Grand Prix of Turkey

Ferrari’s Felipe Massa overcame a bold challenge from Lewis Hamilton and McLaren to clinch a third consecutive Turkish Grand Prix victory.

Hamilton’s unique three-stop strategy helped him pass Massa for the lead before half-distance, but he couldn’t pull out enough of an advantage to beat the Brazilian after his additional stop, so had to settle for second place, just ahead of Kimi Raikkonen in the second Ferrari.

After outqualifying teammate Hamilton and claiming his first front row start, Heikki Kovalainen was badly delayed by an early puncture and finished a lapped 12th.

Both Kovalainen and Raikkonen got away slowly at the beginning of the race, allowing Hamilton to leap through from third and challenge Massa for the lead…

Classified:

Pos  Driver        Team                       Time
 1.  Massa         Ferrari               (B)  1h26:49.451
 2.  Hamilton      McLaren-Mercedes      (B)  +     3.779
 3.  Raikkonen     Ferrari               (B)  +     4.271
 4.  Kubica        BMW Sauber            (B)  +    21.945
 5.  Heidfeld      BMW Sauber            (B)  +    38.741
 6.  Alonso        Renault               (B)  +    53.724
 7.  Webber        Red Bull-Renault      (B)  +  1:04.229
 8.  Rosberg       Williams-Toyota       (B)  +  1:11.406
 9.  Coulthard     Red Bull-Renault      (B)  +  1:15.270
10.  Trulli        Toyota                (B)  +  1:16.344
11.  Button        Honda                 (B)  +     1 lap
12.  Kovalainen    McLaren-Mercedes      (B)  +     1 lap
13.  Glock         Toyota                (B)  +     1 lap
14.  Barrichello   Honda                 (B)  +     1 lap
15.  Piquet        Renault               (B)  +     1 lap
16.  Sutil         Force India-Ferrari   (B)  +     1 lap
17.  Vettel        Toro Rosso-Ferrari    (B)  +     1 lap

Fastest lap: Raikkonen, 1:26.506

Not classified/retirements:

Driver        Team                      On lap
Bourdais      Toro Rosso-Ferrari    (B)    25
Nakajima      Williams-Toyota       (B)    1
Fisichella    Force India-Ferrari   (B)    1

That was a really good race, in terms of the spectacle – plenty of overtaking and the race for victory seemed uncertain with Hamilton’s risky 3-stop strategy. Kimi did indeed pit last of the top 3, on lap 20 but he never seemed quick enough to be able to challenge for the win unfortunately.

The start of the race brought in the safety car with a big crash. Kimi had a poor start as did Kovalainen but seeing as they both started on the dirty inside of the track, this was no surprise.

Kovalainen took a rear tyre puncture from Kimi’s wing and therefore had to climb his way throughout the field all day. Kovalainen did a fantastic job though, making no mistakes considering how many overtakings took place and some were rather tricky and needed second attempts.

Hamilton’s job was giving Massa something to think about, but in the end Lewis’s effort got him second place. Unfortunately for Kimi, Lewis has now taken 2 points out of the championship gap but Kimi is still comfortably on top with 35 points. 

ITV did not show Kimi’s comment in the press conference yet again (annoying little b*stards) but I assume he isn’t happy at all (no surprise, Kimi only wants to win). Kimi got close to Lewis towards the end during the last 8 laps but never seemed to go for a fight, maybe Ferrari told him to ease off but I admit I really wanted to see Kimi try and pass Lewis. It would have been pretty hard but I guess this is the safer and wiser Kimi we’ll have to get used to at Ferrari. Nonetheless, we now head to Monaco, the tight historic circuit that Kimi didn’t do very well on last year but he’ll make sure he’s on top form to keep his title and get the feeling of winning back as soon as possible.

So, the good points we Kimi fans can take from this race are: Kimi stayed close to the front two and he took fastest lap, with a damaged front wing. Until Monaco, keep flying Kimi!

| Race Quotes – Kimi Happy with 3rd After Difficult Weekend

"I didn’t have a very good start," he said. "I got alongside (Kovalainen) under braking and got inside and tried to slow down. He turned in a bit and we touched. I broke the front wing and he got a puncture. It is racing.

"We chose to use the front wing all race as it takes too long to change it. It was difficult weekend but at least we got some points."

"It wasn’t too bad, but it never helps if you damage the end of the wing," he added. "It’s difficult to say how much better it would be with the proper wing but for sure it doesn’t help you."

"I think it wasn’t the best qualifying for me, and maybe our weakest point. We had a bit more fuel than the others, that is the reason (we were slow) but also the lap was not as good as we wanted. It all started on Friday when we had a problem.

"We had a difficult weekend and I’m happy to be third. I didn’t lose too many points. We’ll see what we can do in the next few races. The next two last year were not so strong for us, so we will see what we can do."

Press Conference

Q. (Livio Oricchio – O Estado do Sao Paulo) Kimi, after seeing
Hamilton in front of you after the last pit stop, did you believe it
was possible for you to overtake him?

KR: It’s always difficult to overtake but we tried, we tried
to push him but unfortunately we couldn’t get close enough because we
knew that we have good straight-line speed on the back straight but if
you don’t get close enough… I was always catching him but I was too
far away, so there was nothing that we could do.

Q. Did you pretty much settle for third, one hoped you would have a go at Lewis at the end?

KR: For sure we tried to be in second place but we couldn’t, so I would rather take third than anything else.

Q. (Michael Schmidt – Auto Moto und Sport) Kimi, you lost two
positions going into the first corner, was it not such a good start due
to the line you had to start on or was there a technical problem?

KR: The inside line is never going to be as good as the clean
side but also, when I was side-by-side with Heikki and then he was
turning in and I needed to slow down because otherwise we would have
hit hard, so both of us were pretty slow in the corner, so I think
people came round the outside. I think Kubica or somebody else came and
passed us. I lost some places there but it all started to go wrong at
that point.

Q. (Juha Paatalo – Financial Times Germany) Kimi, this was
certainly a weekend where the nine point lead that you had coming here
helped you. What are your thoughts about the championship, still having
a seven point lead after such a problematic weekend?

KR: Like I said before, this race is early in the season and
it’s good to have a little gap to the others but we already saw today –
or this weekend – that if you cannot get everything out of the car then
you are going to lose some points. We’ve lost a few points now but it
doesn’t change too much. I don’t worry about it too much. We go race by
race and try to win and try to gain the points on the others, but
sometimes you need to be happy with what you get and today was one of
those days, so this weekend I was never really where I wanted to be but
six points is still good.

Ferrari Team Quotes

Felipe Massa – 1st: "Its fantastic to have got the hat trick here in Istanbul: it might really almost be worth asking for a Turkish passport! It was a very tough race but the team work magnificently, giving me a great car… I want to dedicate this win to two people: to my mother on Mothers Day and to Stefano Domenicali whose birthday it is today."

Kimi Raikkonen – 3rd: "It was a difficult weekend for me but six points are definitely better than nothing. At the start, I was almost alongside Heikki but then he slowed and I had to brake too to avoid a heavy crash. We touched just enough to damage the end plate of the front wing on my car: it was not a very serious problem, but it definitely didn’t help my race. My first set of soft tyres worked very well, but the second was not as good: for the rears, maybe it would have been better to switch immediately to the harder, but that’s easy to say with hindsight… Now we must ensure we are as well prepared as possible for the Monaco Grand Prix, where we struggled in 2007."

| Race Videos – Press Conference, Race Start, Kimi Overtakes Alonso, Last Lap/Finish, Heikki VS Glock 

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| Saturday Qualifying – Massa Leads McLarens to Pole, Kimi P4

Felipe Massa will start from pole position in Turkey for the third successive year after a dominant performance in qualifying at Istanbul Park.

The Ferrari driver, who is also chasing a third straight win at the track, was nearly half a second clear of the rest of the field after his first flying lap in Q3, and although the McLarens closed in, Massa improved on his second lap to claim pole with a 1:27.617.

Heikki Kovalainen and Lewis Hamilton took second and third for McLaren, but championship leader Kimi Raikkonen could only manage fourth in the second Ferrari after getting caught behind Fernando Alonso on his last lap.

The McLarens had been over a second off Massa’s pace in the first part of Q3, then made major gains on their second runs. Hamilton used the hard tyres to take third, while Kovalainen briefly knocked Massa off the provisional pole before having to settle for the outside front row position.

Robert Kubica completed the top five for BMW, four places ahead of teammate Nick Heidfeld.

Red Bull Racing got both their cars into the top ten for the first time in 2008. Mark Webber and David Coulthard then chose to save fuel and only do one run in Q3, taking sixth and 10th respectively.

Jarno Trulli maintained his record of reaching Q3 for every race so far this year and qualified eighth, while his Toyota teammate Timo Glock languished in 15th position.

Alonso was unable to repeat his astonishing Barcelona qualifying form, but did make it into the top ten again. He will start seventh.

Rubens Barrichello couldn’t manage to claim a top ten start for his record-breaking 257th Grand Prix, but he did out-pace teammate Jenson Button, as the Hondas took 12th and 13th places, just behind Nico Rosberg (Williams).

The German squeezed into the top ten in the last seconds of Q2, then got pushed back to row six when Heidfeld recovered from a poor first lap to guarantee a Q3 position with his final run.

The demise of Super Aguri made it tougher for the midfield teams to secure a place in Q2, with only 15 rather than the previous 16 drivers now proceeding to the second qualifying segment under the tweaked format.

Williams’ Kazuki Nakajima and Renault’s Nelson Piquet were the drivers to lose out, with Nakajima spinning on the exit of Turn 7 on his first Q1 run and then only reaching 16th at the second attempt. He will start one place ahead of Piquet, who briefly got up to 15th then was edged back to 17th as others improved in the final seconds.

Sebastian Vettel impressively reached Q2 in the 2007 Toro Rosso chassis’ last qualifying session, but his teammate Sebastien Bourdais was only 18th-fastest in Q1, albeit just 0.179 seconds slower than Vettel, who ultimately qualified 14th.

The Force India cars were slowest of all. Although Giancarlo Fisichella out-qualified teammate Adrian Sutil by half a second, he will start behind the German thanks to his penalty for passing the pit exit red light at the start of Friday practice.

Pos  Driver       Make                 Q1        Q2        Q3       laps
 1.  Massa        Ferrari              1:25.994  1:26.192  1:27.617  16
 2.  Kovalainen   McLaren-Mercedes     1:26.736  1:26.290  1:27.808  16
 3.  Hamilton     McLaren-Mercedes     1:26.192  1:26.477  1:27.923  15
 4.  Raikkonen    Ferrari              1:26.457  1:26.050  1:27.936  17
 5.  Kubica       BMW Sauber           1:26.761  1:26.129  1:28.390  17
 6.  Webber       Red Bull-Renault     1:26.773  1:26.466  1:28.417  17
 7.  Alonso       Renault              1:26.836  1:26.522  1:28.422  18
 8.  Trulli       Toyota               1:26.695  1:26.822  1:28.836  20
 9.  Heidfeld     BMW Sauber           1:27.107  1:26.607  1:28.882  20
10.  Coulthard    Red Bull-Renault     1:26.939  1:26.520  1:29.959  16
11.  Rosberg      Williams-Toyota      1:27.367  1:27.012            13
12.  Barrichello  Honda                1:27.355  1:27.219            13
13.  Button       Honda                1:27.428  1:27.298            14
14.  Vettel       Toro Rosso-Ferrari   1:27.442  1:27.412            15
15.  Glock        Toyota               1:26.614  1:27.806            15
16.  Nakajima     Williams-Toyota      1:27.547                       9
17.  Piquet       Renault              1:27.568                       7
18.  Bourdais     Toro Rosso-Ferrari   1:27.621                       8
19.  Fisichella   Force India-Ferrari  1:27.807                      10
20.  Sutil        Force India-Ferrari  1:28.325                       9

McLaren look in good shape for the race tomorrow, and they need to be after Ferrari’s 3 consecutive wins of the season so far. Felipe Massa took his usual Turkish delight with a stunning lap, way ahead of McLaren and Kimi. Massa will have a lot on his shoulders going into the race tomorrow, as he’s got an energetic Kovalainen and a desperate Hamilton.

Kimi though continued to struggle throughout the day and it looked like he would improve after going fastest in Q2, but we assume he’s carrying more fuel into the race as he often does. He is quick of the line and his priority off the grid tomorrow will be to jump Hamilton into turn 1 and also fend of BMW’s Kubica! It’s going to be a fun race to watch therefore, and hopefully we won’t be disappointed. Keep Flying Kimi! There are loads of cool photos from Turkey today and you can use them as wallpapers – take your pick here!

| Qualifying Quotes – Ferrari

Kimi Raikkonen – 4th: "Obviously, I would have preferred to have been further up the grid, but this position is definitely not the end of the world. What matters is the race when the points are given out. We are up against very strong opposition, which is no surprise to us.

"Of course, there’s a question mark over fuel loads and we won’t get an answer to that until the first pit stops tomorrow afternoon. I am a bit disappointed but I made mistakes on my second lap in Q3 and I have to accept that: I didn’t go into the final corner before the pit straight quite right and lost a lot of speed.

"We can count on a car that is good over a distance and we will try and make the most of it, trying to get as many points as possible. Winning is never easy, but I’ll give it a go!"

| Qualifying Video – Q2 Onboard lap, Kimi Gives Room in Turn 8, Pole & Last Minutes

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