Buzzin F1 - Formula One Blog

Felipe Massa took the chequered flag today at the Bahrain Grand Prix for Ferrari, after dominating the race from the first lap. It’s the first points he’s scored so far this season but it’s his sixth career win in Formula One.
World Champion, Kimi Raikkonen finished on the tail of his Ferrari teammate to take his 50th podium position so far in his career. His second place has also put him at the top of the points chart with 19, 3 points ahead of Nick Heidfeld.

British driver, Lewis Hamilton, had a disastor of a race after messing-up at the start and later, damaging his car badly after running into the back of his old mate Fernando Alonso. He had lost seven places at the start of the race and finally finished in 13th place. Amazingly, Alonso did not appear to have too much rear end damage for a while but, it was soon apparent that he was in trouble with the balance of the car.

Robert Kubica, the pole position man, did not make such a great getaway off the line, but had a very impressive race finally finishing in third place to take his well deserved place on the podium. It is the first time that a BMW Sauber driver has started a grand prix in pole position. His teammate Nick Heidfeld finished in a creditable fourth place and moved the team up the the top spot of the Constructor’s Championship.

Jenson Button and David Coulthard were battling it out until Button tried to dive up the inside of Coulthard spinning both cars of the track. Fortunately both drivers were able to rejoin immediately, Button minus his nose cone. He pitted again and then retired from the race on lap 21. There may be handbags at dawn down in the pits!

Another exciting scrap happened between the Toyota driver, Timo Glock and Fernando Alonso. Alonso was trying to pass Glock who was in ninth place on lap 38 but Timo was having none-of-it and Fernando was seen locking his rear brakes and losing more time as he shook his fist at Glock. I’d love to be a fly on the wall when those to get together!

Here are the results for the Bahrain Grand Prix 2008:

1 Felipe Massa (Brz) Ferrari one hour 31 minutes 6.970 seconds
2 Kimi Raikkonen (Fin) Ferrari +3.339 secs
3 Robert Kubica (Pol) BMW Sauber +4.998
4 Nick Heidfeld (Ger) BMW Sauber +8.409
5 Heikki Kovalainen (Fin) McLaren-Mercedes +26.789
6 Jarno Trulli (Ita) Toyota +41.314
7 Mark Webber (Aus) Red Bull-Renault +45.473
8 Nico Rosberg (Ger) Williams-Toyota +55.889
9 Timo Glock (Ger) Toyota +1:09.500
10 Fernando Alonso (Spa) Renault +1:17.181
11 Rubens Barrichello (Bra) Honda +1:17.862
12 Giancarlo Fisichella (Ita) Force India-Ferrari one lap behind
13 Lewis Hamilton (GB) McLaren-Mercedes one lap
14 Kazuki Nakajima (Jpn) Williams-Toyota one lap
15 Sebastien Bourdais (Fra) Toro Rosso-Ferrari one lap
16 Anthony Davidson (GB) Super Aguri-Honda one lap
17 Takuma Sato (Jpn) Super Aguri-Honda one lap
18 David Coulthard (GB) Red Bull-Renault one lap
19 Adrian Sutil (Ger) Force India-Ferrari two laps
R Nelson Piquet Jr (Brz) Renault 40 laps completed
R Jenson Button (GB) Honda 19 laps
R Sebastian Vettel (Ger) Toro Rosso-Ferrari 0 laps

Fastest lap: Kovalainen, 1:33.193, lap 49.

Key: R = retired