Schumacher Hails 'Brilliant' Strategy

Michael Schumacher praised his Ferrari technical director Ross Brawn for the strategy gamble that helped the six-time World Champion secure victory in Sunday's French Grand Prix.

German Schumacher admitted he feared his second defeat of the season after being surprised by the strong pace of Spanish pole sitter Fernando Alonso's Renault during the opening stages of the Magny-Cours race.

But Brawn pulled a master stroke by switching from a three-stop to a four-stop strategy that gave Schumacher the edge.

"It was just brilliant! Basically after the second pit stop we decided to go for that (strategy)," said Schumacher.

"(Looking back) it was clear there wasn't really a challenge, there was only the challenge forward. We knew it was optimistic but no risk, no fun, so Ross decided for it. I wasn't really so optimistic going into the race and it is just unbelievable.

"Not only the strategy but the teamwork again, in terms of pitstops, the guys have just done fantastic pitstops, very precise."

Ferrari combined the advantages of a short pitlane at Magny-Cours and Schumacher's sublime ability to set stunning laps on his out and in laps to make the strategy work despite a lower than normal pitlane speed limit.

The team had the plan in reserve in case they encountered problems during the race and Schumacher said that, rather than a 'spur of the moment' event it was a highly calculated piece of strategy.

"Certainly you calculate all this," said Schumacher. "There are lots of factors included in the calculations but, as I said, there was only the opportunity to go forward and we did it.

"I was surprised after my second pitstop how good Fernando was able to keep on me because to our calculations he was able to stay a lot longer than we thought and to do the pace he was doing was concerning.

"We saw him very early put in a lot of fuel for his last stint and his tyres, from my point of view, struggled a bit towards the latter end and (him) having so much fuel was our opportunity to open the gap.

"Our tyres worked fantastically well towards the end of the stints whereas our competitors struggled and that was one of the reasons we were able to close the gaps before pitstops and attack and go for the strategy."