Schumacher, however, was clearly best of the rest behind the Renaults, having disposed of both the Hondas in the space of five laps to move into third. Button continued to head Barrichello until lap 15, but was then struggling for grip, as his overheated rubber left the rear of the RA106 sliding. Pitting ahead of schedule allowed the Brazilian through to fourth, but his own scheduled stop - interestingly without a tyre change - saw Barrichello drop down the order too.
With a lot of the field looking to one stop to combat the changing conditions, lap 20 came and went with just four cars having pitted and, even then, Robert Doornbos' call had been necessitated by a first corner incident that cost the Dutchman his nose.
Nick Heidfeld was making good progress in the best of the
BMW Saubers, and was up to fourth, heading
Mark Webber, Barrichello, team-mate
Robert Kubica, Pedro de la Rosa,
Felipe Massa and the recovering Button in the top ten. Raikkonen was the only casualty at this point, but the race had already seen its fair share of incident, with almost every driver finding the limits of adhesion, and some transgressing them.
Schumacher became the first of the frontrunners to pit, on lap 21, but followed Barrichello and Raikkonen's lead by taking on fuel only, despite - or more likely because - his rear Bridgestones already looking more like the slicks of old. The two Renaults followed over the next couple of laps, and this is when the race began to turn towards Maranello. Alonso was first in, with
Renault opting to change the Spaniard's front tyres for a new set of inters, but, when Fisichella pitted from a short-held lead next time around, the team left his rubber alone.
Both blue cars got out ahead of Schumacher, but Alonso was almost immediately in trouble, unable to lap anywhere near his earlier pace. With both Fisichella and Schumacher able to run at anything up to four seconds a lap faster than him, the Spaniard was left to watch helplessly as his commanding lead was whittled away to nothing in just five laps, leaving Fisi to play the biggest rearguard role of the season.
