Michael Schumacher
Race: 3rd
Michael Schumacher lost ground to Fernando Alonso after finishing in 3rd place, while Alonso was 2nd in the Turkish Grand Prix. Schumacher would all but certainly won the event, had the safety car not been deployed, requiring Ferrari to stack their cars which eventually cost Schumacher the race.

Michael was running 2nd at the time, behind his Ferrari team mate Felipe Massa, who pitted first, forcing Schumacher to wait as Alonso from 3rd passed Schumacher as a result of stacking. This meant that the Spaniard would cruise to 2nd, despite a late charge by Schumacher. Although the Ferrari was overall much faster than the Renault, Schumacher could not get passed Alonso as his 248 F1 was too slow at the most important part of the track.

Had Schumacher not been forced to lose out in the pits or had he been able to pass Alonso for 2nd, he most certainly would have won the race as Felipe Massa would have pulled over to let him by.

Alonso now leads Schumacher by 12 points with 4 races remaining. This is what Michael had to say about his race:

"First of all, I want to congratulate Felipe, who once again today did a fantastic job, clearly deserving to win. Obviously, this weekend things did not go my way, either yesterday in qualifying or today in the race. For some reason, in the second stint, the car was not going as well as it had done in Friday’s free practice. It was rather nervous and the fact that it had a pretty heavy fuel load certainly didn’t help and neither did my mistake at Turn 8 on lap 28. On top of that, the set of tyres in this stint did not perform as well as the others and they also blistered. In the end I tried to stick with my rival in case he made a mistake. Today, I have lost two points in the Drivers’ championship but I still believe I can win the title."

August 28, 2006