As the gap at the front ebbed and flowed once more, Barrichello’s late pit-stop freed up Kubica, who immediately showed his true colours and proved just how much he had been compromised by the
Honda getting in front of him at the start by lapping two to three tenths of a second quicker than
anyone else on the track, McLarens included.
When Button pitted at the end of lap 41, Raikkonen was finally promoted up into the points, but it would only be a fleeting respite as he too came in seven laps later, rejoining just in time to see team-mate Massa flash by…a full lap ahead.
The relentless pace at the head of the field saw Alonso now holding a 7.5 second advantage over Hamilton, but neither was clearly in any mood to back off, despite the ever-menacing guardrail that seemed to loom closer with every lap.
Kubica’s late-stopping one-stop strategy, allied to the Pole’s lighting turn of speed, paid off as he came back out of the pitlane marginally in front of team-mate Heidfeld, who had run ahead of him for the majority of the race. A similar strategy worked equally well for Alex Wurz, who having qualified six spots adrift of
Williams team-mate Rosberg, leapfrogged him during the race to run solidly in the points at the track where nine years ago the Austrian had duelled ferociously with and got the better of none other than
Michael Schumacher.
Alonso pitted for the second and final time on lap 51, switching onto the unloved soft tyres, with Hamilton – whose car was now literally dancing around the circuit as the young Brit edged dangerously close to the Armco – following suit just two laps later. With 25 laps left to run, and a five-second gap between the two leading protagonists, battle was on.
Sutil would become the race’s third casualty when he swiped the barriers in a similar fashion to Liuzzi earlier on, while it would prove to be a particularly bad day for Spyker when team-mate Christijan Albers followed the German into retirement just a handful of laps from home.
