Fernando Alonso won the Spanish Grand Prix by nearly 10 seconds in a dominant performance in front of his home fans on Sunday to close the gap on championship leader Sebastian Vettel and get back in the Formula One title race. Finnish driver Kimi Raikkonen finished second for the third straight race, with Alonso's Ferrari teammate Felipe Massa third as most drivers chose a four-stop strategy due to ongoing problem with Pirelli's fast-degrading tires. That issue remains a big concern as tires still shred far too easily despite pre-race modifications. Starting from fifth place, Alonso won his second race this season, showing that Ferrari can challenge Red Bull for pure speed. Alonso was easily quicker than Vettel, with the three-time defending champion finishing 38.2 seconds behind in fourth ahead of teammate Mark Webber. "In the four years with Ferrari this is the best (car) we've had," Alonso said. "I realized the race was in our pockets if we don't do mistakes." He climbed on top of his Ferrari and waved a Spanish flag gleefully as he encouraged applause from the fans, who broke into chants of "Alonso, Alonso." It was Alonso's second win in Barcelona -- the first coming in 2006 -- and his seventh career podium on the Circuit de Catalunya. "It's very special winning at home and it doesn't matter how many times you repeat it," Alonso said. "Very long last laps because you want to finish as quickly as possible. Difficult qualifying as we were not too quick yesterday but we knew we had the pace on the long runs. We did it and everything worked perfect." Read more http://espn.go.com/racing/f1/story/...-alonso-wins-homeland-spanish-gp-close-f1-gap
