Schumacher Seven Time World Champion
Oh, and Kimi Won Grand Prix of Belgium

By Erik Nielsen
Photos courtesy and copyright Ferrari Media

Michael Schumacher wrapped up his seventh driver's world championship at the track where his F1 career started by capturing two points more than his team mate. While it wasn't a perfect race for the German (he didn’t win the race after all), a Ferrari 2-3 is nothing to be scoffed at.

Darth Vader actually smiled, maybe only for a split second while wearing his leather jacket and trying to relive the 1980's. The flying Finn part 2 actually had a car that presented the first real challenge for Schumacher all season and was able to push the car to McLaren's first win in 17 months. The boys from Woking may have finally sorted the car to run with Ferrari, but it's a case of too little, too late.

The weather at Spa is always a factor. With a light drizzle through parts of qualifying, the order was slightly mixed up and it was difficult to really determine who would be the fastest on Sunday. We finally had drama. There seemed to be more accidents this weekend than at Monaco and only nine cars were running at the end of the race. The safety car made three appearances and did more laps than at least four cars in the field.

The first lap of the race was a good impersonation of a demolition derby. Mark Webber was a little too ambitious when he tried to pass Giancarlo Fisichella and broke Burino's wing in the process. Jenson Button and Felipe Massa both suffered damage but kept going. Webber was running without a front wing when he tried got tied up with Sato-san and Montoya, but the luckless Japanese driver got caught in the middle and spun, taking out Webber, Bruni and Pantano in the process. The race wasn't stopped because the stewards thought they could sweep up all of the razor sharp carbon fiber bits under a safety car. Race fans would realize soon that they missed a few.

Schumacher suffered behind the safety car, not because it bunched up the field, but because his Bridgestone tires lost temperature and took approximately three laps to get back to optimal performance.

Alonso was the first of the leaders to go out spinning on lap 11 while leading the race. Moments later, David Coulthard had a tire shred (probably from carbon fiber bits from the first lap incident) and had to pit. Several laps later, Montoya tried to bully his way past Jarno Trulli and knocked them both out of contention. Race stewards reviewed the incident and yelled at the Columbian, but there were no serious consequences.

The incident of the race came when Jenson Button's rear tire exploded at 200 miles per hour and he careened into Zsolt Baumgartner. While the Minardi was taken out of the race, by being in the way probably saved Jenson from an even harder shunt with the wall.

The drive of the day still goes to Rubens Barrichello who was in last place after the first lap incidents, but drove a strong race and ended up on the last spot on the podium. I was guessing that Ferrari would let the Brazilian win at least one race of the season, but if McLaren is back, his chances seem to be getting slimmer by the day.

Michael did show that he wasn't willing to take away from the Finn's moment back in the spotlight and scheduled his press conference for the Wednesday after the race. While McLaren did crunch their numbers better than Ferrari this weekend, with only a handful of races left, they may have run out of time to even move up a couple of spots in the constructor's championship. The fat lady was last seen getting into her car and going home. All that is left is to see where the also-rans end up this year. The cars will run again in two weeks at Monza. Ferrari will probably pull out all of the stops to ensure the home crowd gets a good show.