…The outside line proved the place to be at the start, as Raikkonen sling-shot past Hamilton and tucked in behind team-mate Massa in perfect scarlet choreography. Raikkonen cutting in, though, forced Hamilton to momentarily lift his foot off the throttle, which allowed Alonso too to get a run down the inside of him into turn two, and the Spaniard aggressively forced his way past, the pair almost touching in the process.
Further back down the field
Heikki Kovalainen tagged the back of
Ralf Schumacher's
Toyota and went off, while
Giancarlo Fisichella would make it a dreadful opening lap for reigning world champions
Renault by running off-piste a matter of corners later and rejoining the track only to be collected heavily by the unsighted Spyker of Sakon Yamamoto. Vitantonio Liuzzi also peeled into the pits for a new nose cone, ensuring it was an incident-strewn opening lap.
Turn four, though would witness even greater drama still, as Hamilton attempted to reclaim third place from Alonso, only to run wide and slip back down to eighth. Within a lap he had regained seventh from
Jarno Trulli and set about chasing down the BMWs ahead, only to almost go off again when he got caught out behind
Nick Heidfeld. Worse, though, far worse, lay just around the corner.
With Massa and Raikkonen pulling effortlessly away at the front and leaving Alonso fading in their wake,
Robert Kubica found a way past the sprightly
Mark Webber for fourth, but the major drama was Hamilton suddenly slowing as his engine cut out. With the
McLaren engineers frantically on the radio to him and all looking lost, the #2 machine suddenly kicked into life again, but the Briton had lost a whole half a minute – and twelve positions – in the process.
