It was a considerable risk, but one Hamilton knew he needed to take, and next he homed in on
Sebastian Vettel and Schumacher, but as he found the
STR a tough nut to crack the pressure was beginning to show, and the tyre lock-ups ever-more apparent.
Schumacher pitted at the end of lap 34 to make Lewis' job somewhat easier, and he now lay 15 seconds behind Heidfeld – the man whose place he would need to take if he was still to lift the crown. Thirty-seven laps remained.
The unexpected continued as Nakajima betrayed his lack of
Formula 1 racing experience by knocking over one of his mechanics as he came in to make his first-ever
F1 pit-stop, while further up the order Kubica threw another spanner in the works by challenging and then passing Alonso for third place, the Spaniard like his team-mate struggling in the middle stint. With Raikkonen also beginning to find some pace, all of a sudden, this was anyone's championship.
Hamilton came back into the pits from ninth place not long afterwards, but conventional wisdom said a 6.5-second pit-stop with 34 laps still to go would surely not be enough to get him to the end of the race…would it? Kovalainen then completed
Renault's day of misery by crashing out heavily, while Kubica seemed to be adopting a similar strategy to that of Hamilton by pitting early for a short-fill, and with 32 laps left to run the Briton needed to somehow find a way past Coulthard, Kubica, Rosberg and Heidfeld to stand any chance of lifting the laurels.
Barrichello's dream of breaking his 2007 points-scoring duck at home went up in smoke – quite literally – as his unloved
Honda lunched itself on the entry to the pit-lane 30 laps from the end of the season, leaving the experienced Brazilian with no points on the board for the first time in his 15-year career in the top flight.
Kubica now found himself having taken over Coulthard's place as the man most likely to be frustrated by Rosberg, as the
Williams and
BMW went at it hammer-and-tongs for sixth spot while the Scot pitted.
