Juan Pablo Montoya won in his final race for Williams-BMW on Sunday, beating future McLaren teammate Kimi Raikkonen to capture the Brazilian Grand Prix.
In the final race of the season, native son Rubens Barrichello started from the pole for the second straight year and led early, but finished third in his best performance in 12 attempts at Interlagos. Barrichello's Ferrari teammate Michael Schumacher took seventh place.
PHOTO: AFP
It was a disppointment for Ferrari, which won 15 of the 18 races this year had Schumacher, who had 13 of the victories, claim his seventh Formula One title.
The victory was Montoya's fourth in his Formula One career and first since the 2003 German Grand Prix. Next year, Montoya will drive for McLaren with Raikkonen, who won the Belgian Grand Prix this year.
Schumacher, who started 18th after receiving a 10-place penalty for changing engines after a practice-session crash, never was in contention in the 71-lap event.
A light rain halted almost immediately after the start, prompting a parade into the pits over the first few laps for teams to change to dry weather tires.
After leading from the green light, Barrichello was among those to pit for tires and dropped to sixth.
Fernando Alonso stayed on the track and led until the first regularly scheduled pit stop on lap 18, yielding the front to Montoya.
While Barrichello dropped back, Schumacher climed to eighth after being one of the earliest to change tires.
Montoya held onto his lead following the second round of regular pit stops, with Raikkonen and Barrichello in second and third. By the 55th lap, Montoya was a second ahead of Raikkonen and maintained the advantage over the final 16 laps.
Alonso finished fourth with Ralf Schumacher of Williams fifth. Like Montoya, Ralf Schumacher will leave Williams next season, for Toyota.
Takuma Sato of BAR was sixth, 50.2 seconds behind Montoya, a half second ahead of Michael Schumacher.
Sato's BAR teammate Jenson Button, who already had clinched third place in the season's drivers standings, left after just three laps with a blown engine. He had finished second or third 10 times without winning a race.
Sato's perfomance gave BAR second place in the constructors standings wth 119 points, 143 behind Ferrari and 14 ahead of Renault.
Ferrari's 15 victories equalled the record it tied in 2002 and set by McLaren in 1988.
One of auto racing's most successful dynasties was in mourning after a plane owned by Hendrick Motorsports crashed in thick fog en route to a NASCAR race, killing all 10 people aboard, including the son, brother and two nieces of owner Rick Hendrick.
The Beech 200 King Air took off from Concord, North Carolina, and crashed Sunday in the Bull Mountain area 11km from the Blue Ridge Regional Airport in Spencer, near the Martinsville Speedway, said Arlene Murray, spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration.
"It's just very tough," said Donnie Floyd, an employee of Hendrick, who placed a bouquet of flowers outside the company's Charlotte, North Carolina, headquarters. "We are like one big family."
News of the crash halted Hendrick driver Jimmy Johnson's victory celebration after the Subway 500 in Martinsville. The Hendrick team also includes drivers Jeff Gordon, Terry Labonte and Brian Vickers.
The cause of the crash was not immediately known, but it occurred in rough, hard-to-reach terrain in weather described as "extremely foggy" by Dale Greeson, who lives about a mile from the site.
National Transportation Safety Board investigators were to begin their investigation Monday.
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