side effects of thigh fractures is that fat gets deposited in the patient’s blood vessels and, in Peterson’s case, this blocked circulation in his lungs and starved his brain of oxygen. Andretti was driving to the hospital to see the Swede when a toll collector told him: “I just heard on the radio, Ronnie died.”
Even today, Peterson is rated as one of the greatest drivers never to have won a world championship. His fast, aggressive approach was sometimes more effective in qualifying than during the race but he drove with elan – some observers said it was as if he could make his car dance – winning three Italian Grand Prixs (1973, 1974 and 1976). In 1978, he was only 12 points behind Lotus’s lead driver Andretti, who had become a close friend, and the American told him that, after Monza, they would ignore team orders and race for the title. It was not to be.
Jochen Rindt, 28, 1970
“At Lotus, I can either be world champion or die,” said Jochen Rindt. In 1970 he did both, dying in practice before the Italian Grand Prix and becoming the only driver to posthumously win the world championship. Born in Germany, but racing for Austria, Rindt certainly knew the risks. When Jim Clark was killed during the 1968 German Grand Prix at Hockenheim, he asked a journalist: “If Jim Clark is not safe, what can happen to us?” What did happen, in Rindt’s fifth practice lap at Monza in September 1970, was that his Lotus 72 crashed into the guardrails and, because he was not wearing any crotch straps, his seatbelt buckle caused fatal throat injuries. The most likely cause of the crash was brake failure. Rindt was killed only yards from the spot where Wolfgang von Trips had crashed and died in 1961.
Rindt’s first five seasons in F1 were plagued by technical issues and in 1969 his manager Bernie Ecclestone persuaded him to join Lotus because the cars, although they had been involved in 31 accidents in one 29-month period, were fast enough to win races – and he seemed to get more speed out of them than anyone else. The 1970 season, his last, was one of the most dramatic in the history of F1. At Monaco, a circuit on which it can be hard to overtake, Rindt was eighth on the grid but raced through the field to clinch his first Grand Prix. He went on to win four in a row, in a campaign punctuated by mechanical problems. When the steering failed in practice for the French Grand Prix, he ran over to the Lotus garage and shouted at Chapman: “If this happens again, and I survive, I will kill all of you.” Something like that did happen again, at Monza, but he didn’t survive.
Wolfgang von Trips, 33, 1961
If you accept the official narrative that Formula 1 didn’t begin until 1950, Wolfgang von Trips’ accident which killed himself, and 15 spectators, in 1961 is the deadliest crash in the sport’s history. Which makes it all the more remarkable that his Ferrari team-mate, American driver Phil Hill, who went on to win the race and the world championship, surveyed the incident and said: “It looked bad, but no worse than the others.”
To be fair, von Trips had crashed – and injured himself – at Monza in 1956 and 1958. The footage of the accident that killed the German aristocrat in 1961 is ambiguous. Trying to overtake Jim Clark on the second lap, his Ferrari touched his rival’s Lotus, ploughed straight into the crowd, became airborne, hit a side barrier and flung him out of the driver’s seat, killing him instantly. Clark admitted there was contact between the cars and was briefly in danger of being charged with manslaughter. Nicknamed Taffy – possibly because his official moniker was Wolfgang Alexander Albert Eduard Maximilian Reichsgraf Berghe von Trips – he was almost always in contention for a podium finish and was on top form in 1961, winning the British and Dutch Grand Prixs and finishing the season a posthumous runner-up to Hill. He raced in Formula 1 for six seasons but his greatest legacy to the sport may well be establishing the go-kart centre in Kerpen where Michael and Ralf Schumacher honed their skills.
Controversies, conspiracies and crashes
The Italian Grand Prix has delivered more than its fair share of melodrama - on and off the track – as these incidents clearly prove.
1956: The plot against Fangio
Why would Ferrari’s mechanics deliberately cut holes in Fangio’s car during the 1956 Formula 1 season, and let rainwater in? Was this really a plot to undermine the team’s most gifted driver? To Enzo Ferrari, there was no mystery: “(He) was a really great driver but he suffered from persecution mania. I was not the only one against whom he entertained all kinds of suspicions.” The Argentinian even alleged – recanting later – that Ferrari’s bosses had balked at asking Collins to give up his car at Monza.
Knowing he only had to finish third to win the world championship, Fangio had suggested to his Italian team-mates Luigi Musso and Eugenio Castellotti that, if they took it easy, he would let them battle it out for the last ten laps. Keen to win their ‘home’ grand prix, they ignored him. All these plots and counterplots were ultimately rendered irrelevant as the Argentine’s joint second place finish was enough to secure his fourth world title. He then confirmed Enzo Ferrari’s view that he wasn’t a team player by signing for Maserati, for whom he won his fifth and final world title.
1960: The British boycott.
In an undistinguished season for Ferrari, finishing first, second, third and fifth at Monza in 1960 was something of a pyrrhic victory. The organisers had changed the route to make it faster – favouring the straight-line speed of the Ferrari cars – combining the road with a banked oval circuit. The British teams – BRM, Cooper and Lotus – protested against such favouritism and, convinced the revised circuit was too dangerous for their cars, boycotted the race. Their decision meant that none of the 17 drivers who started the race had previously won a Formula 1 Grand Prix – and ten of them would never win a single point in their entire careers.
This probably didn’t matter that much to Ferrari’s Phil Hill who became the first American to win a Grand Prix since Jimmy Murphy in 1921 but still fell well short of Australia’s Jack Brabham, who also sat out the race, in the quest for the world title. The British teams mysteriously returned in 1961 but their worries about the risky circuit were vindicated by the accident in which Von Trips and 15 spectators died.
1970: Lotus on trial
“Any car which holds up for a whole race is too heavy.” That characteristically forthright remark by Colin Chapman, founder of the Lotus car company and the eponymous F1 team came back to haunt him after Rindt’s death in practice in 1970. A brilliant engineer and designer, Chapman pioneered aerodynamics in motor racing but struck John Surtees, who refused to drive for him, as “too devious by half”.
After Rindt died, Chapman was put on trial in Italy, where his decision to remove the car’s rear wings to make it faster was heavily, if inconclusively scrutinised. John Miles, Rindt’s team-mate, tested the modified vehicle and found it undrivable. Chapman was ultimately acquitted, protesting that the car’s brakes had only failed when it hit the barriers and mounted a comeback in partnership with American driver Mario Andretti before, rashly, becoming embroiled with crooked car magnate John DeLorean. Chapman died, aged 54, of a heart attack in December 1982 before he could stand trial – a judge said he would probably have served ten years in jail.
1995: Crash course
Did Damon Hill brake too late or Michael Schumacher too soon? This was the conundrum facing officials after the Italian Grand Prix in September 1995 when the great rivals collided while vying for second place.
They had crashed into each other so often and so recently – most notably in the 1994 Australian Grand Prix, which had clinched the German’s first world title (of seven) – that any verdict on such an incident was bound to be controversial. After an angry confrontation with Hill in the paddock – for which Schumacher later apologised – Japanese driver Taki Inoue accepted the blame, admitting that he had veered off his line as the British driver tried to pass him, causing him to crash into Schumacher’s car. Hill insisted he had done nothing wrong, saying “I would never ever want to tangle deliberately or have an accident like that." The race was ultimately won by Johnny Herbert, Schumacher’s team-mate at Benetton-Renault.
2001: After the Twin Towers
Days after the terrorist attacks on New York’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon in Washington DC had killed 2,996 people on September 11 2001, Michael Schumacher didn’t want to race at Monza, saying: “It was difficult to get back in the car and drive as if nothing had happened. I didn’t feel like it and I’d rather have been anywhere else.” His brother Ralf felt the same. Yet the FIA, the sport’s governing body, presumably determined to prove that terrorists would not prevail, had already announced that the grand prix would go ahead.
Feeling that F1 should somehow mark this tragedy, Schumacher then proposed that no one should overtake for the first two chicanes in the race but, to the fury of French driver Jean Alesi, Canada’s Jacques Villeneuve and two team owners disagreed. FIA president Max Mosley later maintained that drivers should have raised such concerns months ago which, as the grand prix happened only five days after the attacks, would have required them to be clairvoyant.
In an uneventful race, a subdued (Michael) Schumacher finished fourth behind Juan Pablo Montoya who led from the start. There is a theory, particularly prevalent in Germany, that sport is the most serious of all the trivialities, but it’s hard not to agree with the Schumacher brothers that this was a race that should never have been run.