EON

Barcelona – Felipe Massa held off local hero Fernando Alonso in the first turn to win his second straight Formula One race from the pole position, at the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday.

The Ferrari driver Massa stood his ground when Alonso attacked from second place on the grid in a McLaren-Mercedes and won handily from new championship leader Lewis Hamilton (McLaren) and Alonso.

Massa, who also won from the pole in the last race four weeks ago in Bahrain, now has four career victories. But team-mate Kimi Raikkonen had to retire with technical problems in the 10th lap while driving in third place.

The outcome gave the British rookie sensation Hamilton the championship lead on his own with 30 points after his fourth career race in which he has made the podium on each occasion, with only a race win missing.

The two-time defending champion Alonso has 28 and Massa 27 points early in the 17-race season. Raikkonen, who was tied for the lead with Hamilton and Alonso, remained on 22 points.

A record 140,000 fans came to the Circuit de Catalunya hoping for a victory of their hero Alonso like last year, but Massa already spoilt the show when he grabbed the pole on Saturday by three hundredth of a second.

The start was delayed as Jarno Trulli encountered problems after the warm-up lap in his Toyota, forcing him to start from the pit lane while all others went on another warm-up lap which cut the race distance by one lap to 65 laps.

Massa was not put off by the delay and raced in a league of his own to Ferrari’s third season win after holding off Alonso’s early challenge.

Alonso tried to overtake the Brazilian on the outside going into the opening right turn, but Massa stood his ground, Alonso rode out into the gravel in the next left turn after the cars briefly touched and lost two positions, with Hamilton and Raikkonen moving ahead.

Alonso also failed to overtake Raikkonen three laps later before moving up to third place when the Finn had to retire.

Watched by Michael Schumacher, who attended the first race for Ferrari since retiring last season, Massa led by almost 10 seconds before his first pit stop in the 19th lap which went without problems even though some flames burst out of the Ferrari when he left.

Massa could take it easy in the end of a lonely race in front to lead an unchanged race top three in 1 hour 31 minutes 36.230 seconds. He beat hamilton by 6.8 seconds, with Alonso 17.5 seconds off the pace.

Poland’s Robert Kubica placed fourth for BMW, while team-mate Nick Heidfeld met disaster at the first pit stop to drop out of contention when a front wheel wasn’t properly fixed. He had to return to the pits and eventually retired in the 48th lap.

Veteran David Coulthard got the first points of the year for Red Bull in fifth place, Niko Rosberg was sixth in a Williams, Heikki Kovalainen seventh in a Renault and Takuma Sato got the first ever championship point for Super-Aguri in eighth place.

The next race is the famous Monaco Grand Prix in Monte Carlo on May 27.