Formula 1

About the season

Fernando Alonso, at 24, won his first World Championship with Renault, beating Emerson Fittipaldi's 33-year-old record to become the youngest World Champion in Formula 1 history at the time. A new rule that season banned mid-race tyre changes (a single set had to last from qualifying through the chequered flag), which scrambled the competitive order and badly hurt Bridgestone-shod Ferrari against the Michelin runners. At the United States Grand Prix in Indianapolis, all fourteen Michelin-shod cars withdrew to the pits after the formation lap over safety concerns, leaving only six Bridgestone cars to race, one of Formula 1's biggest ever scandals, met with boos and thrown objects from the furious American crowd. The crisis was triggered by tyre failures suffered by Ralf Schumacher and Ricardo Zonta in the same corner; Michelin could not guarantee safe tyres for the race, and the FIA rejected a compromise proposal to add a chicane to slow the cars down. Fernando Alonso won the 2005 Drivers' Championship with 133 points (Renault), 21 points ahead of the runner-up. Renault won the Constructors' Championship with 191 points, 9 points ahead of the runner-up. Across 19 completed races this season, there were 100 retirements. 5 different drivers won a race this season. Fernando Alonso took the most race wins, 7 in total. Fisichella won the season-opening race, the Australian Grand Prix. The closest finish of the season came at the San Marino Grand Prix, with a gap of just 0.215 seconds. The United States Grand Prix saw the most retirements of the season, with 14 drivers failing to finish. Pablo Montoya made the biggest gain of the season at the German Grand Prix, from grid position 20 to finishing 2 (up 18 places). The most dominant win of the season came at the Hungarian Grand Prix, with a margin of 35.6 seconds. The season's biggest upset win came from Räikkönen at the Japanese Grand Prix, starting from grid position 17. Alonso won the Chinese Grand Prix, the final race of the season.