| | SAO PAULO -- Michael Schumacher said Ferrari's strategy at the start of Sunday's Brazilian Grand Prix was the key to his victory at Interlagos.
"We've definitely seen improvement in the start strategy," said the German, whose Ferrari had been third on the starting grid behind the McLarens of Finland's Mika Hakkinen and Briton David Coulthard.
"I think we got the hang of that."
Schumacher, who swept past Hakkinen with an overtaking manoeuvre at the start of lap two and went on to win for the second time in two races this season, said he was delighted with the early fight with the world champion and pole-sitter.
His Ferrari clearly started lighter on fuel than the McLarens and came in for a first pit stop after just 20 laps.
"We adopted a very aggressive strategy with both drivers on two stops." said Ferrari team boss Jean Todt.
"I almost was able to catch Mika straight away but I didn't want to take too much risks and obviously he was not too keen to let me by," said Schumacher. "It was quite entertaining. It doesn't happen too often that you have between the leaders a real fight and overtaking so I enjoyed that."
"At 15 laps from the end, we had a little problem and it probably wasn't too necessary to drive that slowly. But we had a good lead so I just took it easy."
Second-placed Coulthard said his start was a disaster and he felt lucky just to finish the race.
"I didn't get my start quite right. The lights didn't change quite when I wanted them to. And then I hesitated and that's obviously when lost some time there," he said. "Then very early on I lost a gear and did the whole race using only fourth gear and upwards."
"All in all it was a very difficult race to get six points is very good."
Asked if the Ferraris were proving consistently faster than the McLarens, the Scotsman chafed at the question.
"You have to wait until the end of the season. People are so impatient these days."
Third-place finisher, Giancarlo Fisichella of Italy, said he had a tough time in the first 15 laps, but then his Benetton responded as he had hoped.
"It was hard to drive with so much fuel at the beginning, the steering was difficult," said Fisichella. "But after 20 laps we had a good performance and I just drove on."
"Already yesterday, I saw a possibility of getting on the podium," said Fisichella, who started fifth on the grid.
Team owner Eddie Jordan saw two of his drivers come home in the points, with Germany's Heinz-Harald Frentzen fourth and Italian Jarno Trulli fifth after both failed to finish in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.
"It gives us five points and that's a little bit of a bonus," he declared.
"There was a lot of concern about our reliability and I think we've made big headway (in testing) at Silverstone last week and today sort of proved that."
"With Jarno having such a dreadful qualifying yesterday we took a decision that we needed to get him up running and motivated so we ran him on low fuel at the beginning to give him that incentive to get on with it.
"Not that he needs that, but it just gave the team the
impetus as well. So we took a two stop with Jarno, which worked
quite well for him, to come from 12th to fifth is a big result."
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