Bahrain Grand Prix: Brazilian Felipe Massa
led Ferrari to a one-two victory at the Bahrain Grand Prix today
with team mate Kimi Raikkonen seizing the championship lead from
McLaren's Lewis Hamilton.
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.
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 team mate 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 agonisingly slow
start and then running into the back of former team mate Fernando
Alonso's Renault.
McLaren were 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 have now finished on the podium in all of the
first three races of the season, a feat unmatched by Ferrari or
McLaren. They have 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 chequered flag 3.3 seconds ahead of
Raikkonen.