Massa reaffirms his Championship ambitions

The victory helps the Brazilian driver consolidate his position as the strongest challenger to Lewis Hamilton with only six of the season’s 18 races remaining. Alan Henry reports.

Lewis Hamilton battled acute neck pain and physical discomfort to stretch his World Championship lead by another crucial point with a faultless drive to second place in the inaugural European Grand Prix on the Spanish city’s superb new waterfront circuit. His McLaren crossed the finish line just 5.6 seconds behind the winning Ferrari of Felipe Massa, the Brazilian driver moving ahead of his team-mate Kimi Raikkonen and consolidating his position as the strongest chal rlenger to the British driver with only six of the season’s 18 races remaining.

Third place went to Robert Kubica’s BMW Sauber, ahead of Heikki Kovalainen (McLaren) and Jarno Trulli (Toyota). Massa escaped without penalty after his crew waved him back into the race after his second refuelling stop just as Adrian Sutil’s Force India drew level. The two cars almost collided and Massa had to back off the throttle to avoid hitting the narrowing pit wall immediately in front of him, but the Ferrari team was fined 10,000 euros (£8,000) for their mistake.

Second place for Hamilton was certainly a hard-earned reward at the end of a physically gruelling weekend for the British driver who, after practice on August 22, had been laid low by both the effects of flu and muscle spasms in his neck that had sent him to bed with a raging headache, the lingering effects of which endured into the next day. He was treated by massage and painkilling injections into the muscle by the McLaren physio, but admitted that the nagging discomfort lasted all the way to the chequered flag.

As a result Hamilton restricted his laps in free practice and the first part to qualifying to make certain he was up to the mark for the crucial shoot-out which would determine the first five rows of the grid.

“I cannot complain with second place,” said Hamilton. “I have had a traumatic weekend. I had a few problems health-wise but seemed to pull through. I just woke up very early yesterday and I had a spasm in my neck. Fortunately I’ve got a great doctor. It was so bad that I was struggling to stand up and so I had to have injections in my neck and take plenty of painkillers.”

He added: “At the start I was on the dirty side. I got a reasonable start but nowhere near as quick as Felipe. I had to hold my spot and Robert (Kubica) was pushing quite hard for a couple of corners. I was trying to keep up with Felipe but it was pretty hard to overtake here.”

Massa’s start from pole was helped by the fact that his Ferrari was running with a slightly lighter fuel load than the McLaren, but although Massa made both his refuelling stops two laps earlier than Hamilton during the course of the gruelling, if processional, 57-lap race, this strategy did not provide the British driver with the sufficient scope needed to make up the lost ground. Nevertheless, Hamilton seemed on course for pole position, but just as the chequered flag came out Massa delivered the perfect lap to ease the McLaren driver out on to the dirty line which goes with the outside of the front row of the grid.

“I think it is amazing,” said Massa after the race. “After such a bad result to come here to a new track which was new for everybody. We did a fantastic job. There is nothing more we can ask for, especially after such a bad result (engine failure in Hungary), which we still need to work on as we had another problem with Kimi.”

Yet again the young Brazilian had spectacularly reaffirmed his World Championship ambitions while leaving his team-mate, Raikkonen unwilling to discuss his performance shortcomings in any detail.

Raikkonen was running more than half a minute behind Massa when his engine abruptly failed in a huge cloud of smoke in front of the pits at the start of lap 47. It was the third successive race at which Raikkonen had dramatically underperformed and his worryingly poor form must surely have triggered alarm bells in the corridors of power at Maranello in view of the fact that his present contract with the team lasts until the end of 2010.

The Finn also had a chaotic experience at his second refuelling stop when he moved to resume the race before being signalled to do so while the refuelling rig was still coupled to its nozzle on the side of the car. He stopped again after a few feet, but not before one of the pit crew had been knocked over, but thankfully not seriously hurt.

Meanwhile, Spain’s national hero, Fernando Alonso, had a disastrous weekend in front of his home crowd. His Renault lacked the pace to make it into the top-10 shoot-out, so he had to be content with 12th place on the starting grid. On the opening lap he was hit from behind by Kazuki Nakajima’s Williams, the impact knocking off his rear wing and sending him straight into the pits to retire.