Felipe Massa
The first ever Grand Prix has taken place on the new street circuit of Valencia, with blue skies and no sight of the safety car, but what a boring race!
This track contained about as much excitement as watching paint dry, with practically no overtaking moves and no racing whatsoever.
Felipe Massa in the Ferrari took the victory yesterday at the Spanish circuit after taking the lead from the start followed by Britain’s Lewis Hamilton in the McLaren.
On the first lap, Williams driver, Kazuki Nakajima, drove into the back of Fernando Alonso’s Renault. Both drivers needed to pit, Nakajima for a new front wing and a whole new back wing for Alonso with a much longer stop for the repairs.
By lap two, Massa had made a gap between himself and Hamilton, of 1.5 seconds with Robert Kubica in third, Kovalainen in fourth and Sebastian Vettel in fifth.
David Coulthard in the Red Bull, also managed to get caught up in the Nakajima and Alonso incident, seeing him spinning and going back down the grid.
The problems weren’t over for Alonso, as his mechanics had obviously found other problems with the car, and Alonso was out of his seat and it’s race over. Apparently, there had also been gearbox issues with the car, but a great disappointment for all those Spanish fans.
On lap eight, Coulthard tried to pass Adrian Sutil in the Force India but contact was made and he span yet again, although good luck was coming his way when on lap twelve Rubens Barrichello in the Honda ran wide letting Coulthard through to take seventeenth place!
Massa had a close encounter on his second pit stop when his team released him from pit box as Sutil was already coming down the pit lane. Massa was put under investigation and it was announced that the penalty would be imposed after the race.
Fortunately, Massa was allowed to keep his first place after the stewards had deemed his release dangerous. The Ferrari team have been reprimanded and fined a total of 10,000€ for the “unsafe release from pit-stop, although no advantage was obtained.”
Sutil later went onto put his Force India in the tyre wall while Kimi Raikkonen in the second Ferrari, hit one of his refuelling men after trying to leave the pit before the fuel nozzle had been removed.
The injured man, was in charge of the fuel rig and was hit and run over by the right rear tyre. At the moment he seems to have just injured his foot but is understood to be having a check-up at the hospital after complaining of back pains.
Two laps later, Raikkonen’s engine expired in a ball of smoke, ending a disastrous weekend for the Finn and again no points.
Here are the results:
1. Felipe Massa (Brz) Ferrari one hour 35 minutes 32.339 seconds
2. Lewis Hamilton (GB) McLaren-Mercedes at 5.611secs
3. Robert Kubica (Pol) BMW Sauber at 37.353
4. Heikki Kovalainen (Fin) McLaren- Mercedes at 39.703
5. Jarno Trulli (Ita) Toyota at 50.684
6. Sebastian Vettel (Ger) Toro Rosso- Ferrari at 52.625
7. Timo Glock (Ger) Toyota at 1:07.990
8. Nico Rosberg (Ger) Williams-Toyota at 1:11.457
9. Nick Heidfeld (Ger) BMW Sauber at 1:22.177
10. Sebastien Bourdais (Fra) Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1:29.794
11. Nelson Piquet Jr (Brz) Renault 1:32.717
12. Mark Webber (Aus) Red Bull-Renault one lap behind
13. Jenson Button (GB) Honda one lap
14. Giancarlo Fisichella (Ita) Force India-Ferrari one lap
15. Kazuki Nakajima (Jpn) Williams-Toyota one lap
16. Rubens Barrichello (Brz) Honda one lap
17. David Coulthard (GB) Red Bull-Renault one lap
R Kimi Raikkonen (Fin) Ferrari 45 laps completed
R Adrian Sutil (Ger) Force India-Ferrari 41 laps completed
R Fernando Alonso (Spa) Renault one lap completed
Key: R = retired
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