Length: 4.627 km
Number of Laps: 66 (305.256 Km)
Best Lap: G. Fisichella - 1'15''641 (2005, Renault)
Record Pole: M. Schumacher - 1'15''022 (2004, Ferrari)
2005 Pole: K. Raikkonen - 1'16''602 (Mclaren)
2005 Podium: K. Raikkonen - F. Alonso - J. Trulli

Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher had been the logical favourite to claim day two’s honours, but the Renault star stood tall in front of his home crowd.

Despite the performance, and the margin of four tenths he put on Schumacher, he still wasn’t fancied for the overall triumph.

The Ferrari was over 10 kilometres per hour quicker down the straight after all, surely it would cruise to a hat trick of victories?

Renault admitted that they were worried but the Scuderia’s pace, but they still fancied their chances.

24 hours later as the lights dimmed on the sixth race of the season those chances quickly strengthened.

Alonso, with his teammate Giancarlo Fisichella, shot off the line and into the first turn. The first hurdle had been overcome, the Ferraris were still behind and he was leading the race.

The next hurdle was to keep the Italian racers behind, with such a straight-line speed advantage they would soon be shaping up to make a pass.

However the expected fight wouldn’t eventuate. Alonso put in cracking lap after cracking lap, dropping Fisichella, Schumacher, and the rest of the field at an alarming rate.

By the time he pitted on lap 18 he was already 13 seconds ahead and Ferrari would face a very tough task if they were going to run him down.

With a clear track Schumacher certainly did turn up the pace, and started eating into Alonso’s advantage.

But he pitted just six laps later and, while overcoming Fisichella, was still eight seconds down on Alonso when he returned to the track,

The second phase was a battle of wills and the pair traded times as they both pushed their cars to the limit.

Schumacher was forced to fight, his car was unstable and nervous, Alonso cruised and eventually pushed the gap out by another four seconds.

44 laps in the second round of stops began, and Renault had their man back on the track in eight seconds flat.

The stop put Schumacher back in the lead, nine seconds ahead, with five to eight laps before he too would need more fuel.

The German was required to put one and a half seconds per lap on his championship rival until his stop, a job that would prove highly difficult.

In the end it would prove too difficult. Despite his best efforts, Alonso negated the damage to just three or four tenths and never gave Schumacher as much as a look in.

After 66 laps he crossed the start/finish line for the final time to claim his third victory of the season, the eleventh of his career, and the first in front of his adoring home crowd.

Schumacher finished second, Fisichella a distant and disappointing third, Felipe Massa (Ferrari) fourth, and Kimi Raikkonen (McLaren) fifth.

Importantly for Renault the result stopped the ‘championship rot’, consolidating Alonso’s lead at 15 points in his bid for a second successive title.

Heading to Monaco the Michelin rubber will be favoured again meaning Ferrari will have a fight on their hands if they are to stop Renault claiming another triumph.

Ron Dennis said this weekend that he would be making a decision on the team’s 2007 driver line-up in the next three or four weeks.

Juan Pablo Montoya certainly didn’t help his bid to remain in that line-up on Sunday after spinning out of the Spanish Grand Prix.

Mid way through the event, whilst running a lowly 10th, the Colombian lost control of his car and spun at turn four.

Unluckily he proceeded to get beached on top of the kerbing and was unable to recover, eventually jumping out the MP4-21 and sulking back to the pit lane.

Ferrari fans were given a coronary late in the Spanish Grand Prix when Michael Schumacher disappeared from the timing monitors.

A computer glitch saw the seven time championship show up as stopped in the opening sector and his name plummet down the order.

Renault mechanics were seen cheering and shaking hands, before thee German’s Ferrari came tearing down main straight past the pit wall.

Honda were left with a dilemma during the opening laps of the Spanish race when their drivers were running nose-to-tail in fifth and sixth positions respectively.

Rubens Barrichello was struggling for race pace and Jenson Button was stranded behind.

Under the Formula One rules team orders are not important, so while telling Barrichello he was holding Button up they stopped short of asking him to move aside.

Honda had hoped the Brazilian would guess at the underlying message, having been rather skilled at diving out the way during his days at Ferrari.

Unfortunately for Button he didn’t and the Briton was forced to wait until the first round of the pit stops.

Japanese rivals Toyota also had driver problems. Ralf Schumacher was trailing his teammate Jarno Trulli and we mucked up an attempt at an audacious pass.

Coming from a long way back, Ralf tried to out brake Trulli into turn one, but only succeeded in clipped the rear of his teammate’s car and knocking off his own front wing.