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It's 12 podiums in a row (and counting) for Fernando Alonso, having taken the win on home soil that has eluded him in his four previous appearances in Barcelona.
While Michael Schumacher has won on home territory no fewer than eight times, the 135,000 sellout Spanish crowd had never seen anything like this at Barcelona - the closest comparison in recent years is probably when Alex Criville won the MotoGP event in 1999.
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The start of the 1991 Spanish GP at Barcelona. Michael Schumacher is the only current driver to have raced then © LAT |
Perhaps the win is not surprising, given the results of qualifying, when Alonso took the 150th pole position for Renault engines. In 16 F1 events at Barcelona, only once had a race winner come from below the front row of the grid (Schumacher in 1996, from third place). Added to that, nine of the last ten Spanish Grands Prix have been won from pole position.
Schumacher's second place was much more like his regular Barcelona performances. He is the only man to compete in every F1 race at the Barcelona circuit, and last year's retirement marked the only time that he failed to score points there.
