Ferrari’s Felipe Massa silenced a lot of voices today at Bahrain by running an almost perfect race to clinch the 2008 Bahrain Grand Prix. Teammate Kimi Raikkonen was second. Lewis Hamilton finished outside the points and lost the championship lead due to it. The Pole on pole Robert Kubica was third for the BMW team.

Nick Heidfeld claimed a calm fourth place behind teammate Robert Kubica. Young Heikki Kovalainen got McLaren F1 fifth place.

An interesting point in the race was when Lewis Hamilton ran into the back of Fernando Alonso, it made him pit and eventually this resulted in him being out of points. Some people say Fernando brake tested Lewis Hamilton, but i really dont think it was anything like that. I have seen the videos again and again and they look highly inconclusive. Later on Lewis Hamilton was apologetic to the McLaren F1 team :

“I am really disappointed and feel like I had let the team down”

“You need to pick up the pieces and then deliver points. I didn’t do that. The collision with Renault’s Fernando Alonso cost the race.” Lewis Hamilton said

Meanwhile my best moment of the race was when Force India formula one’s Giancarlo Fisichella held back Lewis Hamilton for 3 laps, closing the door on Lewis countless times. The Force India car does show a lot of promise and hopefully they will be getting some points this season. Giancarlo eventually finished 12th. The final classification was :

Race result of the formula one Bahrain Grand Prix 2008

1 Felipe Massa (Bra) Ferrari one hour 31 minutes 6.970 seconds
2 Kimi Raikkonen (Fin) Ferrari +3.339 secs
3 Robert Kubica (Pol) BMW Sauber +4.998
4 Nick Heidfeld (Ger) BMW Sauber +8.409
5 Heikki Kovalainen (Fin) McLaren-Mercedes +26.789
6 Jarno Trulli (Ita) Toyota +41.314
7 Mark Webber (Aus) Red Bull-Renault +45.473
8 Nico Rosberg (Ger) Williams-Toyota +55.889
9 Timo Glock (Ger) Toyota +1:09.500
10 Fernando Alonso (Spa) Renault +1:17.181
11 Rubens Barrichello (Bra) Honda +1:17.862
12 Giancarlo Fisichella (Ita) Force India-Ferrari one lap behind
13 Lewis Hamilton (GB) McLaren-Mercedes one lap
14 Kazuki Nakajima (Jpn) Williams-Toyota one lap
15 Sebastien Bourdais (Fra) Toro Rosso-Ferrari one lap
16 Anthony Davidson (GB) Super Aguri-Honda one lap
17 Takuma Sato (Jpn) Super Aguri-Honda one lap
18 David Coulthard (GB) Red Bull-Renault one lap
19 Adrian Sutil (Ger) Force India-Ferrari two laps
R Nelson Piquet Jr (Brz) Renault 40 laps completed
R Jenson Button (GB) Honda 19 laps
R Sebastian Vettel (Ger) Toro Rosso-Ferrari 0 laps