Formula One news

Hamilton moves step closer with dominant win

Lewis Hamilton moved a major step closer to winning the drivers' championship with a dominant victory in the Chinese Grand Prix. Felipe Massa ended up second, courtesy of Kimi Raikkonen who finished third.

There was no sign of the dramas of a week ago as Hamilton made a strong start to lead Raikkonen and Massa into turn one. Kovalainen got a jump on Alonso at the start, but the winner of the last two races wasn't about to stand for it and muscled back past for fourth at the hairpin.

Hamilton built a lead of over 3.8s in the first ten laps over Raikkonen as Massa fell a similar amount behind his team mate. The Brazilian was the first to pit on lap 14 along with Alonso - one lap before race leader Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Raikkonen.

As the field sort itself out, Hamilton resumed the lead and had increased his lead over Raikkonen to 6.9s by lap 25. Robert Kubica was up in third until he made his first pit stop on that same lap, letting Massa back through to third, Alonso to fourth, Kovalainen to fifth and Heidfeld to sixth.

The race remained processional, until drama struck McLaren on lap 35 when Kovalainen suffered a right front tyre puncture. The Finn made crawled back to the pits and rejoined the race at the back of the field.

Meanwhile Hamilton, Massa, Raikkonen and Alonso all made their second pit stops without drama and maintained the same order, but Hamilton's lead increased to over 12 seconds and any thin hope Ferrari had of catching him looked long gone. 

With seven laps to go, Raikkonen did what was expected of him and lifted off on the back straight, letting Massa through to second place and minimise the damage done to his championship challenge to just two points instead of four.

Hamilton cruised to victory ahead of Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen to extend his championship lead to seven points. 14 points for Ferrari, however move the team 11 clear of McLaren with one race remaining in the constructors' championship.

Fernando Alonso could produce no heorics, but was not far off the Ferraris when the chequered flag fell and he took fourth, and five more valuable points for Renault. Heidfeld ended up fifth ahead of BMW team mate Kubica while Glock and Piquet picked up the final points in seventh and eighth.

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