May 14, 2006

Matador Alonso reverses Schumacher's strategy at Barcelona: Following being outwitted by Micheal Schumacher and his Ferrari team, Fernando Alonso answers with a reply of his own, to win his first home race of his career

BARCELONA, Spain- For the last two races, Michael Schumacher relied on pit strategy to beat Fernando Alonso and his Renault team. It woke up a lot of the media and many formula one fans. The Spanish Grand Prix was hoping to be another one of those moments. But this time, Alonso and his band of matadors were ready to take them on. The Spaniard on his home turf, read the road map of the Scuderia, and began a huge early lap domination at the beginning of the Spanish Grand Prix, to win his first home race of the world champion’s career, with the final result of a sixteen second gap at the Circuit de Catalunya, just north of this city. Alonso, spurred on by his teammate, Giancarlo Fisichella , at the beginning of the race, Alonso began a huge 11 second gap ahead of his German rival from Ferrari, leading after the same number of laps. On one occasion, the Spaniard posted the fastest lap time of 1:17:368 seconds, before the first of his two pit stops. As the current world champion dived in for his first stop, it gave the opportunity for then second place Schumacher, to increase his lead in the race. However, a sudden spin by McLaren driver Juan Pablo Montoya on lap 18 brought out the yellow flags that could have given the Ferrari leader a needed chance to build up on his lead. Schumacher’s gap did not improve much after that, and as the two top drivers exchanged leads approaching each of their final stops, Alonso took the final lead change of the race, considering that Schumacher had a good enough pit stop to just overtake Fisichella for second place. Schumacher finally slowed his pace down towards the end of the race, and Alonso simply went quicker to a final gap of 16 seconds, when in front of thousands of his Spanish supporters, Alonso crossed the finish line for his third win of the season. Following Alonso, Schumacher and Fisichella, Schumacher’s Ferrari teammate Felipe Massa finished in fourth, with last year’s winner, Kimi Raikkonen finishing in fifth. Jenson Button, Rubens Barrichello and Nick Heidfeld all took the last points positions. American Scott Speed started from 16th position and worked his way up to 11th before engine trouble retired his Toro Rosso car near the end of the race. “We had maximum race performance and everything went perfectly today,” commented Alonso after the race. “For me, it was the best finish in front of my people, my supporters, and it was equally the best finish of my career next to the world championship that I won last year in Brazil.”

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