Rubens Barrichello applied a two-stop strategy to race against Schumacher, which is why he started only sixth on the grid, and this moved the Brazilian up to second through the first stops. He looked as if he might give Schuey a run for his money initially, but when the German returned from his second pitstop still in the lead, the race was effectively won.

It was Michael Schumacher's 75th win from his 200th start. He set the fastest lap of the race and was once again, entirely unbeatable.

Electric starts from Renault drivers is hardly news these days, but Trulli's getaway was spectacular. When Juan Pablo Montoya's Williams started slowly, Trulli nipped between Schumacher and the Colombian to take the lead at the first corner. Within a lap, the Italian and the world champion already had a one second advantage over third-placed Takuma Sato.

Montoya's start dropped him to fourth ahead of Barrichello, Fernando Alonso, Olivier Panis, David Coulthard, Ralf Schumacher and Kimi Raikkonen. Overtaking being about as commonplace at Barcelona as a Ferrari retirement, this order would remain the same until the first pitstops. And with the knowledge that he was faster than the Renault, Schumacher decided to wait for his strategy to come into play.

"I still had the option to sort of close the door on him [Trulli] at the start," said Schumacher. "But with the speed that he was coming along I thought it would not be very fair so I left open the door and let him do what he was obviously superbly doing. So I waited for our strategy, which worked superbly well.

"Certainly I was a bit slower [while behind him] than we probably could have been as you saw by the gap we were able to open afterwards. But the concern obviously was where would I fall into the order after the pitstops had happened, and how much fuel everybody was on. But actually almost everybody was on a rather short first stint so it didn't really matter that much."

After the first pitstops for the three-stoppers, Barrichello, obviously on a longer first stint, maintained a 10s lead to Schumacher and for a while it seemed that we may have a race. But the Brazilian failed to maintain his early speed following his pitstop and Schumacher capitalised on that to build a big enough lead so that when he made his second stop, he returned to the track still in the lead.

By this time though, Schumacher's F2004 had developed a cracked exhaust. "The team noticed it after the first pitstop in the second stint," said Schumacher, "Ross [Brawn] came on the radio and said: 'There is not much we can do, we can just hope it will last', and he wasn't very optimistic while he was saying that. Knowing what an exhaust failure means I wasn't very optimistic either! So I just did what I was able to do in preserving as much as possible."Trulli contained a charge from his Renault team-mate Fernando Alonso to take an emotional third place, which he dedicated to Renault aerodynamicist Dino Toso who is fighting a serious illness. Alonso could not match his heroic antics of a year ago on home turf and for much of the weekend seemed plagued with set-up problems. He did find some speed through the race as his pitstops released him from behind slower cars.

After a star turn in qualifying Takuma Sato found his BAR-Honda was no match for the Renault's in race trim and slipped to fifth ahead of Ralf Schumacher's WilliamsF1 BMW FW26. The Williams team had a poor race and both its drivers struggled with a car that never looked like being a front-runner. Ralf finished more than a minute behind his brother.

At least he finished. Team-mate Juan Pablo Montoya was forced to retire after suffering total brake failure as he made his final pitstops. So bad was the problem that he hit his front jackman who courageously offered himself as a buffer. "The brake pedal was very long all day," said Montoya. "When I got to the first stop I had nearly no brakes. But then they came back.

"Then when [Giancarlo] Fisichella pitted I started pushing really hard. I was doing everything with the engine and they told me to come in. I came in quite slow and when I pressed the brakes there was nothing. I knew this race was going to be a nightmare."

Fisichella was excellent in the Sauber. Another to employ a two-stop strategy, he was in the points for most of the day and deserved his seventh place. The same was true of Jenson Button who fought back from 14th on the grid to finish in the last points position a lap down.

Felipe Massa, totally outraced by his Sauber team-mate, finished ninth ahead of the woefully slow McLarens of David Coulthard and Kimi Raikkonen. Mark Webber and Cristiano da Matta were the last of the 13 finishers.