Formula One: Alonso Denies Schumacher

Fernando Alonso produced one of the finest defensive drives in the history of the formula one world championship to win the San Marino grand prix yesterday. But even as he stood on the podium at Imola's Autodromo Enzoe Dino Ferrari, accepting the cup for his third victory in a row and the fourth win in four races for his Renault team, he knew that the man who finished in his slipstream casts a shadow that threatens to engulf the rest of the season.

Alonso's dazzling performance helped formula one to take another step away from its sick bed, but there was a more sombre message in the all-out assault by Michael Schumacher that brought high drama to the second half of the race. The reigning champion had to be content with the runner-up spot, finishing a fifth of a second behind the winner, but the scorching pace demonstrated by his new Ferrari as he recovered from a poor grid position will have encouraged him to believe that he can repair a disastrous start to the season and mount a successful defence of his title.

Yesterday, however, was a time to celebrate Alonso's gifts. After Kimi Raikkonen, the early leader, had retired on the ninth lap with a broken driveshaft in his McLaren-Mercedes, the 23-year-old Spaniard displayed a remarkable maturity under the most ferocious pressure as he preserved an engine severely strained in the high temperatures of Bahrain two weeks ago. The win extended Alonso's lead in the 2005 world championship and reconfirmed the general belief that, of the current crop of drivers, he is the most likely to succeed Schumacher as the man the rest of field have to beat.

For the last dozen of the race's 62 laps the No1 Ferrari had been lodged under the Renault's rear wing, trying to provoke a mistake and create an opening. Having pursued a plan that allowed him to recover the ground lost by an error in the morning's second qualifying session, which pushed him down to 13th position on the starting grid, Schumacher demonstrated the speed of the F2005 as he gobbled up a 20-second deficit on Jenson Button's BAR-Honda.

Taking advantage of confusion as they approached slower cars, he slipped past the British driver - who finished in an encouraging third place - in the braking zone for the Variante Alta before setting off in pursuit of Alonso.

Emerging from his third and final pit stop barely a second behind the Renault, Schumacher was a constant presence in Alonso's mirror for an almost unbearably tense final 20 minutes. As he dodged and darted about, bringing every scrap of his formidable racecraft to bear, he was urged on by the cheers of Ferrari's home crowd.

On one lap he feinted to pass on the outside at the long Tosa hairpin, and on the next he probed for the inside. Going down the hill into Acque Minerali he attempted to push his car's red nose alongside the Renault's cockpit, and time and again he tried to get a run on Alonso at the Variante Alta, a chicane approached at 190mph. On each occasion Alonso, showing astonishing coolness, would hold a line that made it too risky for the Ferrari to go for the pass.

As the laps wound down and Schumacher glimpsed the possibility that his outstanding performance would go without the ultimate reward, an edge of desperation entered his driving. Each time they came out of the Curva Rivazza and headed into the final chicane, he seemed to be even closer to his rival. Twice as they plunged into the first part of the complex he locked his brakes, smoke pouring from his abused tyres as they slid on the asphalt.

But Alonso never wavered while sticking to a strategy devised to lighten the load on a very tired engine. He had completed the minimum of laps in practice, exposing a V10 that had 600km on the clock after Bahrain to no more than an additional 450km in its second race weekend. A lowered red limit and careful attention to keeping it cool did the rest, along with the driver's own intelligence.

"Like everything we do, it was a team decision," Denis Chevrier, the head of Renault's racing engine programme, said afterwards, "but this was another expression of Fernando's huge talent."

Now Alonso looks forward to his home grand prix in two weeks' time with 36 world championship points in the bank, double that of his nearest rival.

"I really wanted the victory here," he said. "Obviously Michael was much quicker than me, about a second a lap, and I knew the only chance I had was to brake a little earlier to hold him up in the middle of the corners and then get back on the throttle quickly."

When two back-markers appeared ahead of them in the final laps, he coolly reduced his speed to avoid giving Schumacher the sort of opportunity that had undone Button earlier in the afternoon.

The Ferrari team leader could console himself with the knowledge that the staggering pace demonstrated as he reeled in Button would surely have carried him to victory had he not lost control at Rivazza and skated off the track. "Everybody worked extremely hard to prepare the new car," he said. "This is the payback."

Alonso's outstanding defensive drive bore comparison with those of Gilles Villeneuve, who kept his outclassed Ferrari ahead of a traffic jam of four faster cars for two mesmerising hours at Jarama in 1981, and of Ayrton Senna, who resisted a prolonged attack by Nigel Mansell in a superior car at Monaco in 1992.

The man whose Ligier followed Villeneuve into second place at Jarama 24 years ago was in the paddock yesterday, and made no secret of his admiration.

"The kind of attack Michael made is very difficult to hold off," Jacques Lafitte said, "but Alonso made no mistakes. I think he took a big step today. He knows he can resist Michael. Before he was not sure. Now he is sure and it will help him a lot."

The hidden message of a wonderful race was that, given Schumacher's return to form, Alonso will be needing all the help he can get if he is to become formula one's youngest world champion.