After the safety car came out on the 14th lap (following Vitantonio Liuzzi’s spin out), a tactical error was committed by the Ferrari team, which saw both of their cars enter the pits at the same time in first and second position (Felipe Massa pitting first while Micahel Schumacher waited by idely). This left Schumacher leaving the pits in third position on the tail of points leader Fernando Alonso.

Massa went on to win the race with Alonso in second, half a second clear of Schumacher in third place. Congratulations go to Massa, who won his first formula one race, but with Schumacher in such a tight race with Alonso for the championship wouldn’t you think that they would have done everything in their power to guarantee Schumacher the best result possible? The team should have requested that Massa do another lap before pitting so Schumacher would have been allowed to pit and get out before Alonso and in all probability win the race and close the gap in the championship even further. As it stands, Alonso has stretched the lead back out to 12 points with 4 races left in the season. If Schumacher fails in his quest for an 8th World Championship title, today’s race will be looked on as the turning point in the closing stages of the season.

Alonso holds off Schumi in the final stages of the Turkish Grand Prix

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 27th, 2006 at 9:39 am and is filed under Formula 1. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.