NO RUNAWAY; Ferrari finishes 1-2 in Turkey.(Competition)

Byline: NIGEL ROEBUCK

Felipe Massa scored his first-ever Grand Prix win in Turkey last year, taking the pole and leading all the way. He repeated the feat this year, but teammate Kimi Raikkonen was in his mirrors all the way and finished second. Their Ferraris were essentially unopposed, with McLaren-Mercedes near the pace but not truly there.

Raikkonen cranked out the race's fastest time on the penultimate lap-more than half a second better than anyone else's best-and there appeared no obvious reason for it. "Well,'' he said, "the race was decided yesterday, really, in qualifying. It's so boring, driving behind other cars all the time; there's no passing these days, with the aerodynamics the way they are. . . . I did the lap at the end because I just wanted to see what the car could do.''

That summed up the afternoon. The Istanbul Park circuit is totally different from the Hungaroring and theoretically offers at least two overtaking opportunities. In reality, though, there was remarkably little passing.

McLaren's Fernando Alonso finished third, but the world champion-competing in his 100th Grand Prix-echoed Raikkonen's words. "At the start, I was overtaken by the two BMWs, so my race was already a little bit over,'' he said. "I spent endless laps behind [Nick] Heidfeld, but it's so difficult to overtake. Really, you have to wait for the guy in front to make a mistake, and Nick was driving very consistently and very well. My race really started only after the first stops, where I was able to get ahead of him finally.''

The Ferraris were long gone by then, and so was Alonso's teammate. Lewis Hamilton started from the front row, alongside Massa, but he was on the dirty side of the track, and Raikkonen passed him immediately. Thereafter, he watched the Ferraris getting farther away every time around-until lap 43, when he limped to the pits, right front tire flapping.

That was bad luck, but had the tire failed a few seconds earlier, it could have been a great deal worse. Hamilton was at the exit of turn eight when he sensed the beginnings of a problem. "Turn eight,'' Alonso said of the multi-apex, downhill left-hander, "is the most testing corner in F1, no question.'' More so than Spa's legendary Eau Rouge? "For sure.'' Indeed, the drivers are subjected to 5 g for seven seconds.