French F1 Grand Prix: Massa Wins In France As Raikkonen Hits Trouble

Massa takes the championship lead with his third win of the season

That was fantastic, I didn't expect that. Sometimes you need a bit of luck, and we got that with Kimi's exhaust. It was a good present. It was a great race. We showed our performance here, we are heading in the right direction, with the team doing a fantastic job

By Citizen Correspondent Sir Stephen

Date Posted: 06/23/08

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With the 2008 season rapidly approaching the halfway mark, Felipe Massa left France with the lead of the drivers’ championship. And on recent form, who’s to say he can’t go all the way? He may have benefitted from team mate Kimi Raikkonen’s technical woes, but even with a sick car, Ferrari’s one-two was emphatic.

And as McLaren and BMW Sauber slipped down the order, it was Toyota who were partying hardest in the Magny-Cours paddock on Sunday evening…

Brazilian Felipe Massa was handed victory in the French Grand Prix when Ferrari team-mate Kimi Raikkonen ran into problems with a broken exhaust.

Raikkonen was in control of a race dominated by Ferrari when his right-hand exhaust cracked at half-distance. But such was Ferrari's advantage that Raikkonen held on to second place. Jarno Trulli marked Toyota's best race of the season with third while Lewis Hamilton was 10th after falling foul of officials for the second race in a row.

It was always going to be a difficult race for the Englishman following his 10-place grid penalty for crashing into the back of Raikkonen in the pits in the previous race in Canada. But the 23-year-old made it even harder for himself by cutting the Nurburgring chicane in the process of passing Toro Rosso's Sebastian Vettel as he sought to make up places on the opening lap. That led to a drive-through penalty, the most lenient punishment available to the stewards for the offence, which cost him any realistic chance of scoring points.

There will, though, be some debate about whether Hamilton deserved to penalised, with McLaren team boss Ron Dennis claiming after the race that Hamilton was already ahead of Vettel before the corner. What was not up for debate was the superiority of the Ferraris. It was obvious from his lap times that even had Hamilton suffered no penalties, the McLaren did not have the pace to challenge the Ferraris.

Raikkonen converted his pole position into a lead at the first corner, and set about building the gap he needed to keep his lead, knowing that he was to make his first stop two laps earlier than Massa. Raikkonen, edging further ahead by the lap, was nearly five seconds clear of his team-mate when he stopped on lap 21.