SAO PAULO — On 22 October 2006, Fernando Alonso secured his second drivers' world title at the Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos as Michael Schumacher retired from Formula 1 for the first time, with Ferrari's Felipe Massa winning his home race, Alonso finishing second to clinch the crown and Schumacher recovering to fourth.
Alonso arrived with a 10-point advantage after Schumacher's engine failure and retirement from the lead at Suzuka had turned a potential two-point lead into a 10-point deficit. The German's hopes suffered further when a fuel pressure problem in Q3 left him 10th on the grid with Alonso fourth. "I don't know what we can do," Schumacher said after qualifying. "I don't know how the race will develop. It is hard to predict something, but I will try my best. It is much more difficult starting from 10th, but of course I will try." Ferrari technical director Ross Brawn added: "Let's not forget that in the past, Michael has managed to win races starting even further back on the grid."
Schumacher jumped to seventh on the opening lap and moved past former team-mate Rubens Barrichello before overtaking Giancarlo Fisichella around the outside for fifth on lap eight, only for the slightest touch with the Renault to cause a rear-left puncture that dropped him to 20th, 69 seconds behind Massa and exactly one minute behind Alonso. By lap 27 he had caught the back of the pack and successively overtook Tiago Monteiro, Robert Doornbos, Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica, while undercutting rivals and benefitting from retirements to run fifth before his second pitstop. Emerging seventh, he passed Barrichello again and pressured Fisichella into a lock-up at Turn 1 to reclaim fifth on lap 63, then produced a clinical move on McLaren's Kimi Raikkonen on the antepenultimate lap to take fourth, eight seconds behind Alonso, as Massa remained 33 seconds clear at the front.
"The race was chaotic, I think that is the right word," Schumacher said. "We really had a superb car today, from the pure speed we could have lapped everybody. So I have to say it was the perfect end to the season in terms of car performance, but for me it didn't work out well." Alonso hailed a "fantastic way" to conclude his time at Renault, who he described as "my family in Formula 1", ahead of his move to McLaren for 2007. "I will have these memories with them all my life, and to finish the last race like this is something that you never dream of, you never even try to dream of, because it's always more than what you expected," he said. Speaking to Telecinco about emulating Ayrton Senna, he added: "To join McLaren and never to race with Ferrari reminds me a lot of Senna. He won three titles, and for me, to retire with three and achieve what he achieved would be the objective of my career." Twenty years on, Alonso is still chasing that third crown.
Schumacher, then 37, had announced his retirement at Monza a month earlier, with Ferrari signing Raikkonen for 2007 and the German unwilling to stay at the expense of Massa. Asked about a future return, he said: "Formula 1 is constantly changing. The technology, the engines, the rules, the circuits. Once you're out of it, you're out." He did return for a three-year stint at Mercedes from 2010 to 2012, where he struggled to match team-mate Nico Rosberg and scored just one podium finish while topping qualifying on his final Monaco outing. At the time of his first retirement, his wife Corinna Schumacher told German network RTL: "That we're all going to go home healthy, that nothing happened in all these years and that we got away with just the one broken leg." Schumacher, now 55, was severely injured in a skiing accident in December 2013 and has not been seen in public since.