Schumi home and dry

Brazilian Felipe Massa, Schumacher’s teammate, stepped up to the podium for the first time in his 58-race career with third place.

Alonso has 44 points to Schumacher’s 31. McLaren’s Kimi Raikkonen has 23. Renault remain leaders in the constructors’ championship with 62 points but Ferrari leapfrogged McLaren into second place with 46.

Schumacher, who finished 3.7 seconds clear of Alonso, took the lead definitively after the second round of pitstops when he came in three laps after the Spaniard and came back out still ahead of him. “If you finish first, what can you say?,” declared Schumacher. “That’s the way it makes everyone happy who wants to see us win…it was a great race, great strategy, great performance all the way through.”

Alonso, who can now turn his thoughts to his home Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona next weekend, said second was good enough in the circumstances. “Second place I think is a fantastic result for us here. I think we were a little bit down compared to Ferrari’s performance this weekend,” he said.

“Also I think tyres were not working perfectly okay this weekend. So even with everything, to get the eight points means we have everything okay and we should win again.”

Alan Baldwin