Michael, it’s been a while since we’ve see you conducting the Italian national anthem on the podium. How does it feel?
Michael Schumacher: Yeah, great. What else can you say? We had an amazing weekend. We’ve had a lot of work. We made some mistakes in the last races, very obviously, and to come here and perform the way we performed – although there was obviously some struggle at some moments – but in general, over the weekend, we were very competitive and that’s thanks to a lot of us, our many partners, starting with Shell who came up with a completely new fuel, some more horsepower; Bridgestone working very hard on the tyre side and obviously the team itself with new bits for the cars. On the engine, there has been a big push from everybody and as you say, that’s the result and it paid off.

Great start from the pole, great first stint and then it looked as if you had to work very hard to sustain the pressure from Fernando. What was the car like at two thirds of the race?
MS: It started off OK after my first pit stop and then I ran into some trouble, I don’t know what it is, we obviously have to check the car. It was some graining but not a big issue, honestly, but the car never came back (improved) and never really performed as it was in the beginning and it was quite a bit of a struggle, but luckily this is a circuit where we know from another year – last year – that overtaking is almost impossible unless you make a mistake so obviously you study who is behind and in that case it was Fernando, and where are the moments where it could get critical, and to prepare yourself just for those areas and it worked out.

And of course, it was the reverse from last year. What was the traffic situation like for you today?
MS: Pretty good. No complaints, the guys did a good job out there.

Fernando, you were looking very strong in that second stint; sliced into Michael’s lead and then just stuck behind him for the rest of the race:
Fernando Alonso: Yeah. It’s true that I arrived quite quickly to him but then, as Michael said, here it’s very difficult to overtake, nearly impossible if there is no mistake. Michael didn’t make any mistake so I just waited for my opportunity and at the end it didn’t come. But I’m happy. We qualified with much more fuel than the others, obviously, and we assumed that that was the right thing to do. In normal circumstances, on a normal circuit, we should win the race. Also we didn’t plan to make the second pit stop on that lap, we came in much earlier just to try to overtake Michael and it didn’t work – maybe the opposite. Maybe I should have waited until my normal pit stop, maybe that would have worked better. But who knows? I think this eight points is better for me. Second in the championship were Kimi and Fisichella and I took another four or five points off them, so championship-wise it was a perfect result.

We saw you run a little bit wide out of the second chicane with three laps to go, what was the car like at that phase of the race?
FA: Well, on the limit. I think Michael was very slow in the second stint but not so slow in the third stint. I think the last set of tyres again worked quite well for them and it was not so easy to be behind him and try to overtake, so I really pushed, with five laps to go, just to try to overtake him. I was able to use all the revs in the engine etc, I tried hard. When I saw it was not possible I just went down a little bit and as I said, it was a risk moment and I thought it wasn’t the right time to risk any more.

Juan Pablo, congratulations to you, a strong drive after your problems in practice yesterday, leading your teammate and Felipe Massa in the Ferrari.
Juan Pablo Montoya: I think it was good. I had a really quick start. I went onto the inside of Fernando, I think he went to try to pass a BAR (Honda) so I had to lift and I lost a couple of places there when I backed off but on and off it was a really good race. I think we did a lot of work over the last couple of weeks and I think we’re going in the right direction. I think our car performance wasn’t as good as we expected. As you saw, we had a lot of fuel in the car as well. I think it was good, we passed a lot of people and everything and I think we had a really good car to fight for the lead but when I got to third I was 13 seconds behind. What can you do, you’re too far behind.

And the pressure from Felipe in those closing stages?
JPM: I was pretty much cruising to be honest.

Michael, returning to you. After a great start in the first race, a couple of problematic races as you said, now the championship for you is well and truly alive.
MS: Yeah. It hadn’t really gone away, honestly, even with two difficult races, but points-wise it’s looking two points better now, but there’s a long way to go.

Press Conference

Michael, a sunny afternoon, an adoring crowd, victory; do Sunday afternoons get any better?
MS: No, certainly not. That’s the maximum you can have.

Everything seemed to go pretty well today, even off the grid. We saw your guys doing a major clean-up operation…
MS: Yes, there was some incident this morning so there was oil on my grid position, so that’s what was going on, removing the oil.

And did it feel OK?
MS: It felt pretty slippery initially, to pull away, but probably I cleaned enough off to be OK. It finally worked OK.