ISTANBUL, Turkey — Felipe Massa feels right at home in Turkey. He has started from the pole and won the Grand Prix for three-consecutive years here.
“I think I can get a passport here already,” he said with a smile.
Massa led most of the way in his Ferrari to score his second win of the season and the seventh of his career.
“It was a very difficult race actually, and Lewis [Hamilton] was pushing me hard a lot for the whole race,” he said.
Had things gone differently, both Hamilton and his McLaren Mercedes teammate Heikki Kovalainen would have had a shot at winning the race.
As it was, they ended up second and ninth, respectively, while Kimi Raikkonen finished third in his Ferrari.
Like last year, Hamilton had tire problems that were specific to him alone because of his particular driving style and chassis set-up and how they related to Istanbul Park’s notorious turn eight. On either the hard or soft-compound Bridgestones, there were worries about delamination in the sidewall of the right front tire. Thus, to be safe, he had to pit three times to reduce the number of laps he used each set of tires.
“There’s nothing worse than having a tire blow out at 200 miles per hour, so they tried to avoid that,” Hamilton said. “Unfortunately, it put us on the back foot. Without a three stop, perhaps we would have had a better chance of winning the race, but nevertheless, I’m very happy with second.”
At the start, Massa took the lead and Hamilton slotted into second as Kovalainen and Raikkonen tangled. That sent the McLaren to the pits with a slow puncture and left the Ferrari with a broken front-end wing plate.
McLaren’s strategy would have had Kovalainen making his first pit stop after Massa, and the team believes that would have put the Finn in a winning position.
As the cars stacked up for turn one, Giancarlo Fisichella’s Force India rammed into the back of Kazuki Nakajima’s Williams and then went flying over it. The only other driver to post a DNF was Sebastien Bourdais, who had something break in the left rear of his Toro Rosso.
Massa led over Hamilton, Robert Kubica, Raikkonen, Fernando Alonso and Mark Webber.
On lap 24, there was a rare sight in F-1 — a pass for the lead. On a much lighter fuel load than Massa, Hamilton was considerably quicker, and he dived underneath the Ferrari at the end of the back straight.
Ferrari had told Massa that Hamilton was on light tanks, so he didn’t defend too harshly.
Raikkonen’s wing damage was enough to upset the balance of the car, but not enough to warrant a pit stop. And he still managed to set the fastest lap of the race.
The McLarens were quicker than the BMW Saubers in Turkey, so Kubica ended up fourth and Nick Heidfeld, who started ninth, was fifth.
In the battle for the best of the rest, Alonso and Renault were just a touch better than Webber and Red Bull.