That Pitstop at Imola

Post Imola '06, it is tempting to conclude that Alonso lost the race when he pitted earlier than Michael, even though he had more fuel.

However, Michael did an amazing job before that pitstop to control the pace of the race. The commentators did briefly speculate if he was running in economy mode to conserve fuel so that he could lap later than Alonso - while that seems improbable, it certainly seems true that Michael slowed down considerably when he had Alonso behind him.

An article on Planet F1 has Pat Symonds explaining why Renault called in Alonso for his second pitstop earlier than scheduled.

Interestingly, he also believed Michael had a lot more performance in that car during the second stint and he was probably 'sandbagging' to fool Renault into believing they had a chance.

This is what Pat Symonds said :

The really significant thing was that on the free lap after Fernando pitted, Michael showed he had some performance in reserve. On the lap we pitted, he did a lap of 1:25.7 - where his average speed in the ten previous laps, was 1:27.4. The lap times during the second stint had not suggested he had that performance in reserve.

This is backed up by the timings shown during the race. When Alonso pitted, the gap was 0.3-0.4 seconds. Alonso pitted for 6.7 seconds, while Schumacher pitted for 7.1 seconds. Yet, Michael was ahead by 1.4 seconds when he came out of the pits !

Michael must have been laughing when Alonso pitted !!! What a great drive !