By Nick Sparkes
April 23 2006

With the two Toyota’s lining up within the first 5 rows, a points finish looked highly likely after what looked to be another successful weekend. But their hard work came to nothing with Jarno Trulli retiring early and Ralf Schumacher falling back on the wrong strategy. At the start all 22 cars got away cleanly, with Jarno making an excellent start getting alongside one of the McLaren’s and the other Toyota of Ralf Schumacher as they entered the first turn. But what looked like light contact between the McLaren and Jarno Trulli would later lead to the Toyota driver pitting, and subsequently retiring with a damaged steering column. This would be his second retirement from the last two races. In contrast Ralf looked to be in excellent shape early on, holding sixth place as he pitted for the first of three stops that afternoon. From there, Ralf went backwards. With only the Honda of Jenson Button joining Ralf on a three stopper, the German didn’t have the speed in his Toyota to make up the time and subsequently exited the pit lane after his final stop behind the group of cars he was previously ahead.

Elsewhere Yuji Ide made a bold move on the MF1 of Christijan Albers, spending the Dutch driver into a multiple of rollovers coming to a haut the right way up. Jenson Button left his pit garage a bit too early when the lollipop man accidentally let him go whilst the refueller was stilling finishing his job. Luckily no one was injured, but this added time to the Briton’s race subsequently losing him a podium. Up at the front Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso drove a reply of last years race, but this time the positions were reversed. As hard as Alonso tried, Michael positioned his car on the right piece of tarmac, blocking every move. With only a few laps left Alonso began making mistakes whilst following Michael, and in the closing stages backed off leaving Ferrari and Michael Schumacher to take a memorable victory.