F1-Blog

Michael Schumacher has boosted Ferrari's 2006 hopes by winning the San Marino GP at Imola. It however was not all good new for Ferrari, Michaels car struggled after the first pit stop with what looks like troubles with his Bridgestones.

The Ferrari team chose to run more new tyres in qualifying than Renault and it seems they have suffered due to that decision. The Ferrari number 1 driver seemed to be 2 seconds of the pace during his second stint, and at least 1 second a lap off the pace in the third run.

He did however win due to a tactical mistake made by the Renault team. Renault called Alonso in for a fuel and tyre change while he was stuck behind Michael. However this proved a mistake as Alonso was then held up on his out lap by traffic and Ferrari were fortunate enough to bring Michael in on the following lap after a decent in lap. This allowed the Ferrari to just get out in front of the Renault basically sealing the race due to the difficulty of overtaking.

The race was not good for another driver, Jenson Button. He had a small glitch on his first pit stop when a rear wheel was stuck, then during his last stop the 'lolly pop' man let Button go before the fuel rig had been disengaged from the car, this caused the fuel rig to snap away from the piping and meant that Jenson had to stop part way down the pit lane for it to be removed from the car. Jenson ended seventh.

The under paced McLaren cars finished in relatively good positions, with JPM getting his first podium of the year in third, and Kimi managed to claw his way to fifth.

Massa seemed to not be in the same race as his team leader, and ended the race in fourth.

The drive of the day (in my opinion) came from Mark Webber who ended up in sixth place after starting outside the top 10. His performance was put into place when you look at the difference between Webber and Rosberg who finished nearly 40 seconds behind.

All in all a decent race, and it was kind of strange thinking it was good that Ferrari won. Let's hope that Honda can get their pit crew sorted out, as that was what stopped Button being on the podium, and with some luck McLaren, Ferrari, Williams, Toyota and BMW can get up to the performance levels of the Renault.

For those that did not get to see it, and have an EasyNews account then click here to download the SpeedTV version of the GP. I really must look into getting an ITV version of the GP's up for download, Blundel and Brundle are so much better commentators.

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