By Kris
August 22 2005

The First ever Turkish Grand Prix was won by Mclaren driver Kimi Raikkonen. The Renault team had mixed fortunes in the race with Fernando Alonso eventually finishing in 2nd and Giancarlo Fisichella 4th The Turkish Grand Prix could not have got off to a better start for the mild seven Renault f1 team. The lights went out and both Renaults had a stormer of a start. Fisichella from the dirty side of the grid managed to jump Kimi Raikkonen into turn one. Alonso also had a great start and he to tried to pass Raikkonen into turn one put could not manage to get passed the Finn. The lap continued and Fisichella ran wide and Kimi managed to get through to take the lead of the race. This was exactly what the Renault team did not want to happen. It was then essential for the team that Alonso got passed Fisichella so that he could go after the Finn so the championship difference did not become even smaller. on The Following lap the Team informed Alonso that he was quicker and to over take the Roman. He managed to overtake Fisi without letting Montoya passed in the same move.

Alonso did not have the pace to take over the Finn but did have it to keep within a second of the Mclaren driver. Unfortunately the Renault didn't have as much fuel as the Mclaren and had to pit on the 13th lap, with Fisi pitting on the proceeding lap. it was a first short stint for Renault but one that worked for Alonso. He pitted and managed to come out ahead of Jenson Buttons BAR Honda.

Fisi's pit stop was typical of his luck this year. he entered the pits and everything was fine. Then the Crew could not get the fuel nosel into the car. It seemed to take the team a life time to realise that there was no Fuel entering the car and then they quickly swapped to the spare refuelling rig and the fuel finally went into Fisichella's car. He then left the pits and had a lot of work to do as he was behind Trulli in his Toyota.

As all this was happening the race leader Kimi Raikkonen was pulling out the fastest laps of the race and the other Mclaren of Juan Pablo Montoya was setting personal best lap times. The Mclarens pitted on laps 21 and 22, they were carrying significantly more fuel than the Renaults which showed you what a fantastic job they did in qualifying especially Raikkonen.

Montoya entered the Pits and everything seemed to be going ok put then as the lollypop went up and he drove away the man on the refuelling rig was polled along with him. Montoya suddenly stopped and the fuel rig was disconnected. He left the pits and he came out in front of Renault Spaniard.

The top three positions were constant toward the end of the race with them all in comfortable positions with quite a large gap to the car in front and behind. Fisi jumped the Toyota of Jarno Trulli and the BAR of Jenson Button and was in fourth place but Jenson Button was closing him down.

Everything seemed set until Juan Pablo Montoya was lapping the Jordan Of Taigo Monteiro. He went passed him and then cut in but then the Jordan seemed to hit the Mclaren. this sent Montoya spinning. He managed to recover and just got back on the track in front of Alonso, the gap was just 1.5 seconds.
The Columbian was rattled by the mistake and had the problem of a flat spotted tyre. Then on turn 8 Montoya ran wide and Fernando Alonso went through to capture the second place and made it so Kimi Raikkonen only gained 2 points and that Mclaren gained less points into the constructors championship lead of the Renault lead.