Lewis Hamilton described this as 'the best race ever for me'. That's quite a claim when you consider some of the remarkable drives in the Englishman's brief F1 career. But it was fully justified by a 58-lap race in which Hamilton was 'full-on' from start to finish. More than that, he and McLaren-Mercedes had to overcome a potential handicap when forced by concerns over tyre wear to make an extra pit stop.
In truth, Hamilton would have accepted fifth place. In the end, he finished second, pushing the winner, Felipe Massa, for an hour and 27 minutes.
These two were in a league of their own, particularly after two other candidates for victory, Heikki Kovalainen and Kimi Raikkonen, touched at the first corner, forcing Kovalainen to make a pit stop to replace a tyre on his McLaren and Raikkonen's Ferrari dropped to sixth. The world champion staged an impressive recovery to finish a close third, but even that was not enough to detract from the way Massa had been forced to work for his, and Ferrari's, third win in succession in Turkey.
Hamilton had not been particularly happy after qualifying third - and struggling to do so. Making the tyres work had been a problem for every team in the unexpectedly cool conditions but McLaren's difficulties had been multiplied when Bridgestone advised the British team that there were safety concerns over the way in which their tyres were been punished, particularly through Turn Eight, a very long and fast left-hander. McLaren chose to err on the side of caution and brought Hamilton in for an extra stop rather than run too many laps on a particular set of tyres.
Fortunately, stopping three times instead of two did not make a huge difference at Istanbul Park and Hamilton's different strategy brought a great deal of interest to the race, as he took the lead at one point.
In the end, however, Massa had the upper hand, leading home his British rival by 3.7 seconds. It was a timely result for both drivers and keeps them both in the championship frame as the season moves to Monaco in two weeks' time.
