Formula 1: World champion Fernando Alonso won a wheel-to-wheel duel with Michael Schumacher to start his title defence with victory in the Bahrain Grand Prix.
The sport’s youngest champion hounded Schumacher’s Ferrari for 40 laps before squeezing by with barely an inch to spare as he came out of the pits.
The Renault driver came out of the pit lane alongside Schumacher but won a test of nerve to hold the lead and seal his ninth grand prix win.
McLaren ace Kimi Raikkonen fought his way up from last on the grid to hold off Honda’s Jenson Button for a battling third place.
Button narrowly missed out on a podium with fourth, while the other McLaren of Juan Pablo Montoya was fifth.
Mark Webber ran a steady race to claim points for Williams with sixth place while his rookie team-mate Nico Rosberg charged from the back of the field to take seventh on his debut, clocking the race’s fastest laps on the way.
The German pitted on lap one after an incident but he fought back to take two points, just ahead of Red Bull’s Christian Klien, whose team-mate David Coulthard was 10th.
At the start, Schumacher led away but Ferrari’s hopes of a buffer in the shape of his team-mate Felipe Massa were dashed at the second corner.
Massa defended second place vigorously at the first turn but Alonso quickly bullied his way past and set about hunting down Schumacher.
Ferrari debutant Massa’s attempts to keep pace with Alonso almost ended in disaster for both drivers when he spun at the start of lap eight.
His out-of-control Ferrari missed Alonso’s Renault by inches but he was able to resume in sixth.
Schumacher was the first of the leaders to stop for more fuel and fresh tyres, on lap 15. He preserved his advantage over Alonso so when the Spaniard stopped, he emerged behind Schumacher.
Alonso’s team-mate Giancarlo Fisichella was soon out of the picture when an apparent engine problem left him spluttering back to the pits and into retirement on lap 22.
Montoya’s pit stop strategy allowed him to move back in front of Button but the Englishman soon rectified that with a forceful pass on lap 29, diving down the inside of the McLaren at turn one.
Raikkonen’s qualifying crash, which left him last on the grid, allowed McLaren to experiment with an alternative strategy and he reached half distance without pitting, helping him into third. He stopped for the only time on lap 30 and rejoined in sixth.
Alonso stayed glued to Schumacher’s gearbox until lap 37 when the Ferrari driver stopped for more fuel and tyres.
That gave Alonso three laps to build a cushion big enough to take the lead and he managed with nothing to spare, emerging from the pits neck and neck with Schumacher but just holding on.
Alonso kept up a slim cushion at the front while further back Rosberg and Coulthard duelled side by side for several corners before the Williams driver took eight on lap 50. Rosberg did the same to Klien on the last lap.