Montoya earns first win of year
Juan Pablo Montoya took a risk to win the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, England, one of the few moves that’s worked this season for the former Indy 500 champion.
He beat Fernando Alonso, who finished second to extend his Formula One points lead. This was Montoya’s first victory of the season and first with McLaren-Mercedes. The Colombian’s previous win came in Brazil in the last race of 2004.
Montoya started third on the grid behind Alonso, who was on the pole. Montoya nearly brushed Alonso going through the first turn. Seconds later at the next corner, he swept by as the Spaniard slowed to avoid a crash.
“One of us was going to back off, or we were going to go off,” Montoya said after his fifth career victory. “And the chances are he was going to back off before me. He has got a fight for the championship, and I just wanted to win the race.”
Alonso improved to 77 points after 11 of 19 races. Raikkonen, who finished third, stayed second with 51. Michael Schumacher, who was sixth, remained third with 43. Montoya moved up to sixth with 26 points going into the July 24 German GP at Hockenheim.
Montoya’s victory came before a sellout crowd of 100,000 at the former World War II airfield in central England. Fans paused for a minute’s silence before the start in tribute to the victims of the bombings in London.
Montoya never trailed and finished in 1 hour, 24 minutes, 29.588 seconds and averaged 136.089 mph. Alonso was 2.7 seconds back with McLaren’s Kimi Raikkonen 15 seconds behind the winner.
Giancarlo Fisichella of Renault was fourth and Jenson Button of BAR-Honda was fifth.
Champ Car
Justin Wilson won a Champ Car race for the first time, passing Oriol Servia with 11 laps to go and then holding on to capture the Toronto Molson Indy.
The race ended under caution when A.J. Allmendinger, Wilson’s teammate for the upstart RuSport team, crashed as he was closing in on Servia for second place. Allmendinger brushed the wall then careened across the track into a tire barrier.
Mario Dominguez then slammed into Allmendinger’s stopped car to bring out a caution with seven laps to go. The race ended when officials were unable to get the track cleaned during the allotted time the series had to finish the event.
Alex Tagliani finished third and was followed by Jimmy Vasser and Sebastian Bourdais, who overcame an early accident with Paul Tracy to finish fifth and reclaim the lead in the Champ Car series standings.