2001 Brazilian Grand Prix

The 2001 Brazilian Grand Prix was a Formula One race held at the Interlagos Circuit on April 1, 2001.

This exciting Grand Prix had three notable incidents, two of them being overtaking moves, both on Ferrari driver Michael Schumacher, and both taking place at the "Senna S" corner of the track.

The first of these overtaking maneuvers took place very early in the race. An early safety car was brought onto the track because McLaren driver Mika Häkkinen had stalled on the starting grid. When the safety car came in, F1 rookie Juan Pablo Montoya overtook defending champion Michael Schumacher.

The home crowd though had little to cheer about for Rubens Barrichello. He had problems before he even got on the grid and had to switch to the spare car. He then slammed into the back of Ralf Schumacher on the restart, causing Rubens to be out on the spot. Ralf Schumacher limped back to the pits, but was in for a long time replacing the rear wing; he later spun off when the track was wet.

By lap 39 it was turning into a dream race for Montoya - in his first season in Formula 1, he was leading his "home" Grand Prix by more than 30 seconds over Michael Schumacher. However, this dream would then be ruined while he was lapping Jos Verstappen. Verstappen let Montoya by, but as he pulled in behind Montoya while braking for turn 4 his Arrows slammed violently into the back of Montoya's Williams and both men were out of the race.

Soon after Montoya's retirement it began to rain heavily, forcing everyone to change tyres, some went onto full-wet tires while others chose the intermediates.

Michael Schumacher was fighting understeer all race, and despite planning to stop twice instead of once was only able to run at the pace of Montoya and Coulthard. However he was right back in the hunt after he had pitted early. He still needed to pit again for fuel anyway but was able to change tires as well. Coulthard, who had made his one and only stop, stayed out an extra lap which at that point looked costly.

But then Schumacher, with a dry-weather set up on his car, spun soon after exiting the pit lane allowing Coulthard right back on his tail.

This led to the second amazing overtaking move of the race, this one by David Coulthard. He passed Schumacher with the aid of a backmarker, rather similar to his teammate Mika Häkkinen's move on Schumacher at the Belgian Grand Prix the previous season.

Coulthard stormed on to win, while Schumacher suffered another off on his way to second place and a delighted Nick Heidfeld took his first-ever podium driving for Sauber. It was also Sauber's first podium since Jean Alesi at the 1998 Belgian Grand Prix.

Standings after the race

 * Drivers' Championship standings


 * Constructors' Championship standings


 * Note: Only the top five positions are included for both sets of standings.