Full Throttle

Felipe Massa scored his first points of 2008 with a dominant victory ahead of Ferrari teammate Kimi Raikkonen, with BMW’s Robert Kubica third.

In the process may have silenced those that have been quick to blame his early season troubles on F1’s switch away from traction control. If Massa’s dominate win, on what history has proven to be a very slick track covered in desert sand, doesn’t squash the critics nothing will.

Raikkonen assumes the lead in the World Championship thanks to a disastrous race for Lewis Hamilton.

The bulk of Hamilton’s drama unfolded once the five red lights dimmed to signal the start. Hamilton appeared to temporarily stall. That forced McLaren teammate Heikki Kovalainen into a swerving around Hamilton’s seemingly stricken car.

Hamilton finally pulled away, finding himself amongst the mid-field runners heading into turn one and around the first lap, by the end of which he was running ninth.

On lap two Alonso was just ahead of the McLaren driver and appeared to either ease off the accelerator for a split second or as some have claimed, break-checked the Brit, but it was enough for Hamilton to run into the back of Alonso, losing his nose cone in the process, while the Spaniard damaged his rear-end plate.

The shunt dropped him to 19th place and he struggled from that point on to finish a distant 13th.

For Massa, it was his second successive victory in Bahrain, and after all the speculation about his future in the wake of his poor start to the season, he is up and running and a bit closer to being in the picture.

Robert Kubica held onto third from teammate Nick Heidfeld, and with the 11 points from the duo it means BMW Sauber lead the constructors’ championship for the first time in their history.