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Formula One
F1: Raikkonen Dominates to Win Spanish GP
Finn extends points lead while Massa and Hamilton complete podium; Alonso retires.
Kevin Krefting  |  Posted April 27, 2008   Barcelona, Spain
Raikkonen holds on to P1 as Massa and Hamilton move up at the start. (LAT Photo)
Raikkonen became the first repeat winner of '08 and now leads Hamilton by nine points in the championship. (LAT Photo)

Since 2001 whoever starts on pole at the Spanish Grand Prix wins, and in 2008 it was no different: Kimi Raikkonen became the first repeat winner of the ’08 season by posting a light-to-flag victory at the Circuit de Catalunya, thus extending his championship points lead.

Given the history in Spain, the race was decided at the start, when Felipe Massa, third on the grid, managed to jump on surprising outside polesitter Fernando Alonso to put two Ferraris one-two at the end of the first lap – which saw the deployment of the first safety car of the day after Force India’s Adrian Sutil made a mistake on Turn 3 and spun, and was collected by the Toro Rosso of Sebastian Vettel, the only driver so far this season to have been unable to complete a single race.

Under yellow, the order had Raikkonen and Massa up front followed by the McLaren of Lewis Hamilton, who got the jump on BMW’s Robert Kubica at the start. Heikki Kovalainen was sixth in the second McLaren, while BMW’s Nick Heidfeld and Red Bull’s Mark Webber completed the top-eight.

The order was unchanged at the restart on lap three. Two laps later, Renault’s promising weekend began to go sour when Nelson Piquet, running 10th, ran wide on Turn 4 and dropped to 18th. Two laps later, the Brazilian attempted an overly optimistic move on Toro Rosso’s Sebastien Bourdais and the pair collided, causing the retirement of both cars.
Kovalainen's crash is replayed on the trackside jumbo screen: Finn was conscious but had to be airlifted to a nearby hospital. (LAT Photo)

On the 16th lap, Alonso gave away the light fuel load that had propelled him to P2 on the grid by kicking off the first round of pit stops. Massa was next among the frontrunners on lap 19, with Raikkonen coming in one lap later and emerging ahead of his teammate. Both Hamilton and Kubica made their stops on lap 21.

All that action left Kovalainen on P1, but for a short time: the Finn stuffed his McLaren in the barriers in the fifth-gear high-speed Turn 9 after suffering an apparent failure on the left-front suspension, which caused the tire to collapse and the car to run straight into the barriers at high speed, in an incident eerily similar to Michael Schumacher’s 1999 crash at Silverstone in which the German broke both legs.

The safety car was deployed while the marshals removed Kovalainen from the wreckage. The Finn was conscious but had to be airlifted to a nearby hospital for further checks.

The 13-minute safety car period caused by the incident proved costly to Heidfeld, who had to pit for refueling before the pits were open, and was handed a 10-second stop and go penalty for it. Honda’s Rubens Barrichello also ran into trouble after a brush with Force India’s Giancarlo Fisichella at pit exit caused him to lose his front wing and forced an unscheduled additional stop.
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