Symonds praises Ferrari's performance

Schumacher scored his first win of the season after holding off the challenge from Fernando Alonso during a big part of the race.

Ferrari scored a strategic victory despite Alonso's Renault looking like the faster car, especially when Schumacher struggled with his tyres.

The German driver saw a gap of over 10 seconds to Alonso vanish over three laps as his tyres failed to perform following his first pitstop.

The Spaniard, however, was unable to pass Schumacher and so Renault decided to change their strategy and make Alonso pit two laps earlier than planned.

But Schumacher also modified his strategy and he pitted right after Alonso, emerging ahead of the world champion.

"Hats off to Michael and Ferrari, because they pulled a blinder," said Symonds. "From our point of view, we could have run our planned strategy and still finished second. But it would have been an unsatisfying second place, because there would have been a 'what if' factor because we hadn't explored every option available to us.

"As it was, we tried everything we could - and it didn't come off because we saw two cars with very equal levels of performance, battling for the win. As I said yesterday, 'nothing ventured, nothing gained.' But in this case, nothing lost either."

Symonds believes Schumacher was not lapping as fast as he could when Alonso was right behind him, a suggestion confirmed by the quick lap set by the Ferrari driver right before his pitstop.

"The really significant thing was that on the free lap after Fernando pitted, Michael showed he had some performance in reserve," Symonds added.

"On the lap we pitted, he did a lap of 1:25.7 - where his average speed in the ten previous laps, was 1:27.4. The lap-times during the second stint had not suggested he had that performance in reserve."