Felipe Massa and
Lewis Hamilton have blown the 2008
Formula 1 World Championship wide open, after the former made it three wins out of three in Istanbul and the latter proved McLaren-Mercedes are well-and-truly back in contention.
The Turkish Grand Prix marked the first time since the season curtain-raiser in Melbourne back in March that
McLaren have seemed to have the measure of
Ferrari, and with an unusually off-colour
Kimi Raikkonen coming home just third, battle – it would seem – has been resumed.
After the starting lights took what seemed to be an eternity to come on, when the race finally did get underway pole-sitter Massa made a textbook getaway, as Hamilton – on the clean side of the track – shot past McLaren-Mercedes team-mate
Heikki Kovalainen to slot into second place.
Raikkonen attempted to dive up the inside of Kovalainen into third, but as the latter squeezed the world championship leader out,
Robert Kubica in the BMW-Sauber was able to go around the outside of both of them to nick the spot, as
Fernando Alonso demoted Raikkonen a further place down to sixth.
A collision towards the back of the pack, however, saw
Giancarlo Fisichella enter turn one far too quickly, lock up and slam into the back of Kazuki Nakajima’s
Williams. Indeed, the experienced Italian – making his 199th grand prix start in Istanbul this weekend – almost flipped over as he marked his third first corner incident in as many years in Turkey, and both he and the rear wing-less Nakajima became early retirees.
With Fisichella’s team-mate
Adrian Sutil requiring a new front wing too, the safety car was deployed, with Massa leading from Hamilton, Kubica, Kovalainen, Alonso crucially ahead of Raikkonen and
Mark Webber,
Nick Heidfeld,
Nico Rosberg and
David Coulthard rounding out the top ten.
