Anthony Davidson aside, the top ten continued in much the same vein as before, with only the fired-up Coulthard making in-roads. The Red Bull driver was right up behind team-mate Webber by lap 25 and, with the Australian struggling with a fuel flap that had refused to close after his stop, was soon up another spot. Both RB3s then hunted down the lacklustre Fisichella, the Italian clearly struggling with an ill-handling
Renault, taking seventh and eighth as Davidson's long opening stint finally ended.
Fisichella was not the only one in handling trouble, with none other than Alonso struggling to put his car exactly where he wanted it. Later reporting both under- and oversteer, the world champion provided little resistance to the charging Heidfeld, who underlined
BMW's latent potential by sweeping around the outside of his Mercedes-powered rival for fourth at turn four on lap 32.
Neither
McLaren appeared particularly happy on its second set of tyres, with Hamilton unable to regain ground lost to Massa during the pit-stops. The Briton was now nine seconds adrift, and in danger of falling into Raikkonen's clutches as the Finn attempted to make it a
Ferrari 1-2.
Coulthard's assault on the points ended on lap 37, the Scot pulling into pit-lane with his right-rear driveshaft having failed, joining Button, Speed, Liuzzi and
Takuma Sato on the injury list. The Japanese driver had suffered a massive engine failure on the home straight three laps earlier, and the problem sadly heralded a similar fate for
Super Aguri team-mate Davidson, who made to six laps from home before his V8 followed suit.
Red Bull's hopes of taking anything home from the three 'flyaways' took a hit on lap 38, when Webber had his airbox-mounted 'mid-wing' break off, probably as the result of the deflected airflow caused by his still-open fuel flap, and then parked up five laps later, clearly frustrated that his
Williams reliability record had followed him to his new home.
