Ferrari's Felipe Massa wins his 3rd straight Turkish GP

[May 12, 2008]  ISTANBUL, Turkey (AP) -- Felipe Massa held off Lewis Hamilton to win his third straight Turkish Grand Prix on Sunday and earn Ferrari's fourth consecutive Formula One victory.

Massa finished 3.779 seconds ahead of McLaren driver Hamilton on the 58 laps at Istanbul Speed Park to continue a trend of winning from pole position in Turkey. All four winners at the circuit have come from the pole.

Defending world champion Kimi Raikkonen finished 4.2 seconds back in third place as Hamilton denied Ferrari a third successive sweep of the top two positions.

Robert Kubica of BMW Sauber was fourth, ahead of teammate Nick Heidfeld. Heikki Kovalainen of McLaren finished 12th after starting from second on the grid.

Raikkonen leads the standings with 35 points, seven ahead of Hamilton and Massa. Kubica is next with 24. Ferrari opened up a 19-point lead over BMW Sauber in the constructors' standings.

"I'm in the fight. Sometimes you win, sometimes you don't win, but it's important to be competitive," Massa said after his seventh career win. "It's important to be consistent."

Massa's win was his second in three races. The Brazilian has taken 28 of a possible 30 points since failing to finish the first two races of the season.

"It's just fantastic, today was a very difficult race," Massa said. "Lewis was pushing me hard the entire race. Three stops was quite a lot optimistic and it opened up a reasonable gap."

Hamilton overtook Massa after 24 laps, but the McLaren driver's three-pit strategy didn't leave enough time to pass him again on soft tires with Raikkonen bearing down.

"I'm thrilled to come second ... on the strategy we were on today," Hamilton said. "I lost a bit of time in my middle stint. We started on the harder tire and we knew it was going to be tough to battle the Ferraris, so to finish in the points is great.

"I think this is the best race ever for me," Hamilton said. "It's not about winning, it's about feeling that you extract 100 percent from yourself and the car and I did that today. If I had managed to get the car on pole, I could have won."

Hamilton said the three-stop strategy was adopted because the safety of his tires couldn't be guaranteed. Hamilton experienced a tire failure in Turkey last year. 

"We had a structural concern on the tires which we had in practice, and we discussed with Michelin and decided to make it a three-pit strategy in the concerns of safety," McLaren team principal Ron Dennis said.

Kovalainen punctured a tire as he squeezed Raikkonen out at the start. After a quick pit stop, he returned to the track in last place before working his way up to finish 12th.

Kovalainen was knocked unconscious and hospitalized for a day with a concussion after his car slammed into a wall at high speed at the Spanish GP two weeks ago.

Renault's Fernando Alonso, Mark Webber of Red Bull, Nico Rosberg of Williams, Red Bull's David Coulthard and Jarno Trulli of Toyota rounded out the top 10 Sunday.

No driver had won the same race in three consecutive years since Michael Schumacher's four straight victories at the U.S. Grand Prix in 2003-06.

The next stop on the F1 calendar is the Monaco GP at Monte Carlo on May 25.

[Associated Press; By PAUL LOGOTHETIS]

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