By role
April 20 2003

Fernando Alonso finished 6th today for his 4th consecutive point finishing position in as many races for Renault. The Spanish driver fought a hard race to try to stay with the frontrunners and was able to finish ahead of Montoya. A different story for Jarno Trulli that strugled in the race. Lack of luck made him have to take the T-car that was set up for Fernando Alonso. Thta made it quite difficult for him to fight for points and he could only finish 13th. This prevented Trulli for scoring points for the first time this season.

Renault had to build from Alonso's race who was busy trying to keep the pace of the top 3 teams that clearly were taking advantage of their more powerful engine.

Alonso was however pleased with the final result as bot the drivers of Ferrari, McLaren and Williams finished this race: "A perfect finish to a good weekend for me," admitted Alonso, who finished in sixth place. "Today I couldn't hope for a better result. The car felt very good, I was competitive from the start and it was great to be able to race and fight with the top teams. I am very happy and optimistic for my home race in Spain, in two weeks."

The Spanish GP is coming up in two weeks and the circuit will be packed with fans cheering the young Spaniard that is surprisingv manhy on this start of the season.

Michael Schumacher fought a very emotional win the day after his mother died. He won in front of Raikkonen who fough a hard race to keep Barrichello at bay who finished 3rd. Ralf Schumacher,a lso affected by the death of his mother crossed the line on 4th ahead of Coulthard. Alonso took advantage of a pit problem by Montoya and was able to hold for 6th place by seconds over the charging Montoya. Button finished 8th and added one point to the BAR team.

Trulli could not face the pace on the T-Car and since he exited on 16th position he never had a chance to fight for points. He fought hard and showed Renault's reliability that so far has brought home all cars in the 4 races of this season. He was a bit disappointed: "Today, it was good to get to the end of the race, to confirm the reliability of our car," said Trulli. "I am obviously frustrated, because although I didn't encounter any particular problem, to race in the T-car, which wasn't set up for me, made it impossible to make any progress during the race.

"It's a consequence of the new rules and I must accept them. I will have to put this behind me and I am already looking forward to the next race."