Clean Getaway Lets Massa Win

With both McLarens consigned to the dirty side of the grid, pole position sealed the win for Ferrari. By MARK HUGHES

It was a Ferrari day. But it was nowhere near as emphatic as the one-two made it look. In this age of Formula 1 where most of the race result is decided on Saturday afternoon, Felipe Massa's excellent pole position lap was decisive.

Once the fuel weight sums are done it's clear that Massa only sneaked pole through being fuelled one lap lighter than the McLaren - and that's all it took. It put the Ferrari on the clean, fast side of the grid and the McLaren on the dirty slow one, triggering a startline choreography that ensured a Ferrari one-two from beginning to end, Massa ahead of Kimi Raikkonen.

McLaren and Hamilton were hopeful they might have been able to split the Ferraris had Lewis not suffered a front-right blowout on the eve of his second stop, but the maths say he would likely have failed in that bid by 4-5sec. As it was, he wrestled the car back to the pits from turn nine, three laps earlier than his planned stop, and did well to come away with fifth place.

Had it blown in turn eight rather than nine, he wouldn't have finished at all. Had it blown early in the lap, he'd have lost so much time getting back to the pits he'd not have been in the points. Given the pendulum of incidents any driver gets in a title campaign, it was good damage limitation.

There were a few other significant what-ifs too. If Raikkonen had done the lap he should have done on Saturday instead of being too aggressive in the last two corners, there's every reason to believe he might have been the dominant pole-to-flag man.

On his penultimate race lap he went around more than 0.6sec faster than anyone else had managed all afternoon. But being behind his team-mate on the grid meant he was behind him in the race too. There were a couple of times when Raikkonen seemed to be demonstrating that he could be lapping faster if only his team-mate were not there. But Massa had no need to be pushing, given that he had control of the race.

If Fernando Alonso had managed to find an extra 0.028sec from his McLaren in qualifying and lined up on the clean side to further punish Raikkonen's Saturday mistake, then he too would probably have beaten Kimi in the race. As it was he took a fortunate third, having lost around 10sec to Hamilton while stuck behind the BMWs for nearly all his first stint.

He could almost certainly have found more than the 0.028sec qualifying deficit had he not chosen to qualify on the harder tyre. That decision probably cost him two championship points. Given Lewis's misfortune, he could have been just three points behind him in the table now rather than five. The Ferraris have been dynamite off the grid ever since they got their new start mechanism at Magny-Cours.

Combine this with the fact that they started on the softer, gripper tyre, with both McLarens on the hards, and their clean-side starting slots, and the lights had barely changed before the red cars swamped the silver ones.

Hamilton didn't even have the option of blocking Raikkonen before the Ferrari was clearly past and on the tail of the equally fast-starting Massa. That was it really; game over as far as the victory was concerned. Raikkonen was fuelled a lap shorter than Massa, giving Felipe both the positional and strategical advantage - and he parlayed this into a consummate professional victory.

There was a brief moment towards the end of the second stint when Raikkonen launched an attack and got himself right onto Massa's tail; Felipe responded and in doing so made a mistake into turn seven. It was close, but it still didn't quite present Kimi with an opportunity, and the brief moment of crisis for Massa was over.

These two are still racing each other as hard as they have been all year. Hamilton ran third through the first stint, fuelled a lap longer than Massa, not enough to overcome the 4.5sec deficit he had accrued to the Ferraris by then.

Alonso - having been passed off the line by the very light/soft-tyred/clean-side BMW of Robert Kubica, and the sister car of Nick Heidfeld later in the lap - was limited to their pace, unable to pass. Only by being fuelled to run a lap longer than Heidfeld was Alonso finally able to clear the BMWs and begin his race in earnest.

But he was 10sec adrift of Hamilton by then, 14sec behind the Ferraris. There was a lot of head-scratching over which was the faster tyre over a stint, reflected in a very varied choice as the blankets were removed on the grid. Ferrari had chosen to start on the medium to ensure it retained its grid advantage over the McLarens into the first corner.

"It was a bit of a risk," said Massa, "but not a big one. When we compared the medium and the hard on Friday there was only a small difference in favour of the hard and because the track always comes towards the softer tyre as it rubbers in during the weekend, we weren't too concerned."

As recounted, the mediums stood up fine during the first stint - and because Ferrari then had positional advantage it made no sense to put on the hards for the middle stint. Staying with the mediums was the no-brainer defensive choice. As it turned out, the hard was probably the faster tyre even on the Ferrari, as illustrated by it being on Raikkonen's car when he set that devastating fastest lap in the final stint.

McLaren was not at any stage tempted to fit the medium for the middle stint, being fairly convinced that on its car it was the slower tyre over a stint and therefore best left for the short stint at the end. Instead, McLaren hoped it might just catch the Ferraris by fuelling Hamilton for a longer middle stint.

Because Hamilton had run a lap longer than Massa and two longer than Raikkonen to the first stops, McLaren was able to respond to Ferrari and ensure he was fuelled significantly longer to the second stops. It was this that McLaren believed might have enabled Lewis to leapfrog Kimi.

But a closer look at the numbers shows this was very unlikely to have happened, even if it had not been for the puncture. Lewis was fuelled for six laps longer than Kimi, who pitted at the end of lap 41, with Hamilton 8sec behind.

Replicating Hamilton's six light laps before his first stop and overlaying them onto Raikkonen's heavy laps after his second stop gives the following picture:

At this point it would have been time for Hamilton's stop. A pitstop at this track costs around 16sec plus the stationary time. The time needed to put in the fuel for the remaining 22 laps would have been around 6.5sec, giving a total of 22.5sec. Even if all had gone perfectly, Hamilton would have missed leapfrogging the Ferrari therefore by around 4sec.

All this was made irrelevant by the blowout on lap 43, as recounted by Hamilton: "As I exited the fast left-hander at turn eight I saw some bits fly off the tyre and as soon as I braked into turn nine it just exploded. I went off and almost hit the barrier. The wheel just locked up and I was very lucky to get the car stopped. From then on I was just trying to nurse it to the pits."

He almost collected the pitlane barrier as he made his way in. The explosion had ripped the right-hand wing endplate off completely and also taken away much of the inner part of the bargeboard. Things were further complicated by the fact that this was the lap on which Alonso had to come in for his second stop and the crew had only just got him away as Hamilton crawled in.

There was difficulty getting the jack beneath the damaged front, causing further delay. In all, they did exceptionally well to get him under way again in just over 10sec, minus his missing aero appendages. He'd lost third and fourth to Alonso and Heidfeld respectively but got out a few seconds ahead of Heikki Kovalainen's Renault.

The cause of the failure was still being investigated by Bridgestone at the time of writing. It's quite possible that it was simply overstressed through the severe demands of this track, particularly turn eight. The McLaren does seem to work its front tyres harder than the Ferrari, this almost certainly why it has superior warm-up and thereby an advantage in qualifying.

But it's probably also why the McLaren isn't as quick as the Ferrari on circuits like this featuring long-duration fast turns. The best McLaren race lap was 0.668sec slower than Ferrari's best, whereas in qualifying there was nothing in it. These patterns suggest that the McLaren may have simply been working that outside front just a little too hard for the severe demands of this place.

The team quickly inspected the front tyres that had come off Alonso's car and saw indications of possible over-work there too. "The team told me on the radio, 'Be careful because it seems that you may have the same problem that happened on Lewis's car,'" explained Alonso.

Hamilton's adaptation to the revised handling of the damaged car was such that he was only around 1sec slower than before - this just a couple of tenths slower than Kovalainen. As such, Heikki didn't have quite enough laps left in which to get close enough for a move. Not that he would likely have been able to get past.

Illustrating just how ill-suited this generation of cars is to overtaking, even the Turkish track - with a layout previously considered quite good for passing - served up only a few such moves. Most of them were done by Jenson Button's Honda and Jarno Trulli's Toyota, the latter a fastish car out of position near the back after being punted into a spin in the opening seconds by Giancarlo Fisichella's Renault.

Button's was a great drive from the back of the grid to 13th, just beating Anthony Davidson's Super Aguri - which had lost many positions at turn one avoiding the Trulli incident, wasting Anthony's brilliant qualifying effort. Button's best lap was a full 0.7sec faster than his similarly back-row-starting team-mate Rubens Barrichello, who finished 17th just behind the delayed Trulli. It was only 0.8sec slower than Alonso's best lap.

This was a stunning performance from Jenson and the fact that it bought him only 13th is a sad indictment of where the team is at. Although Kovalainen failed in his bid to catch Hamilton by just over 1sec, his was another excellent drive.

He ran most of the first stint seventh, just behind the Heidfeld/Alonso stalemate, and his long 21-lap first stint saw him briefly lead before rejoining battle with Heidfeld. The Renault just didn't have the last couple of tenths of pace to really pressure the BMW, but Heikki's sixth was three places ahead of team-mate Fisichella.

Kubica's race in the other BMW was severely compromised by his very short opening stint of just 12 laps. "We decided on Saturday to go very aggressive with him," said BMW's Mario Theissen, "by running him light and starting him on the softer tyres."

The hope was that it might get him onto the second or even the front row - but that was a hope dashed by Ferrari and McLaren finding more Q3 performance than BMW reckoned on. As such, although Kubica ran fifth for his first stint, he was leapfrogged by Heidfeld and Kovalainen at the first stops and by Nico Rosberg's Williams at the second, leaving him back in eighth.

Rosberg's was an excellent drive too, his best lap quicker than both Renaults and just a couple of tenths adrift of Heidfeld.

But the day belonged to Massa, on the first anniversary of his breakthrough victory. "I love this place," he said. "Here is where my career made a switch last year and where I started to fight with the frontrunners." However inconvenient it may have been for Ferrari's title hopes, Massa showed he is not ready to lie down just yet.