Alonso celebrates 'perfect' weekend

"It was perfect all weekend," said the Spaniard, who had never finished on the podium at the Montreal circuit before.

"Obviously without safety car the gap would have been much bigger and the race easier but the safety car sometimes help you and sometimes not.

"But the important thing is to win again."

The 24-year-old Spaniard, starting on pole position for the fifth successive race, stretched his overall lead over Ferrari's Michael Schumacher to 25 points at the halfway point in the 18-race season.

Alonso controlled the race from start to finish, and although his gap to second-placed Kimi Raikkonen evaporated when the safety car was deployed with nine laps to go, the Renault driver had no problems to cruise home to score his fourth consecutive win.

The world champion, however, said the race had not been as easy as it looked.

"The race was quite difficult because off line there was a lot of dirt and a lot of dust coming from the tyres and you cannot do many mistakes," he said. "You go a little bit off line and you lose one or two seconds and we saw a lot of this type of incidents in the race.

"We were leading the race with a nice gap but never confident with any of the gaps."

Renault teammate Giancarlo Fisichella was fourth, following a drive-through penalty for jumping the start, after having started from second place.

Alonso looked set to extend his lead over Schumacher to 25 points, but Schumacher took second place from Raikkonen when the Finn went wide at the hairpin on the final lap.

"Today we had an opportunity to have Fisi in front of Michael and Kimi, but at the end Michael managed to finish second, so the gap is not increasing too much. Indy is another chance to win again and increase gap again," added Alonso.