Sakhir, 15th April 2007

Felipe Massa drove an almost error-free race to become the third different winner in as many races in the 2007 World Championship when he took victory in the 57 lap Bahrain Grand Prix at Sakhir on Sunday. He and Ferrari teammate Kimi Raikkonen fought a tremendous battle with McLaren's Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso, the Briton finishing second and becoming the first driver ever to finish on the podium three times in his first three Grands Prix. However, Fernando Alonso, beaten into fifth by BMW's Nick Heidfeld, holds onto to the points lead, sharing with Kimi Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton!

In perfect sunny conditions - but with a strong head wind - the field charged into the first corner with Massa leading from Hamilton and Raikkonen, who was overtaken as Alonso went round the outside of the queue holding the inside line. Heidfeld and BMW teammate Robert Kubica were fifth and sixth, from Giancarlo Fisichella and Mark Webber. At turn four, Adrian Sutil hit Jenson Button and Scott Speed was also involved so the safety car came out for three laps.



At the restart, the leading foursome pulled away from the BMWs, but a gap soon appeared between the leading pair of Massa and Hamilton and Alonso holding up Raikkonen. Behind Heidfeld, who managed to stay in touch, Kubica dropped back o be challenged by Fisichella plus Webber.

Hamilton was the first front-runner to stop on lap 19, followed by Massa on lap 21, Alonso a lap later and then Raikkonen whose strategy found him coming out of the pits in third place ahead of Alonso who was then challenged by Heidfeld.

Massa's lead had grown to over four seconds in the pit stops and would now grow to ten seconds before the second round of stops. Raikkonen maintained contact with Hamilton but would never really challenge, while Heidfeld's challenge on Alonso became more intense until he forced his way through on lap 32, soon leaving the World Champion behind.

The second round of stops began on lap 40 with Massa pitting, then Raikkonen and Heidfeld a lap later, Alonso on lap 43 and Hamilton on lap 44. This time, Massa's lead dropped to 7.6s, even though he immediately set fastest lap of the race on hard tyres.

In fact Hamilton steadily cut the gap during the next eleven laps, but Massa managed to maintain his lead, even if the margin was down to 2.36s by the end of the race. Raikkonen dropped back on the harder tyres; he had been 1.8s behind Hamilton but the gap was nearly 8.5s by the end of the race.

Alonso was also quicker than Heidfeld on the harder tyres and cut the gap from two seconds to challenge the BMW in the closing stages, failing to beat Heidfeld by 0.6s, the German driver finishing fourth for the third time in as many races. Kubica led the rest, 31s further back before another big gap to Jarno Trulli who was caught by Fisichella at the end.

In the Constructors' championship, McLaren hold the lead with 44 points but Ferrari are just five points behind with BMW next. Behind the first three drivers, Massa is fourth, five points behind the trio ahead and two ahead of Heidfeld.