Brazilian Felipe Massa led Ferrari to a one-two victory at the Bahrain Grand Prix on Sunday with teammate Kimi Raikkonen seizing the championship lead from McLaren's Lewis Hamilton.
Felipe Massa celebrates on the podium after leading a Ferrari one-two at the Bahrain Grand Prix at the Sakhir circuit yesterday. (photo: shanghaidaily.com)
Massa's sixth career win brought him his first points of the Formula?One season and came at the same Sakhir desert circuit where he fired up his title challenge last year with a pole-to-flag victory.
"It was a sensational day," Massa said. "The race was pretty difficult because I didn't want to make any mistakes so I didn't push the car hard, I just wanted to bring it home."
World champion Raikkonen collected the 50th podium finish of his Grand Prix career and the Finnish "Iceman" took over at the top with 19 points, three clear of BMW Sauber's German Nick Heidfeld, after three races.
Hamilton, McLaren teammate Heikki Kovalainen and Poland's Robert Kubica are all level on 14.
Britain's Hamilton endured a nightmare afternoon, finishing 13th and lapped by the Ferraris after making an agonizingly slow start and then running into the back of former teammate Fernando Alonso's Renault.
McLaren was also leapfrogged at the top of the constructors' standings by BMW Sauber.
Kubica finished third, after becoming the first BMW Sauber driver to start a Grand Prix from pole position, with Heidfeld a close fourth.
BMW Sauber has now finished on the podium in all of the first three races of the season, a feat unmatched by Ferrari or McLaren. It has 30 points to Ferrari's 29 and McLaren's 28.
Kovalainen was fifth, ahead of Toyota's Italian Jarno Trulli and Australian Mark Webber in a Red Bull. Germany's Nico Rosberg took the final point for Williams.
Massa led from the lights, making a faster getaway than Kubica, and took the checkered flag 3.3 seconds ahead of Raikkonen.
(Agencies via China Daily April 7, 2008)