Sunday, September 16, 2007

EASY WIN FOR KIMI


Kimi made it a hat-trick of wins at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit, as he headed home Ferrari team-mate Felipe Massa in the Belgian Grand Prix. Mclaren's Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton were third and fourth respectively. As a sort of momentum-shift pendulum, After last week's domination by Mclaren, it was now the turn of Ferrari to turn on the heat. The silver-arrows were no match for the scarlet cars.

Raikkonen beat Massa by 4.6s (the gap had been 1.4s the previous lap), but Alonso was 9.6s behind (having been 16.4s in arrears the previous lap until the Ferraris eased off). Hamilton was a further 9.2s adrift, having lost three seconds with a slide off the road in Pouhon on lap 43.

Today's result reduced the gap between Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso in the Drivers Championship. The Englishman has 97 points to the Spaniards 95, while Raikkonen and Massa are on 84 and 77.

Nick Heidfeld claimed fifth place after his usual tidy race for BMW Sauber, recovering from running wide in the first corner at the start avoiding Alonso and Hamilton, who were involved in their own fight which saw the Spaniard push his team mate wide on the exit to the hairpin and then slam the door on him up the hill through Eau Rouge.

Nico Rosberg took 6th place in his Williams ahead of Mark Webber in the Red Bull and Heikki Kovalainen who scored the last point in his Renault. His team-mate Giancarlo Fisichella retired after the first lap due to suspected suspension failure.

Sunday's win being Raikkonen's 13th win of his career and fourth this season for the Maranello marque means he now trails leader Lewis Hamilton by 13 points, with runner-up Felipe Massa 20 points adrift.

Realistically speaking, with three races to go, unless the silver-arrows have a major retirement, it is most likely either Hamilton or Alonso who will fight it out for the Drivers title. Now only Japan, China and Brazil remain on the race calender and with the top two drivers seperated by only two points, it looks like a tight-fight to the end of scandal-ridden 2007 season.

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