LAT Photographic

Barcelona looked a lot like Bahrain: Another complete performance by Ferrari’s Felipe Massa, who took pole position, fastest lap and the win. And as in Bahrain, McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton followed Massa home, thus becoming the youngest man—by a month—to ever lead the world championship, a record he took, appropriately enough, from Bruce McLaren.

So far, Massa and Hamilton appear to get along just fine. After Hamilton’s dynamic start in the Malaysian Grand Prix (Not So Fast, Ferrari, AW, April 16), which negated Massa’s pole position, the Ferrari driver mumbled, “Next time I won’t do that—I won’t give way.” But it came to nothing, and the two joked with each other at the press conference in Spain. As their teams’ young guns, they are both out-scoring their more experienced teammates.

At the race’s first corner, Massa put his, “I’m not giving way” promise into practice, but it was McLaren’s Fernando Alonso, rather than Hamilton, on the receiving end.

When the start lights went out, Alonso knew he had to go for it. Although he qualified second, three-hundredths slower than Massa, he suspected he had two or three laps’ less fuel on board than the Ferrari, and it was vital he get ahead, to capitalize on the weight advantage.

Starting on the dirty side of the track, Alonso was still able to chase the Ferrari to the first turn, and when Massa moved to the inside line, Alonso braked later and went for the outside.

The move almost worked. Through the right-hander, the McLaren was about half a car-length ahead, but the next corner turns to the left, and Massa chopped across to claim the line. Momentarily, the cars touched, and Alonso went off the track. As he rejoined, Massa was away up the road, and Hamilton and Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen had also passed him.

Alonso wasn’t livid, but wasn’t he pleased. “I thought I was ahead of Felipe, but…unfortunately he didn’t think so, and we touched. The right barge board was damaged, and the handling wasn’t quite right after that—it wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t right. Felipe took a big risk, doing what he did, because 99 percent of incidents like this mean both of you are out immediately.”

Massa refused to be fazed. “Come on, this is racing!” he exclaimed. “I’ve always been prepared to admit a mistake, but don’t ask me to say that today. I had the inside line; if anyone was aggressive, it was Fernando, not me.”

Initially, Massa also worried that his car might be damaged, but he couldn’t detect anything awry and pushed hard as he built a good lead before the first round of pit stops. No one ever threatened him. For his part, Hamilton did not sit back.

“We didn’t have the pace of Felipe today,” he said. “But I had to keep pushing—first, to keep ahead of Fernando, and second, to be close enough to Felipe to benefit if anything happened to slow him.”

Ferrari was fortunate that Massa’s car survived the contretemps with Alonso, as Raikkonen’s car retired after 10 laps with electrical problems. For Raikkonen, this was another outing which fell short of expectations; as like the race in Bahrain, he was not on Massa’s pace.

Notably, former world champion Michael Schumacher was present at a grand prix for the first time since his retirement at the end of last year. Schumacher played an active role in Ferrari’s activities; he attended debriefs and offered his opinions when asked. On Friday night, he was at the circuit long after Raikkonen had left, and more than a few considered his presence a boon to Massa. Last year the two worked together and became good friends, whereas Schumacher and Raikkonen have never been close. Indeed, on Sunday morning a German newspaper ran the following headline: “Schumacher and Massa on pole.”

After the flurry of excitement in the race’s first minute or so, the Spanish Grand Prix settled down into a humdrum affair, as races at Barcelona invariably do. The track seems to have been designed to prevent overtaking and there is another problem, too: teams over-test wildly at the Circuit de Catalunya, and know far too much about it for surprises to be a serious possibility. Only a week before the race, all teams tested here—for four days, no less—and the message from the tests was duplicated over the race weekend: Ferrari and McLaren were a class ahead of anything else.

As in earlier races this season, the nearest threat to the big two came from BMW Sauber, and this time Robert Kubica, rather than Nick Heidfeld, was the team’s front runner. A very composed drive produced fourth place, and for most of the race Kubica was within three or four seconds of Alonso.

Red Bull Racing finally had a decent result, with David Coulthard finishing fifth, under attack at the end from the Williams-Toyota of Nico Rosberg, who maintained his excellent 2007 form. Heikki Kovalainen drove his best Grand Prix to date, taking seventh place for a still lackluster Renault team, and Takuma Sato brought joy to Super Aguri by scoring the team’s first ever championship point.

The crowd, at more than 150,000 strong, will probably be the largest at any Grand Prix this season. It was comprised of rabid homegrown Alonso fans, of course, and while the world champion relishes this in a way, in another it has become a pain. Alonso is genuinely a reluctant star.

“Fernando’s desire for privacy,” said McLaren boss Ron Dennis, “is probably higher than I’ve ever seen in a racing driver before. Obviously he has a difficult time in Spain—he can’t go anywhere, or do anything, so it’s not easy for him.”

The situation he finds himself in with his teammate is also not easy. In the past, teammates have rarely troubled him, but Renault people noted that whenever Alonso was slightly outpaced by one, he didn’t respond particularly well and perhaps allowed it get to him more than it should: It’s one thing to have your status threatened by another star, and quite another to come under fire from a rookie. Since Schumacher’s retirement, few question Alonso’s standing as F1’s best driver, and it must be difficult to come to terms with Hamilton’s speed thus far.

“I relish the problem of having to separate two competitive drivers who are pushing each other,” Dennis said when Juan Pablo Montoya joined Kimi Raikkonen at McLaren for 2005. “That’s a great problem to have!”

Maybe, but it will need careful handling and tact. After Bahrain, where Hamilton was quicker than Alonso, McLaren press material glowed in its praise of the double world champion. In Spain, before his own people, Alonso was very keen to reassert himself.

Right to the dying seconds of qualifying, he looked like a man destined to secure pole. Hamilton and Raikkonen both made their last runs and weren’t quite there, but then came Massa, shaving Alonso’s time by three-hundredths of a second and reducing the vast crowd to near-silence.

“I understand that,” Alonso shrugged. “They were disappointed—I was disappointed! Now I’m starting on the dirty side of the track, unfortunately, but still I have a good feeling about our race pace.”

At the first corner, though, it all went wrong.
RACE RESULTS

Circuit de Catalunya
2.892-mile road course
May 13

1. Felipe Massa, Ferrari, 65 laps at 123.454 mph avg. speed; 2. Lewis Hamilton, McLaren-Mercedes, 65; 3. Fernando Alonso, McLaren-Mercedes, 65; 4. Robert Kubica, BMW-Sauber, 65; 5. David Coulthard, Red Bull-Renault, 65; 6. Nico Rosberg, Williams-Toyota, 65; 7. Heikki Kovalainen, Renault, 65; 8. Takuma Sato, Super Aguri-Honda, 64; 9. Giancarlo Fisichella, Renault, 64; 10. Rubens Barrichello, Honda, 64;

11. Anthony Davidson, Super Aguri-Honda, 64; 12. Jenson Button, Honda, 64; 13. Adrian Sutil, Spyker-Ferrari, 63; 14. Christijan Albers, Spyker-Ferrari, 63; 15. Nick Heidfeld, BMW-Sauber, 46 (gearbox); 16. Ralf Schumacher, Toyota, 44 (accident); 17. Vitantonio Liuzzi, Scuderia Toro Rosso-Ferrari, 19 (hydraulics); 18. Scott Speed, Scuderia Toro Rosso-Ferrari, 9 (tires); 19. Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari, 9 (electrical); 19. Jarno Trulli, Toyota, 8 (fuel line); 20. Mark Webber, Red Bull-Renault, 7 (transmission);

21. Alexander Wurz, Williams-Toyota, 1 (accident)

TIME OF RACE: 1h 31m 36.230s
MARGIN OF VICTORY: 6.790s
FAST QUALIFIER: Massa, 1m 21.421s
FAST LAP: Massa, 1m 22.680s
LAP LEADERS: Massa, 1-19; Raikkonen, 20-22; Heidfeld, 23; Massa, 24-42; Hamilton, 43-46; Massa 47-65
CAUTION PERIODS: None
POINTS LEADERS: 1. Hamilton, 30; 2. Alonso, 28; 3. Massa, 27; 4. Raikkonen, 22; 5. Heidfeld, 15; 6. (tie) Kubica, Fisichella, 8; 8. Rosberg, 5; 9. (tie) Coulthard, Trulli, 4
NEXT: Monaco, May 27 (7:30 a.m. Eastern, Speed)

In the GP2 race at the Circuit de Catalunya in Spain, Bruno Senna—nephew of the late Ayrton Senna—won the weekend’s first race (his first series win), with Timo Glock second and Lucas Di Grassi third. Glock won the second race, followed by Javier Villa and Di Grassi. With two rounds completed, Glock moved into the season points lead, with Senna second and Luca Filippi third.What is an article review?