Massa in the right direction

Ferrari's Felipe Massa scored his third win of the season, ahead of team-mate Kimi Raikkonen, to become the first Brazilian to lead the championship standings since the late Ayrton Senna in 1993. Alan Henry reports.

As a test of Lewis Hamilton's resilience, the French Grand Prix was one of the more disappointing performances of his Formula One career. He arrived hoping to make at least some positive headway in the championship after his pit-lane collision with Kimi Raikkonen in Montreal, but having started with a 10-place grid penalty, things went from bad to worse.

Hamilton received a drive-through penalty for straight-lining a corner while dicing with Sebastian Vettel's Toro Rosso. After this there was scarcely any prospect of the Briton scoring points, let alone getting ? close to the private Ferrari demonstration run at the front of the field which saw Felipe Massa score his third win of the season, ahead of the world champion, Raikkonen.

Massa was signalled through into the lead when Raikkonen slowed with a loss of power caused by a broken exhaust pipe. The Brazilian surged into the drivers' championship lead with 48 points, ahead of Robert Kubica (46), who finished fifth, and Raikkonen (43). While Massa celebrated becoming the first Brazilian to lead the championship standings since the late Ayrton Senna in 1993, Hamilton was left licking his wounds with a 10th-place finish and no points for the second successive race. He is now 10 points behind Massa in the championship standings. It was hardly the solid curtain-raiser the 23-year-old had been hoping for in advance of his home race, the British Grand Prix at Silverstone on July 6.

Massa freely admitted that he had not really been anticipating a victory and that Raikkonen had a slight performance edge. "It was fantastic. I didn't expect that," said the 27-year-old, who has won more races than any other driver this year. "Sometimes we need a little bit of luck. Today we had an element of luck because of his exhaust. I think we are in the right direction. The team did a fantastic job."

Massa also admitted that he was worried when rain began to fall towards the end of the race. "I was very concerned," he said. "Sometimes it was some drops and all of a sudden the track was not the same anymore. At the end of the race it was not raining hard enough for us to change tyres. We are still in the middle of the championship and we have a lot of races to go. We have to keep scoring points even if it is not possible to win."

Raikkonen said: "The car was slow in the straight line and out of the low-speed corners, so it was difficult. But luckily we were fast enough in the beginning to go away from the others, and we had a big enough gap. Two more laps and we would not have finished the race. As I said, it's disappointing - but still, eight points is good for the championship and good for the team."

The Ferraris, as expected, showed a significant performance advantage, the long corners on the Circuit de Nevers allowing them to exploit the maximum grip from their Bridgestone tyres which conferred a slight edge over the McLarens, who were predicted to be their closest rivals. Raikkonen duly lined up on pole position ahead of Massa, with Hamilton third fastest but demoted to 13th on the grid after the Montreal penalty was applied.

It was clearly never going to be McLaren's weekend after Heikki Kovalainen was hit with a five-place grid penalty, which dropped him to 10th in the final order. He managed to climb to fourth place but was fended off for a spot on the podium by Jarno Trulli in his Toyota, who came third with a drive of great precision and consistency.

That was the Italian's first top-three finish since May 2005 in Spain and Toyota's first since Ralf Schumacher was third in Australia in April 2006. Touchingly, Trulli dedicated his success to the memory of the former Toyota team principal Ove Andersson who was killed recently competing in an historic car rally in South Africa. "We were pushing really hard because we wanted to dedicate this result to Ove Andersson, who has done so much for Toyota Motorsport," said an ecstatic Trulli.

"Today was a great race, hard and tough. We had a good pace, even if we had to battle with some cars that were quicker than us. I had to fight really hard but that is what people should expect both from myself and from Toyota."

Trulli added: "When the rain came at the end I had to take care because it's always difficult to judge how bad it is when you're in front. But I got back into a rhythm and had a wheel-to-wheel fight with Heikki, just like in go-karts."

Kovalainen was obviously disappointed not to have grabbed the final place on the rostrum but was content to have beaten the Montreal winner Kubica, who was fifth, to the chequered flag.

Less happy was the former double world champion Fernando Alonso who faded from third on the grid to eighth at the finish, beaten by Mark Webber's well-driven Red Bull and his Renault team-mate Nelson Piquet Jr.

"I don't think it (the strategy) was bad but you need to have race pace and be able to run fast enough, otherwise it doesn't matter if you have a good or a bad strategy," Alonso said. "We were a second slower than our direct rivals and that's too much." It was less by far than he had been expecting, but Alonso was not alone in that.