Felipe Massa did exactly what he had vowed to do in the 2007 Turkish Grand Prix, sealing his second successive Istanbul triumph to launch both himself and
Ferrari back into the world championship fight.
As last year when he stormed to his maiden
Formula 1 success ahead of
Michael Schumacher, the Brazilian was flawless in the Turkish heat, seeing off the challenge of team-mate
Kimi Raikkonen to prevail on a day when everything it seemed could go wrong for
McLaren did.
With the four championship contenders looking evenly-matched on the front two rows of the grid and the world title fight balanced on a knife-edge with only six races remaining, the race was always going to be a high-drama affair. So it was to prove.
Indeed,
David Coulthard was in trouble even before it had got underway, with gearbox issues on the warm-up lap round to the grid, but his woes were nothing as compared to those of the two McLaren drivers when the lights went out, with both suffering from being on the dirty side of the grid.
As Massa led away from pole, Raikkonen from row two sling-shot past
Lewis Hamilton into second place but it was
Fernando Alonso who really lost out, being passed by both the BMW-Saubers to drop back down to sixth. A little further back,
Jarno Trulli got nudged into a spin by the slow-starting
Renault of countryman
Giancarlo Fisichella heading into turn one, but luckily the rest of the pack somehow managed to avoid the rotating
Toyota and Jarno lived to fight another day, albeit now all the way down in last place.
By the end of the opening lap alone Alonso was already a staggering 3.5 seconds down on the leading Ferraris, and clearly determined to get past
Nick Heidfeld, as evinced by him coming perilously close to losing it as he pushed just a little too hard on lap three.
![2007 Turkish Grand Prix podium finishers: [L-R] Kimi Raikkonen (2nd), Felipe Massa (1st) and Fernando Alonso (3rd)](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/367642.jpg)
