FEATURED - Sunday, August 24, 2008 16:29 - 0 Comments

Felipe Massa takes dominant victory

Felipe Massa took a dominant win today for the inaugural race at Valencia, sealing yet another European Grand Prix victory. The start of the race was relatively uneventful with Raikkonen losing a place and slipping down to forth. Massa was never really threatned at any point in the race and towards the end easily pulled away from Hamilton.

The only thing marring todays victory was the near collision that almost happened in the pitlane with Adrian Sutil, the incident is being investigated and Massa could expect a fine or a reprimand or both. Any harsher action is unlikely to happen. Kimi Raikkonen didnt fare very well in the race and in a very tense moment ran over one of his pit crew trying to get back on track before Kovalainen who pitting at the same time.

Overally the first formula one race in Valencia was well executed and despite the expectation of multiple safety car periods, they never came. However if the race is to maintain much interest then the designers should probably look to modify the track in somewhere to create some room for overtaking.

Classified:

Pos  Driver        Team                      Time
 1.  Massa         Ferrari               (B)  1h35:32.339
 2.  Hamilton      McLaren-Mercedes      (B)  +     5.611
 3.  Kubica        BMW Sauber            (B)  +    37.353
 4.  Kovalainen    McLaren-Mercedes      (B)  +    39.703
 5.  Trulli        Toyota                (B)  +    50.684
 6.  Vettel        Toro Rosso-Ferrari    (B)  +    52.625
 7.  Glock         Toyota                (B)  +  1:07.990
 8.  Rosberg       Williams-Toyota       (B)  +  1:11.457
 9.  Heidfeld      BMW Sauber            (B)  +  1:22.177
10.  Bourdais      Toro Rosso-Ferrari    (B)  +  1:29.794
11.  Piquet        Renault               (B)  +  1:32.717
12.  Webber        Red Bull-Renault      (B)  +     1 lap
13.  Button        Honda                 (B)  +     1 lap
14.  Fisichella    Force India-Ferrari   (B)  +     1 lap
15.  Nakajima      Williams-Toyota       (B)  +     1 lap
16.  Barrichello   Honda                 (B)  +     1 lap
17.  Coulthard     Red Bull-Renault      (B)  +     1 lap

Fastest lap: Massa, 1:38.708

Not classified/retirements:

Driver        Team                      On lap
Raikkonen     Ferrari               (B)    46
Sutil         Force India-Ferrari   (B)    42
Alonso        Renault               (B)    1

World Championship standings, round 12:

Drivers:                    Constructors:             
 1.  Hamilton      70        1.  Ferrari               121
 2.  Massa         64        2.  McLaren-Mercedes      113
 3.  Raikkonen     57        3.  BMW Sauber             96
 4.  Kubica        55        4.  Toyota                 41
 5.  Kovalainen    43        5.  Renault                31
 6.  Heidfeld      41        6.  Red Bull-Renault       24
 7.  Trulli        26        7.  Williams-Toyota        17
 8.  Alonso        18        8.  Honda                  14
 9.  Webber        18        9.  Toro Rosso-Ferrari     11
10.  Glock         15
11.  Piquet        13
12.  Barrichello   11
13.  Vettel         9
14.  Rosberg        9
15.  Nakajima       8
16.  Coulthard      6
17.  Button         3
18.  Bourdais       2