Motor sport: Ferrari go up a gear to give Raikkonen glory (original) (raw)

Lewis Hamilton's attempt to become the youngest formula one champion and the first rookie title winner collapsed in disarray less than halfway round the opening lap of the Brazilian grand prix here yesterday, allowing Kimi Raikkonen to win the race - ahead of his team-mate Felipe Massa - and the title in a Ferrari.

At the end of a rollercoaster 17-race season in which Ferrari and McLaren never allowed another rival to gatecrash their winning domination, Raikkonen finished as he had started in Australia with a commanding victory. Hamilton and his team-mate Fernando Alonso, who finished third, shared second place in the points rankings on 109 but Raikkonen ended with 110.

Raikkonen took the lead at the final round of refuelling stops, having followed dutifully in Massa's wheel tracks up to that point. Hamilton, having dropped to 18th on lap six when an apparent gearbox problem slowed his McLaren to walking pace, recovered both his composure and control of the car and settled down to make the best of a bad job for the rest of the 71-lap race.

The Englishman pushed relentlessly all the way, diving deep into the many tricky braking areas which abound on this challenging circuit as, one by one, he picked off the rump of the midfield runners. If he could get back to fifth place he would win the championship but in the end he could do no better than seventh.

After being neatly boxed in at the start by both the Ferraris, Hamilton was wrong-footed by Raikkonen coming out of the second corner, forcing him to back off the throttle momentarily, which allowed his other rival for the championship, Alonso, to nip through into third place. Obviously flustered at being demoted from second to fourth, he ran wide on to the broad run-off area and dropped right back into the middle of the field, completing the opening lap in eighth place as Massa led the race ahead of Raikkonen.

Hamilton quickly set about regaining places but ran into more problems on lap eight, when he slowed almost to a halt as his car slipped out of gear. This was a setback for his championship ambitions, although by no means terminal, for the Briton was quick enough to make ground on the midfield runners. But the Ferraris demonstrated such storming pace on the 4.3km circuit that there was never any chance of Alonso, let alone the delayed Hamilton, getting on terms. Ferrari dictated the race from start to finish.

Despite concerns over the durability of the softer-compound Bridgestones as the track temperatures soared to a new record above the 60C mark, qualifying turned out to be an untroubled affair, with last year's home-town winner Massa taking pole position in his Ferrari. Hamilton shared the front row, Raikkonen was back on the second row in third and Alonso fourth.

Massa was not hurrying in the early stages and the two Ferraris breezed through their first routine refuelling stops at the end of lap 20 and 21 before resuming their positions at the head of the field. By this time Nick Heidfeld's BMW Sauber seemed safely ensconced in third place chased by Nico Rosberg's Williams, David Coulthard's Red Bull, Alonso and Robert Kubica in the other BMW Sauber.

In the closing stages Rosberg and the two BMW drivers jousted wheel-to-wheel only inches apart at 190mph. Had two of them collided and retired from the race they would have promoted Hamilton to fifth and handed him the world championship, but in the event they retained their self-control enough to deny the McLaren driver his precious gift.