Nick Heidfeld re-passed the fast-starting
Jarno Trulli to reclaim fifth place, whilst a little further back Hamilton found himself up behind former team-mate – and avowed nemesis –
Fernando Alonso. Suddenly the
McLaren shot up in the air, as it rear-ended the
Renault exiting one of the circuit's slow corners, its front wing flying off in the process.
That left Hamilton to tour back around to the pit-lane with a badly-understeering and skewed-handling Silver Arrow – shooting straight across the gravel trap at one point in evidence of his plight – and he was joined in the ‘repair room' by Honda ace
Jenson Button with a puncture and
Red Bull Racing's
David Coulthard, the Scot suffering a shredded right rear tyre in the opening lap fracas.
Those shenanigans also saw Piquet spinning through the gravel before rejoining the fray, whilst Heidfeld's march continued as the German swept past Kovalainen, and up at the front Raikkonen went bravely around the outside of Kubica into second place at the start of lap three. Just over five minutes into the race, and we already had a
Ferrari one-two.
As Massa set a new fastest lap – a full 0.8 seconds quicker than his defending world champion team-mate – a great battle was brewing for sixth place between Trulli,
Nico Rosberg and
Mark Webber. The
Toyota and
Williams ran side-by-side as they fought out their entertaining, tooth-and-nail scrap, while behind them Alonso – now missing a chunk from his rear wing following the Hamilton contact and reporting vibrations from his R28 – was being hounded by the second Toyota of
Timo Glock, with Fisichella an impressive eleventh in the
Force India not far in arrears and holding off the challenge of
Honda's
Rubens Barrichello, who he had also beaten in Malaysia a fortnight ago.
