Schumacher praises Ferrari’s winning strategy](Yahoo is part of the Yahoo family of brands.)
MAGNY-COURS, France (AFP) - World champion Michael Schumacher praised his Ferrari technical director Ross Brawn for the strategy gamble that helped secure his ninth victory in ten races in the French Grand Prix.
German Schumacher said he and the team were surprised by the strong pace of Spanish pole sitter Fernando Alonso’s Renault during the opening stages of the race and had been forced into making a change to their plans.
Brawn took the decision to switch from a three-stop to a four-stop strategy and the tactical masterstroke, devised by the team’s strategist Luca Baldisserri, allowed Schumacher to cruise to victory.
“The way we started the strategy and the way we thought we could improve our position it was the only option we had,” said Schumacher. "Naturally it is a discussion between us, but the final decision would normally be done by Ross.
"The team needs to understand my situation in the car, how the tires are going and what I think we can go for as we discuss certain A and B and C strategies and we finally come to a decision of what we think.
"But Ross sits on the pit-wall and he can overlook the whole scenario, he has a much better picture than I have and therefore he is the man to decide. And today it worked out.
“It might have worked out as well on the three-stop normal strategy but then I would have had to be able to pass on the circuit, which would have been very difficult. But like this we thought no risk, no fun!”
Ferrari combined the advantages of a short pitlane at Magny-Cours with 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 thought-out 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 pit stop 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 tires, 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 tires 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.”
Brawn said that he had no concerns over making the switch because the team, who have only been beaten once this year when Alonso’s team-mate Jarno Trulli won in Monaco, had nothing to lose.
“Luca Baldisserri, our strategist, came up with the idea over the weekend when we had some numbers, so we had it in our pocket,” said Brawn, who has been the technical director behind all of Schumacher’s six world championship victories.
"During the second stint, when it became clear that we had enough space behind us with Trulli we thought we would throw it in there and jumble up the numbers a bit. Michael needed some free space to run.
“It had got to the stage where Alonso was holding him up so we thought we would try it. We had a pretty good idea when the other guys were going to stop and we didn’t think we would be held up and it worked.”
The move allowed Schumacher to open up a 22-point gap to team-mate Rubens Barrichello in the drivers’ title race while the Brazilian’s third place helped put Ferrari on double the points of closest rivals Renault.
