We return to our trawl down recent memory lane with the top four in the championship separated by just two points. The drama!
GERMANY
The German Grand Prix was expected to be a cakewalk for Lewis Hamilton, after the German-powered McLaren dominated a three day test session at the track, and then the Friday running and qualifying itself. Hamilton was pushed by Felipe Massa in the qualifying session, but not by enough to threaten his pole position.
As it turned out, the race was something of the predicted walkover for the Brit, albeit via a mid-race safety car period that again threatened to make an arsing great mess of everything. The first half of the race was nothing to write about, so we won't, but when Timo Glock shunted his Toyota on lap 36, the field formed up behind the safety car and pitted as one once the pits opened. Well almost as one. Hamilton stayed out, as did Nick Heidfeld in the BMW and Nelson Piquet Jr, the useless offspring of the triple world champion, in the Renault. As the race restarted, Hamilton only pulled out enough of a gap to make his final stop and rejoin third, behind Massa and Piquet, who now led having had the safety car window coincide with his only stop of the afternoon. The McLaren man proceeded to put in one of the most straightforward recovery drives in the history of the sport, as he caught and passed Massa with little concern (this was as close as we'd get to our title contenders scrapping on track this year), and then passed Piquet with even less concern to take his fourth win of 2008.
Championship contenders - Hamilton 58pts, Massa 54pts, Raikkonen 51pts, Kubica 48pts.
HUNGARY
Always one to deliver a boring race, the Hungaroring didn't disappoint this year either, living up to it's own lowly standards. We did look on course for a surprise winner, particularly after the way that McLaren dominated qualifying, Hamilton taking a virtually unchallenged pole position and Heikki Kovalainen took a rare weekend off from disappointing everyone by lining up alongside him, albeit on the dreaded "dirty side" of the underused Hungaroring track.
From the start of the race though, Felipe Massa made jokers of the pair of silver cars, leaping from third on the grid to take the lead with an impish move around the outside of Hamilton at the first corner, a move which rattled the Brit enough to make him look a little silly after his smug comments after the German race about the ease with which he had overtaken the Brazilian there. Once installed in the lead, Massa held the position surprisingly comfortably, given the prediction of a McLaren-dominated race. But there was a cruel twist in the tail for him, as the Ferrari motor in his car let go with just 3 laps to go. Kovalainen inherited the lead to take his first win of his nascent F1 career, after Hamilton had fallen back with yet more tyre dramas. Timo Glock finished second in the best performance of his first full season in F1. The only other talking point from Hungary was a bizarre refuelling issue, which saw no less than three cars briefly catch fire from an overspill.
Championship contenders - Hamilton 62pts, Raikkonen 57pts, Massa 54pts, Kubica 49pts.
EUROPE (VALENCIA)
The teams headed to the first of two brand new events next, as the Valencia street circuit made it's bow on the world stage. Sadly, despite much promise, the track was a bit of a dud, and the race beat even the Hungaroring for snooze-ability. Felipe Massa dominated the qualifying session, taking pole position ahead of Hamilton and Kubica, with Sebastian Vettel impressing in sixth, and the Renault runners complaining about a complete lack of engine power. But despite the exciting qualifying session, the track was already a disappointment. The drab concrete layout and barely-finished facilities hardly set the pulse racing.
The race itself was controlled by Massa from start to finish, but the lack of action was the real talking point. Aside from a late pass by Kazuki Nakajima on Rubens Barrichello, the order remained unchanged save the pit stops, and Massa led to the flag from Hamilton and Kubica. The main action was in the Ferrari pit, where firstly Massa escaped with a fine after being released into the path of Adrian Sutil, prompting the first mutterings of pro-Ferrari bias from the stewards, and then Raikkonen left his pit box too early, running over a mechanic as he went. His penance for his mistake was to suffer engine failure a few laps later, which crippled his waning title hopes.
Championship contenders - Hamilton 70pts, Massa 64pts, Raikkonen 57pts, Kubica 55pts.
BELGIUM
At the historic surroundings of Spa-Francorchamps, the season switched fully into bitter politicking mode, after a thrilling race was marred by questionable driving and stewarding incompetence. On the Saturday, Lewis Hamilton eased to his fifth pole position of the season, comfortably beating Massa to top spot. Highlighting the desperation now surrounding Raikkonen's title defence, he ended up back on row two, behind Heikki Kovalainen. Whispers before the race suggested that unless Kimi won the 44 lap event, he would be forced to adopt a number two role to Massa for the rest of the year. Some rather unkindly asked whether that had not already been decided on after the Spanish Grand Prix (which, by and large, had been Raikkonen's last performance of any note).
Like a last action hero, Kimi chose his moment to start performing again, moving from fourth to second at the start, and then assuming the lead after Hamilton spun at La Source on the second lap in damp conditions. After that, the Ferrari man led comfortably for most of the race, until the rain returned in the closing stages, and then everything kicked off. Hamilton went chicane cutting to barge into the lead, the pair of them then did some synchronised spinning before Raikkonen ended his race, and his championship, in the wall. Hamilton cheered, but then after the race found himself penalised 25 seconds for his moment at the chicane. Massa inherited the win, and the internet broke under the strain of the pointless bickering which suddenly flared up about the situation.
Championship contenders - Hamilton 76pts, Massa 74pts, Kubica 58pts, Raikkonen 57pts.
ITALY
The final leg of the European season for 2008 saw a new face launch himself on the F1 elite, in a move that was just what the sport needed to help people forget about the bitter Spa incident. The weekend was held in wet conditions for the first time in as long as anyone could be bothered to research, and the qualifying session produced a brilliantly topsy-turvy grid, with Hamilton and Raikkonen wrong-footed by a sudden downpour at the start of Q2 and Massa wrong footed by his own limitations in the wet, leaving Toro Rosso's Sebastian Vettel to take his maiden pole, from Kovalainen and Mark Webber. But surely the young German would be overwhelmed in the race, everyone thought.
But everyone thought wrong, the bunch of idiots. Vettel was assisted by the race starting behind the safety car on the wet track, but once released he easily gapped Kovalainen and raced away to become the youngest ever Grand Prix winner. Further back, Hamilton was quickly losing any sympathy people had for him following the tribulations of Belgium by peppering his recovery drive with some truly odious pieces of driving, having Glock and Webber off the track in separate incidents as he bullied his way to a championship lead-saving seventh place, one place behind the soporific Massa. Raikkonen's recovery was far less annoying, but also far less successful, and he failed to score points for the fourth event in a row.
Championship contenders - Hamilton 78pts, Massa 77pts, Kubica 64pts, Raikkonen 57pts.
So, four flyaway events remained, and the championship was grudgingly coalescing into a head-to-head fight between Mass and Hamilton, though Kubica retained a slight outside hope for BMW Sauber. Events would be decided in a disparate series of final events, including F1's first night race. But enough about that for now, that's for the fourth and final part of our review to discuss...
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