Michael Schumacher won the record-breaking seventh title in 2004 after finishing second in the 2004 Belgian GP behind the winner Kimi Raikkonen, in the jubilee 700th race for Ferrari.
In 2004, Schumacher celebrated in the first five races and in the 12 out of the first 13 (except Monaco), and Belgium was the 14th race in which Raikkonen broke his sequence of seven consecutive wins between European GP at Nurburgring and Hungarian GP at Hungaroring.
Ferrari has already secured their sixth consecutive constructors championships in the previous race in Hungary
The Trulli was the fastest in wet qualifying, the second time in the season after the Monaco, after taking advantage of the opportunity to use intermediate tyres when there was less water on the track to go 0.072 seconds faster than Schumacher who was on full wet tyres and in worse conditions with more water on the track.
The race was held in dry conditions and Trulli kept the lead while Schumacher led Alonso and Coulthard. In the first corner, Webber and Barrichello collided, Raikkonen had contact with Massa and Heidfeld with Panis.
After the safety car left the track at the end of the lap four, Trulli led in front of Alonso and Coulthard while Raikkonen overtook Schumacher for the fifth place. Montoya also overtook soon-to-be seven time world champion with a brilliant move in the Bus Stop chicane.
In the lap five, Raikkonen passed teammate Coulthard while Trulli was the first in the pits from the leading pack in lap 10. His team mate Alonso spun when he was in the lead at Les Combes due to a oil leak. Raikkonen then took the leading position in his McLaren Mercedes MP4-19B.
Finn managed to win despite late safety car restart to seal the first win in the season for McLaren and the first from Malaysian GP in 2003 when Raikkonen won for the first time.
“I could not hope for a better result,” said Raikkonen, who won after starting from 10th place.
“It was a tough season, we were close to some good results and the good work of the whole team was finally rewarded with a victory. The race was difficult because I had a damaged floor after Massa hit me from behind, but that did not reduce my performance.”
“From the lap eight I had a problem with downshifting, which affected braking for the first corner, but despite all this, we managed to achieve this remarkable result.”
GALLERY
