Highlights

Massa wins, Hamilton seizes overall lead

(Reuters)
Updated: 2007-05-14 09:40

Ferrari's Felipe Massa won the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday, with 22-year-old British rookie Lewis Hamilton seizing the championship lead from McLaren team mate Fernando Alonso in only his fourth Formula One race.

Double world champion Alonso finished third, eclipsed before his 140,000 strong home crowd by Brazilian Massa and the extraordinary Hamilton.

Hamilton, already the first driver in Formula One history to finish his first three races on the podium, has yet to win but now leads the standings with 30 points to Alonso's 28 and Massa's 27.

Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen, level on 22 points with Alonso and Hamilton before the start, retired after 10 laps with a mechanical problem.

Massa, celebrating his second win in a row and fourth of his career on a bright afternoon at the Circuit de Catalunya, started on pole position and only ceded the lead at the pitstops.

The Brazilian, pilloried by the Italian media after a glaring mistake in the Malaysian Grand Prix in April, took the chequered flag 6.7 seconds clear of Hamilton.

The Briton, who finished third in the Australian season-opener, has now finished second for three races in a row and led all four.

Hamilton made a great start from fourth place, slipping past Raikkonen into the first corner and snapping up second place when Massa closed the door on Alonso and forced the Spaniard to run wide over the gravel.

That was the only time Massa was seriously challenged, his only scare coming at the first pitstop when spilt fuel around the fuel cap ignited in a sheet of flame as the 26-year-old pulled away.

Alonso was fourth place at the end of lap one but moved back to third when Raikkonen slowed with a mechanical problem, returning to the pits at a crawl.

Poland's Robert Kubica finished fourth for BMW Sauber after team mate Nick Heidfeld, who led for a lap, retired with a mechanical problem after a troubled second pitstop.

Briton David Coulthard, at 36 the oldest driver in the race, claimed Red Bull's first points of the season in fifth place at the circuit where he made his Formula One debut in 1994.

Germany's Nico Rosberg was sixth for Williams with Finland's Heikki Kovalainen seventh for Renault.

Japan's Takuma Sato gave Super Aguri their first point in Formula One with eighth place.

The race was shortened by one lap after the first start was aborted because Italian Jarno Trulli's Toyota had stalled in sixth place on the grid. Trulli was pushed away and began the race from the pit lane.

His team mate Ralf Schumacher also had a miserable afternoon, rammed from behind by the Williams of Austrian Alexander Wurz when he braked into the new chicane on the opening lap.

Honda once again failed to score their first point of the season, with Brazilian Rubens Barrichello and Briton Jenson Button coming together on the 23rd lap as the latter was leaving the pit lane.