Massa leads Ferrari one-two in France

Eurosport - Mon, 23 Jun 14:48:00 2008

Ferrari secured a one-two in the French Grand Prix at Magny-Cours, Felipe Massa winning from Kimi Raikkonen.

Toyota's Jarno Trulli finished third, claiming his first podium of the season.

Britain's Lewis Hamilton suffered a terrible race after incurring a 10-place grid penalty for running into Raikkonen in the pitlane during the last GP in Canada, eventually finishing in 11th.

Massa now leads the world championship with 48 points from former leader Robert Kubica (46), who finished in fifth in the BMW Sauber behind McLaren's Heikki Kovalainen, with Raikkonen third on 43 and Hamilton still on 38.

Mark Webber took sixth in the Red Bull ahead of Renault pair Nelson Piquet Jr and Fernando Alonso, Piquet snatching a position from his tam-mate on the penultimate lap as he recorded his first points of the season.

Briton David Coulthard, team-mate of Webber, ended in ninth ahead of Toyota's Timo Glock.
Hamilton was ordered to perform a drive-through penalty after 12 laps when stewards adjudged his first-lap pass on Sebastien Vettel at the chicane to have been illegal and that dropped him down towards the back of the field after he had battled up to 10th from 13th.

Pole-sitter Raikkonen led away Massa and the pair was some distance clear after the initial laps, with Trulli nicely tucked into third after passing Alonso, who suffered a slow start.

Hamilton touched the back of his team-mate Kovalainen but the cars were not damaged; he then displeased Alonso with an aggressive pass 18 laps in that shoved the Spaniard over to the outside as Hamilton pulled out of his slipstream and went wheel-to-wheel.

Englishman Jenson Button was forced out of the race with a damaged front wing after running his Honda into the back of Sebastien Bourdais, the sole retiree on the day.

Piquet, desperate to impress after taking a long time to adapt to F1 from GP2, encountered a problem with his pitlane speed limiter and was passed by Kovalainen on the exit, dropping him to 12th after 25 laps.

Trulli had to fight off Kubica - who knew that a podium finish would maintain his lead in the championship - in the middle stint as he began to lose seven-tenths of a second a lap to the Polish driver.

Raikkonen lost a gap of seven seconds on Massa as he suffered an exhaust problem that persisted until the end of the race, costing him small amounts of time - with 32 laps remaining he let the Brazilian past.

When the Finn came in for his final stop the mechanics left the exhaust alone, a gamble that paid off as they fuelled him to the end of the race and allowed him to coast home in second.

There was a brief scare for the field when it began to rain with fourteen laps remaining, but it did not last. Hamilton, over 10 seconds and two positions behind the points, could have done with the chaos that a downpour would have initiated, but it was not to be.

Trulli was caught late on by Kovalainen - who had passed Kubica after the final pitstops - with the latter also hanging around, but he defended his third to finish 52 seconds behind the winner.
Raikkonen was 13 seconds off Massa's pace at the chequered flag.