On a new circuit for Formula 1, the usual suspects were up front for the start after practice and a qualifying session that would always favour the top teams whose cars had the power and handling to enable them to master this track. Philipe Massa, yet again showed his class with a fastest qualifying lap that relegated Lewis Hamilton to second place with Robert Kubica in third. Both Kimi Raikonnen and Fernando Alonso, the home favourite, were struggling to produce a good time and were only able to qualify in 4th and 12th places respectively.
The race itself started without much incident, unless you were an Alonso fan. He had his rear wing damaged on the first lap and was retired from the race after bringing the Renault in for it to be replaced. A huge disappointment for the thousands of fans there to see him race. Up front though, Massa established an early lead which he would only relinquish temporarily during the first pit stops until all the front runners had made their stops. Even an incident in the pit lane where he almost came together with Adrian Sutil didn’t affect his progress to the chequered flag and the inaugural win in this race. He was later fined for the incident but no other action was taken. Hamilton had no answer to the pace of Massa and had to settle for an incident free 2nd place and 8 points, which will do his prospects of winning the championship no harm. Robert Kubica took 3rd after a stint up to the initial pit stop where his car could be seen squirming around under breaking. He seems well able to cope with this sort of distraction and get on with racing.
Kimi Raikonnen seems to be finding everything very difficult of late and is not getting his Ferrari to perform anywhere near a well as Massa. He was slow off the mark and wasn’t able to retain position early on and never recovered sufficiently to challenge the leaders. This poor start was compounded by a pit lane incident where he took off before the refuelling rig had been removed from his car, injuring one of the Ferrari pit crew. His race ended shortly after when his engine gave out in dramatic fashion. This 2nd engine failure for Ferrari in two races may be a cause for some concern but they have a knack of getting to the root of this type of problem and resolving them quickly.
Next up, Spa, which on recent form should favour the Ferraris.
F1 : Massa dominant in Valencia - Valence - F1-Live.com
