Ferrari played its 'joker'

Brawn revealed after Sunday's race that Baldisserri was always keen the four-stop strategy, which the team switched to after its second pitstop at Magny-Cours when it became apparent that Alonso held a performance advantage early in the stint.

"At the factory, Luca mentioned the possibility of this being a four-stop race," said Brawn, "mainly because of the length of the pit lane [the shortest on the calendar, despite an 80kph rather than 100kph limit because of its narrowness]. When we were going through the final strategies he again made the point that we could have it as a bit of a joker.

"Three and four stops were actually equal on time but then you get this scenario where four gives you some free space because you are out of synch with the other cars and you can use your performance. So that's what we did and to help us along, Renault tried to respond and made it easy for us because with a very short third stint they had to do a very long fourth stint.

"I wasn't sure if they were going to do four stops as well because they did a short 14-lap third stint. But they stuck with the three and had a very heavy car for the last part of the race, which worked in our favour. If you try to anticipate their stop, their natural response is to anticipate it with you, and they are very quick at pitstops, so it was going to be very difficult to beat them otherwise."

When asked after the race if he would ever consider a five-stop strategy, tactical ace Baldisserri replied: "We haven't got enough tyres!"