Michael Schumacher won the 2004 French Grand Prix at Magny-Cours on 4 July with a strategy that still sounds slightly unreasonable: four pit stops. Ferrari and Ross Brawn used repeated short stints to beat Fernando Alonso’s Renault, turning a race that looked awkward into another demonstration of how much confidence the team had in Schumacher, its car and its pit crew.
Alonso started from pole in front of Renault’s home crowd, with Schumacher alongside him. The Renault was quick enough to make a conventional Ferrari victory less certain than usual. Ferrari’s answer was not to wait politely behind it. The team broke the race into short, aggressive phases and asked Schumacher to drive qualifying-style laps between stops.
Seventy laps, four stops, no panic
The plan only worked because every part of it held together. Schumacher had to create enough pace advantage on lighter fuel. Ferrari had to execute the stops cleanly. Bridgestone’s tyres had to support the rhythm. Alonso had to be kept under pressure without Ferrari losing too much time in the pit lane. It was a complicated way to win a race, which made the lack of visible panic more irritating for everyone else.
Schumacher finished ahead of Alonso, with Rubens Barrichello third after passing Jarno Trulli late for the final podium place. It was Schumacher’s ninth win from the first ten races of 2004, a number that captures how little oxygen the season left for the opposition.
The French Grand Prix did not make Schumacher’s seventh world championship inevitable. That had already started to feel like the default setting of the season. What it did was show Ferrari still finding creative ways to win even when the obvious route was blocked. A four-stop race strategy is usually evidence that something has gone wrong. At Magny-Cours in 2004, it was the plan.
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