The day Alonso gave Schumacher an F1 masterclass

It was the first time that the two had fought so closely for a race victory all the way to the chequered flag, and Alonso’s superb win appeared to signal a changing of the guard.

We didn’t know it at the time but Imola was to be a rare high for a Ferrari team strangled by that year’s tyre regulations – Alonso’s main title opposition was to come from McLaren’s Kimi Raikkonen, who should have won the San Marino event.

The 2005 season was defined by a new regulation that required drivers to qualify and complete a race distance on the same set of tyres – essentially an easy way of reining in development and hence speeds.

For years Ferrari had benefited from its close relationship with Bridgestone, with access to tyres that allowed Schumacher to take full advantage of Ross Brawn’s strategy calls by sprinting flat out between pit stops. When the new rules handed an advantage to Michelin, it was a new era.

At the age of 23, Alonso’s time had come. He’d scored his first win with Renault in Hungary in 2003, and while there were no victories in 2004 – a year utterly dominated by Ferrari – he finished fourth in the World Championship, and momentum was building.

Renault got off to a flying start in 2005. Giancarlo Fisichella won the opening race in Australia from pole, with Alonso gaining useful points in third after bad luck in a drying session saw him start only 13^th. The youngster then took pole and won in both Malaysia and Bahrain.

Schumacher scored just two points in the first three races with a seventh in Malaysia, although his teammate Rubens Barrichello did at least earn a second place in Australia. It was clear that Ferrari, which ran the first two races with an interim car before pre-empting the planned introduction of the latest model at round three in Bahrain, was struggling.

“We came to Melbourne with our old car so it was clear to me we would not fight for victory there,” Schumacher told me at the end of that year.

“At least not to my expectations. Obviously, with my bad luck in qualifying, that race wasn’t exactly an ideal one. But to be honest, I knew before the season started that it would not be a good one.”

Regarding the switch to the new car he added: “Let´s put it like this. I knew it would mean a big step forward, and I knew we would need a big step, too.

“But I knew the new car from testing and knew about the problems we sometimes had there. There was…