Brawn hails Schuey's genius

Schumacher put in a series of sub-record laps in the early stages of the event to make up the time he lost to early leader Kimi Raikkonen, whose McLaren was running on a lighter fuel load. Schuey's pace in the early part of the race allowed him to emerge from the pits after his first stop with the race lead - more than even Brawn had hoped he would achieve.

"If we see an opportunity, we go for it," said Brawn. "He is the master of that - he makes us look good. We just have to give him the opportunity and away he goes. The crucial part of the race was when we came out of the pits ahead of Kimi. I was amazed. Our predictions were that we would have been behind Kimi, but we would still have been in a strong position on a two-stop strategy.

"We just needed to get ourselves out of phase with the others - you either do it by doing four stops or, as today, we can do it by two stops."

Brawn also hit out at those who have criticised Schumacher's dominance of Formula 1 as boring. "It's history in the making," he said. "I mean, the guy is exceptional, so I would say try and enjoy it for what it is, because I don't think it will ever happen again."

Even by Schumacher's standards, his season's results have been extraordinary. He has already scored 100 points after 11 races, which is nine more than he amassed en route to the 2003 title.