Montoya the Master

Juan Pablo Montoya benefited from the misfortunes of his McLaren-Mercedes team-mate Kimi Raikkonen to dominate the Italian grand prix from start to finish. It was a copybook performance to upstage the world championship battle between the Finn and Fernando Alonso, whose second place here put him 27 points ahead with only 40 to race for in the last four events.

While the Spaniard enjoyed a strategic and trouble-free race to finish only 2.47sec behind Montoya, Raikkonen had to battle his way back to take fourth behind the second Renault of Giancarlo Fisichella after a weekend ruined by mechanical problems. The Finn suffered an engine failure during qualifying, resulting in a 10-place grid penalty, followed by a tyre failure and a spin in the race.

Above all, though, yesterday signalled the end of an era. For much of the past decade Monza has been the stamping ground of the Ferrari team, but this was the race where Michael Schumacher's domination of the world championship - five in a row - formally ended.

Tenth place was a dismal return for Schumacher, who battled the now familiar problem of poor tyre grip, which the team does not believe can be rectified until the Brazilian grand prix on September 25. It was the first time no Ferrari driver made the Monza podium since 1997, and the home team's poor recent form was reflected in a modest crowd of 60,000 - barely half the number who thronged in during the great days of Schumacher's Ferrari ascendancy.

The German extended his sympathy to the disillusioned Ferrari fans. "I feel sorry for the tifosi and thank them for their support, even though we were not able to deliver them a good result," he said.

"Clearly, our race did not go well and we were much too slow. We are nowhere near where we want to be, but we have to live with it. You could say we were a bit better than in Turkey, but that is still not good enough."

Montoya was on pole, but Raikkonen had qualified fastest despite carrying a heavy fuel load in order to run a long opening stint, his only possible strategy for victory from 11th on the grid after his 10-place penalty. The plan almost worked. Alonso made his first refuelling stop on lap 19, Montoya on lap 20, Fisichella on lap 21. Raikkonen stayed out until lap 25 before ducking into the pit lane, by which point he was up to fourth.

Moving back into the race he immediately slipstreamed past Jarno Trulli's Toy ota TF105 in third place and for a time it seemed that he might actually win from the fifth row of the grid.

But just as it looked as though he might close up on the leaders, Raikkonen suddenly slowed and came into the pits to change the left rear tyre, which had shed part of its tread. He later suffered a quick spin and was closing fast on Fisichella in third place when the flag fell.

"This was a very disappointing day for me which could have ended much better," Raikkonen shrugged. "I pushed very hard throughout and the speed of the car, even with a heavy fuel load, was excellent. So it is a pity that the result does not reflect our performance."

Montoya, meanwhile, drove a perfectly judged race to win at the track where he posted his first formula one success for the Williams-BMW squad four years ago. It all looked smooth and undramatic, but in reality the Colombian was struggling with a handling imbalance and was having to make constant adjustments to the cockpit controls in order to minimise his problems.

In the closing stages Montoya eased back to counter a tyre problem similar to the one that had done so much damage to his team-mate's prospects, allowing Alonso to close to within 3sec. The Toyotas of Trulli and Ralf Schumacher came in fifth and sixth ahead of the impressive Williams stand-in Antonio Pizzonia and the dejected Jenson Button in his BAR-Honda.

Button lamented: "Apart from qualifying we have struggled the whole weekend here. We have found this a difficult circuit and it has been tough getting to grips with the low-downforce configuration.

"We had problems with the fuel rig, which also meant that I had to stop four laps early, and that cost me on the final result."

Michael Schumacher must know precisely how Button feels in the closing weeks of a season which promised so much and delivered so little.