Fernando Alonso takes the checkered flag in front of Michael Schumacher
F1 > San Marino GP, 2005-04-24 (Imola): Sunday race
San Marino Grand Prix winner Fernando Alonso has hailed his latest success as possibly his ‘best ever’, claiming that he actually had to fight for this one.
Whereas his three previous triumphs – in Hungary 2003 and Malaysia and Bahrain this year – had been relative ‘walks in the park’, Alonso was forced to fend off a resurgent Michael Schumacher at Imola, the German having come from 13th on the grid to challenge for his first win of the season.
“I think this was definitely my best win in Formula One, because it was different to all the others,” Alonso confirmed, “I didn’t have a gap to allow me to be conservative, and I knew Michael was catching up from behind – and that meant I had to push all the way through the race. In the end, it worked perfectly, although things were very close in the final laps. But I was 99 per cent sure he would not be able to overtake here.”
For the Spaniard, the race was more of a challenge than it may have seemed, for he had deliberately not done much mileage in practice. Carrying an engine that had already completed a race distance in Bahrain, and apparently given sufficient cause for concern that the team had thought of changing it between qualifying sessions at Imola, Alonso had barely strung any laps together while searching for the perfect San Marino set-up.
“The car was good, but the race was the first time I had done more than three timed laps in a row this weekend, because we were managing the engine very carefully,” he revealed, “We had to make our best estimates with the set-up, and then each lap was a surprise as we discovered how the car changed. I lost some grip towards the end of the race but, in the end, we did enough to get the win.”
Alonso now heads to his homeland – and a guaranteed sell-out crowd – at the head of the point standings and with a victory hat-trick to his name.
“Three in a row is a fantastic feeling, and I’m really looking forward to Spain,” he admitted, “It will be a big party for everybody, and I think we can aim for the podium again.”
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