It's Kubica in front

With both Hamilton and Raikkonen eliminated in the opening stages, the path was clear for Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld to record BMW Sauber's first one-two finish. Alan Henry reports.

Robert Kubica took advantage of Lewis Hamilton's mortifying mistake to record his, and BMW Sauber's, maiden Grand Prix win at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve on June 8. Hamilton's hopes of claiming a second consecutive Canadian GP ended when he drove his McLaren- Mercedes into the back of the world champion Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari in the pit lane.

Hamilton and Raikkonen were rejoining the race after their first scheduled refuelling stops in the opening stages of the seventh round of the Formula One world championship and both cars were eliminated on the spot with suspension damage, leaving the path clear for Kubica and Nick Heidfeld to record a onetwo finish for the team, the first Formula One success for the Swissbased BMW Sauber and for the 23- year-old Polish driver.

Kubica took the lead in the drivers' world championship with 42 points, four more than Hamilton, while BMW Sauber vaulted ahead of McLaren to take second place in the constructors' rankings behind Ferrari. "I never struggled so much before, I was pushing so hard," said Kubica. "It was a great race. It is always chaotic with the safety car and is not easy. I was stuck behind the slower cars but I managed to make up the time. However, the last laps were very, very difficult."

The start at Montreal is tricky with the ribbon of tarmac leading straight into a right kink as the cars accelerate away from the grid, followed by a tight left-hander and then an equally tight right-hand hairpin. Hamilton got away from pole without bother while Kubica dodged over to the left to head off Raikkonen's Ferrari, which the Finn tried to push through to take second place from the second row. But Kubica was having none of that and calmly boxed in the world champion behind him.

By the end of the opening lap Hamilton was 0.7sec ahead with Kubica following on strongly in second. Driving with great poise and confidence, the 23-year-old British driver stretched his advantage to 1.8sec on lap three and 2.9sec on lap four. All went well until the end of lap 15 by which time Hamilton was seven seconds ahead as his good friend Adrian Sutil spun his Force India Ferrari to a standstill a short way along the back straight.

After some heroic efforts on the part of the trackside marshals to move the stricken car to safety the clerk of the course decided to deploy the safety car and four laps later the entire field darted into the pit lane to refuel. Raikkonen and Kubica nipped ahead of Hamilton during the stops and arrived at the end of the pit lane to see the red warning light flashing.

This meant that the safety car had come into view on the start line straight and the cars would have to wait until the pack went by before rejoining. A lapse of concentration saw Hamilton plough into the back of Raikkonen and they were both out on the spot.

Hamilton, three points ahead of Raikkonen after six races, climbed out of the wrecked car and spoke briefly to him before walking back to the McLaren garage without remov- ing his helmet. "I would just rather that neither of us was out," said Hamilton. "We were so quick, I was breezing it. But next time." Penalised 10 grid places for the French Grand Prix in a fortnight that "next time" will not be so easy.

There was an ironic twist in the incident as Raikkonen had failed to score points in the previous race at Monaco after driving into the back of Sutil's car in the closing minutes while the German was in a stunning fourth place.

On the high-speed Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, where a driver's status and reputation is measured by his willingness to offer total commitment to repeated hard braking from 190mph and preparedness to shave walls at more than 160mph on the exit of dauntingly quick corners, Hamilton and Kubica demonstrated that they are the most exciting new talents to emerge possibly for a generation.

Hamilton never flinched as he threw himself into the battle for pole, a contest he won by the hefty margin of 0.6sec from Kubica after a dazzling qualifying session. Unfortunately, after qualifying, and following discussions between track officials and the FIA race director, Charlie Whiting, it was agreed that the hairpin - the tarmac of which had been progressively disintegrating during the session - would be resurfaced on the eve of the race.

The Canadian GP executive vicepresident, Francois Dumontier, said: "We have been monitoring the situation extensively. This year we chose a new specialist to settle the issue but obviously conditions related to the technological evolution of the race cars do create some problems."

In fact, the resurfaced track survived pretty well under the circumstances, although Fernando Alonso fell foul of the slippery conditions and spun off while dicing with Heidfeld for second place. That left Felipe Massa's Ferrari to pick off the Toyota of Jarno Trulli to finish a strong fifth behind David Coulthard, who had his best run of the season for third in the Red Bull Renault, and Timo Glock.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2008* * *Mosley drives through

Max Mosley was not spraying champagne from the balcony of the headquarters of the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile in Paris after winning the vote of confidence in his presidency of world motorsport's governing body. He was, in fact, not saying a word.

But after weeks of strenuous lobbying he had managed to convince two-thirds of his voting members that the revelations of his sado-masochistic adventure in a Chelsea basement two months ago was insufficient reason to remove him from an office he has held since 1991.

Despite the opposition of some of the world's biggest and most powerful motoring organisations, including the American Automobile Association (AAA) and the federations of Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and at least 30 other countries, Mosley secured a two-thirds majority at the end of the threehour meeting in the Place de la Concorde.

He had produced a celebrated barrister, Anthony Scrivener QC, to support his claim that there was no proof that the activities revealed by the News of the World had Nazi connotations - a claim particularly damaging in the light of the identity of Mosley's late parents. He is one of the two sons of Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of Britain's fascists before and after the Second World War, and Lady Diana Mosley, an admirer of Adolf Hitler.

Of the 169 delegates eligible to vote at the extraordinary general meeting of the FIA's general council, 103 voted in Mosley's favour with 55 against. There were seven abstentions and four invalid votes.

As the delegates left the headquarters of the Automobile Club de France, next door to the FIA's offices, virtually all of them nearing or past the age of retirement and a few looking venerable enough to have had a brand-new Bugatti as their first car, some suggested that Mosley's success had been due to his ability to mobilise support among the sporting federations, whose votes were enough to outnumber those of the non-sporting motor clubs, whose membership is far larger. Among its functions, the FIA is the body that licenses international competitions and bestows the right to hold rounds of the Formula One and World Rally Championships.

"It's good for democracy," said Mumtaz Tahincioglu of the Turkish federation, which supervises an annual Grand Prix outside Istanbul. "We think this is the right result," said Georghe Yanakiev, president of the Bulgarian federation and a member of the FIA's World Rally Commission. "We voted for a successful president who made this organisation a respected body."

After the meeting broke up, however, the presidents of several larger federations left for a separate meeting to discuss the possibility of renouncing their membership of the umbrella body. The German federation immediately issued a statement expressing its "regret and incredulity" that Mosley would remain in office and announced its intention to freeze its cooperation with the FIA.

Richard Darbelnet, president of the AAA, accepted the absence of proof of a Nazi connection but voted against Mosley. "I can't think of another organisation that would have arrived at this type of conclusion in similar circumstances," he said. "It's a severe blow and it will call into question the continued involvement of a number of the member clubs."

Mosley, who has agreed to relinquish all public duties to his two deputies and closed the meeting with a final call for "unity and strength", will now concentrate on his forthcoming legal action for breach of privacy against the News of the World, no doubt buoyed by his recent success.