Now a gaping 40 seconds adrift of the runaway Ferraris and 30 behind his team-mate, Lewis found himself having to rely on all his celebrated overtaking prowess – remember Istanbul last year? – and began to scythe his way through the backmarkers. Coming up behind a gaggle comprising
Kazuki Nakajima, both the Super Aguris, Schumacher and Kovalainen, in a fearless display the silver #2 machine took four of them in the space of just one lap to move back up to twelfth, and when the luckless Webber dropped out of fifth and
Jenson Button lost all drive in his
Honda, he was back up into the top ten, with 50 laps left to run.
As the front-runners began to make their pit-stops, Massa extended his lead over Raikkonen and to everyone's surprise Alonso was the first of the McLarens to blink, further underlining the brilliance of Hamilton's qualifying lap. The rookie was in next time around, but a very slow entry into the pits saw him rejoin back down in 14th, with
McLaren having taken the gamble of short-fuelling him and putting him onto the super-soft tyres when most other drivers had stuck with the ‘harder' option. Now the pressure was really on.
There was action further back as
Nico Rosberg and
David Coulthard's squabble continued into the pit-lane, the
Williams just managing to hold onto the advantage as they pulled out of their neighbouring pit boxes. There was a change, however, between Heidfeld and Trulli, as the
Toyota stole away sixth place, while down towards the back of the field
Adrian Sutil lost his car under braking for turn one and clattered into the side of
Anthony Davidson, sending them both into a spin.
With Hamilton continuing his fightback, but seeming to struggle somewhat on the super-soft rubber, it took a mightily brave move for the Briton to force his way down the inside of
Rubens Barrichello from a long way back into turn one, the Brazilian seeing the move coming and just giving him enough room.
