Felipe Massa Wins, Lewis Hamilton Second - European Grand Prix – Valencia

One of the most boring races that I have seen and a huge disappointment as this is one of the new tracks that are supposed to inject some fresh excitement into f1.

The top finishing positions were as the starting grid with Filipe Massa, Lewis Hamilton Robert Kubica and Heikki Kovalainen. There was only superficial excitement brought by the drama from the Ferrari team while surprisingly no safety car as predicted by many team engineers especially the Mclaren F1

As ever the battle was bound to be between Massa and Hamilton and one could almost predict the final results 10 laps into the race. With a track temperate just above 40 degrees, Ferrari would have the slight advantage. Massa was pulling away from Hamilton with between 0.3 and 0.5 seconds per lap for most of the race. I get the feeling that Hamilton was pushing much harder than Massa and the Brazilian could have gone slightly faster.

Down the field, it was pretty much normal procession with David Coulthard’s Red Bull hitting another car, Hondas struggling etc. A genuine let down for the fans was the early retirement of the local driver Fernando Alonso.

A little drama in the pitlane with Felipe Massa beign released into an unsafe rush with Adrian Sutil to exit the pit. Stuarts kept everyone guessing what their outcome would be but fortunately only a small fine was handed to Ferrari.

The team’s reliability failed for a consecutive race and Kimmi Raikkonen was the unlucky one this time round to see his car emit a lot of some from an engine failure.
Notable performances where from Toyota who finished both cars in the points fifth and seventh. Sebastian Vettel had an allroud good weekend.

Race Results
1. MASSA Ferrari
2. HAMILTON McLaren +5.6s
3. KUBICA BMW +37.3s
4. KOVALAINEN McLaren +39.7s
5. TRULLI Toyota +50.6s
6. VETTEL Toro Rosso +52.6s
7. GLOCK Toyota +67.9s
8. ROSBERG Williams +71.4s
9. HEIDFELD BMW +82.1s
10. BOURDAIS Toro Rosso +89.7s
11. PIQUET Renault +92.7s
12. WEBBER Red Bull +1 lap
13. BUTTON Honda +1 lap
14. FISICHELLA Force India +1 lap
15. NAKAJIMA Williams +1 lap
16. BARRICHELLO Honda +1 lap
17. COULTHARD Red Bull +1 lap
R. RAIKKONEN Ferrari +12 laps
R. SUTIL Force India +16 laps
R. ALONSO Renault +57 laps