Best feeling ever, says Alonso

Watched by King Juan Carlos, and to a deafening roar from his ecstatic compatriots decked out in Renault's blue and yellow colours, the 24-year-old ended Michael Schumacher's hopes of a third win in succession for Ferrari.

The German, six times a winner at the Circuit de Catalunya and Alonso's closest rival in the championship after winning his home Grand Prix at the Nurburgring last weekend, finished second 18.5 seconds adrift.

"Fantastic," said a delighted Alonso. "The last five or six laps I saw that Michael was slowing down as well and not pushing anymore, so there were four or five laps I was cruising to the end.

"Winning in front of everyone, my people, my supporters, it was the best feeling in an F1 car, it was equal to Brazil, winning my championship, but there I finished third after a lot of problems and didn't enjoy as much as today's race.

"It is true that to race here and to race in front of all the blue grandstands is a different feeling to all the other races and it's true that 66 laps is not enough to enjoy the race. It was a fantastic day, difficult to forget for me."

Alonso's third win of the season, and 11th of his career, extended his overall lead over the seven times champion to 15 points after six rounds. The Spaniard has now also finished the last 12 races on the podium.

After a strategic race short on incident, Alonso has 54 points to Schumacher's 39.

"I think we did our maximum race performance today," added Alonso. "Tyres performed really well before the race, we had doubts before the start, but everything went perfect as we planned.

"We pushed in the first stint, we were lighter and found a gap quite quickly and we thought it was a defending race from then on, but Ferrari did not come on strongly and in the last stint I was controlling the revs."

Italian Giancarlo Fisichella completed a solid afternoon for Renault, who announced a long-term commitment to Formula One before the race after carmakers agreed to sign a new commercial deal to 2012, by taking third place.