Felipe Massa clinched the inaugural Valencia GP win ahead of Lewis Hamilton in what proved to be a mixed day out for Ferrari.
Massa led the grand prix from start to finish only reliquishing his P1 slot when he came into the pits. Though the stewards decided to investigate a near-collision with Adrian Sutil in the pitlane (brought on by Massa's "unsafe release"), it was decided that the incident was worthy of only a fine and a reprimand to Massa.
Team-mate Kimi Raikkonen, though, put one of his mechanics in hospital with a botched pit-stop and the Finn's engine blew moments after the incident, leaving him without a single point.
The podium was completed by BMW's Robert Kubica who put in another solid performance to ensure he remains the fourth man in this year's title race.
Race Report
The sun shone on Valencia docks as the cars rolled out for the inaugural GP with an ambient temperature of 29C and the track at 44C. Only Nico Rosberg in the Williams would start the race on the Bridgestone Supersofts.
As the lights went out Felipe Massa got a great start from pole, while Lewis Hamilton, on the dirtier side of the grid, came under pressure from Robert Kubica. Kubica had a look down the inside of Hamilton into Turn 2 but thought better of it and backed out to protect his third place.
Raikkonen, starting from P4 on the grid, was slow off the line allowing Kovalainen through and up into his fourth place. In fact Raikkonen's getaway was so poor that he came under pressure from Vettel who banged wheels with the Ferrari in Turn 2.
As the cars continued round the opening lap, there was huge disappointment for the Spanish crowd who had come to see Fernando Alonso. Alonso braked harder than the following Nakajima expected in Turn 4 and the Williams hit the rear of the Renault hard, taking off his own front wing and Alonso's rear wing.
Alonso limped back to the pits to see if he could get a replacement, but there was too much damage at the rear of the car for him to continue.
As the cars crossed the line on Lap 1 it was 1.Massa, 2.Hamilton, 3.Kubica, 4.Kovalainen, 5.Raikkonen, 6.Vettel, 7.Trulli, 8.Rosberg, 9.Heidfeld, 10.Glock,
11.Webber.
Hamilton and Mass traded fastest laps on Laps 2 and 3, starting a trend that would continue for the whole race. The Ferrari and the Mclaren driver were head and shoulders faster than anyone else in the race and were the only two men to set a Fastest Lap in the grand prix.
However the overwhelming number of Fastest Laps were to go to Felipe Massa who reduced it to 1:40.160 on Lap 5, 1:40.091 on Lap 6, while Hamilton took it down to 1:40.090 on Lap 7. From then on it was the Felipe show. By Lap 11 it was 1:39.265 and he had a 4.2 second advantage over Hamilton.
An innocent David Coulthard had been punted backwards on the opening lap and overtook Nelson Piquet Junior for 16th on Lap 5, one of the few overtaking moves of the day. A few laps later he over-extended himself trying to get past Adrian Sutil and banged wheels and spun his Red Bull back to 18th place.
As Massa was drawing away from Hamilton, Hamilton was putting an even bigger gap between himself and third placed Robert Kubica.
Massa's first pit-stop came at the end of Lap 15 at which point he had a 4.8 second gap to Hamilton. He exited the pitlane just in front of Kimi Raikkonen and just behind Heikki Kovalainen who, having been caught up by Raikkonen, now had a heavy Massa holding his fellow Finn up.
Hamilton instantly put the hammer down and collected the Fastest Lap of the race so far with a 1:38.884 on Lap 16. But it was only two laps before he was due in for fuel and when the Brit came back out on track Massa's advantage had shrunk from 4.8 to 3.0 seconds.
Jarno Trulli managed to leap-frog Sebastian Vettel in the first round of pit-stops and the order on lap 21 was: 1.Massa, 2.Hamilton, 3.Kubica, 4.Kovalainen, 5.Heidfeld (not stopped), 6.Glock (not stopped), 7.Raikkonen, 8.Trulli, 9.Vettel.
It was in the middle stint that Felipe Massa began to establish a race-winning lead. On Lap 22 the gap to Hamilton was 3.8 seconds, by Lap 31 it was 8.4 seconds.
Timo Glock continued his Hungarian GP form by resisting a pit-stop until Lap 30 when he finally pitted from fifth place. He had been positioned between fourth placed Heikki Kovalainen and sixth placed Kimi Raikkonen and once the German disappeared Raikkonen began to close the gap to the McLaren driver.
On Lap 32 Lewis managed to break the trend and go faster than Massa, but Felipe responded by setting the Fastest Lap at 1:38.840 on Lap 34, and then a lap later at 1:38.757, and then a lap later at 1:37.708 before pitting for the second time. When he came in he was 10.2 seconds ahead of Hamilton.
Massa was now in a class of his own and Hamilton was setting times akin to the rest of the front-runners.
However at the end of Massa's pit-stop the Ferrari was released directly alongside the Force-India of Adrian Sutil. They continued side by side for a second before common sense kicked in and Massa backed off before he collided with the end of the narrow pitlane exit. It looked an unnecessarily dangerous manoeuvre and the stewards agreed - two laps later it was announced they were investigating the incident involving car No.2 (Massa).
Bizarrely for a set of stewards who had been emphatic enough to enforce a 10,000 euro fine on Fernando Alonso for crossing the white pitlane entry line in practice, they decided they wouldn't come to a decision during the race and deferred it till afterwards. So - disappointingly - the race result would be provisional.
Lewis Hamilton pitted from P1 at the end of Lap 39 and came out just ahead of Robert Kubica in P2. By this time Kimi Raikkonen had reduced the gap to Kovalainen to just 1.3 seconds. Worryingly, the flag marshals thought that Kovalainen was in a Force India and started waving blue flags at him.
Adrian Sutil spun his car gently into the barriers on Lap 42, but even that was too mild to bring out the much-anticipated Safety Car.
Kimi Raikkonen came in for his final pit-stop at the same time as Heikki Kovalainen on Lap 44. If Kovalainen could beat him out onto the track, then he was likely to retain his fourth place. Maybe this was praying on Raikkonen's mind as he appeared to set off too early from the Ferrari pitbox, before the fueling rig was clear.
The result was that the Ferrari fuel man was run over and injured and Raikkonen's pit-stop badly compromised. Kimi departed to pick up sixth place, while the mechanic was rushed off with non life-threatening injuries.
On Lap 45 the positions were now: 1.Massa, 2.Hamilton, 3.Kubica, 4.Kovalainen, 5.Trulli, 6.Raikkonen, 7.Vettel, 8.Glock, 9.Rosberg, 10.Heidfeld.
Massa's gap to Hamilton was 7.1 seconds, the Brazilian not extending his lead by much over a lap now. Though he would probably have been alarmed to see the smoke of Ferrari team-mate Kimi Raikkonen as his engine let go crossing the start-finish line on Lap 47. Raikkonen's failure was the second successive engine blow-out for the Scuderia in two races.
Though Massa managed to eke out the gap to Hamilton to as much as 8.6 seconds on Lap 54, that's as big as it got. At the line he was just 5.6 seconds ahead and the race order was the same as at Lap 45, though minus Raikkonen.
There had been little real drama, even less on-track action and a disappointing result for the home crowd in the first Valencia GP.
Massa took a thoroughly deserved win from Hamilton, Kubica, Kovalainen, Trulli and Vettel. The Brazilian had been head and shoulders the best driver out there, though he inadvertently collected the biggest laugh of the day by intimating in the press conference that Sutil should have slowed down to let him out in the pitlane. As if that ever was going to happen.
FH
Results
01 F. Massa Ferrari 1:35:32.339
02 L. Hamilton McLaren + 5.600
03 R. Kubica BMW + 37.300
04 H. Kovalainen McLaren + 39.700
05 J. Trulli Toyota + 50.600
06 S. Vettel Scuderia Toro Rosso + 52.600
07 T. Glock Toyota + 1:07.900
08 N. Rosberg Williams + 1:11.400
09 N. Heidfeld BMW + 1:22.100
10 S. Bourdais Scuderia Toro Rosso + 1:29.700
11 N. Piquet jr. Renault + 1:32.700
12 M. Webber Red Bull + 1 laps
13 J. Button Honda + 1 laps
14 G. Fisichella Force India F1 + 1 laps
15 K. Nakajima Williams + 1 laps
16 R. Barrichello Honda + 1 laps
17 D. Coulthard Red Bull + 1 laps
18 K. Räikkönen Ferrari + 12 laps
Did not finish
19 A. Sutil Force India F1 + 16 laps
20 F. Alonso Renault + 56 laps
