RACE START

FERRARI'S Felipe Massa started the race superbly with absolutely no pressure from anyone going in to Turn One.

But his team-mate Kimi Raikkonen was not so lucky. Raikkonen attempted a brave move hard on the brakes on the dirty side of the track to pass McLaren's Lewis Hamilton for third place but beautiful car control from Hamilton allowed him to hold Raikkonen off.

McLaren's Heikki Kovalainen who started in second, suffered a tyre failure and was forced to pit at the end of the first lap moving his team-mate - Hamilton - up into second place.

RACE ACTION

AFTER an action-packed start to the race, the focus of attention moved to reigning world champion Raikkonen who was very eager to take back his original fourth position from two-time world champion Alonso.

Raikkonen found an opportunity to use the superior power of his Ferrari to slipstream past Alonso on the straight.

Hamilton was doing extremely well to pressure Massa although he was on hard compound tyres, while Massa was on the soft compound.

The two drivers continued to drive a superb race with absolutely no mistakes and exchanged a series of fastest laps every other lap as their fuel loads decreased. After the first series of pit-stops, McLaren seemed to have changed Hamilton's strategy to a three-stop one.

Hamilton was still right behind Massa but looked like the faster driver. He was looking for a way to pass. He found himself an opportunity and forced himself on the inside with precision braking, forcing Massa to run wide.

Hamilton was now in first and pulling away from Massa at around a second a lap. The race was now getting very exciting as some brilliant driving from Hamilton and some strategic genius from the Mclaren team was looking like it could lead Hamilton to victory.

Massa went in for his final pit-stop with around 20 laps to go and rejoined the race. Hamilton was now over 10 seconds ahead of Massa, but he had to pit once more and continued pushing hard.

Hamilton increased the lead to around 15 seconds and finally had to pit. An excellent 5.4-second pit-stop by the McLaren crew brought Hamilton out just over five seconds behind leader Massa though. He hung on till the end.

Hamilton's team-mate Kovalainen did a stunning job, snaking through the bottom half of the field to finish an impressive 12th considering he was last, after the first lap.

RACE STRATEGY

THIS was a superb race that almost won it for Hamilton with quick thinking from the McLaren team to change their strategy in the middle of the race.

Yes, they said after the race that they had planned it.

But among the front-runners, Hamilton was the only one who started on hard compound tyres. This was probably because he preferred the balance of the car on those tyres.

Hamilton is a very aggressive driver who always pushes the tyres to the limit so starting on the hard compound tyres would have been a safer choice.

In the middle of the race, the McLaren team gambled and changed their strategy from a two-stop to a three-stop strategy to allow Hamilton another stint on the hard compound tyres. The gamble almost paid off as Hamilton was able to pressure Massa throughout the entire race.

This was definitely one of the better strategical races for fans, as different teams were using different strategies to achieve results.

RACE SUMMARY

THIS was definitely the best F1 race I've seen in a long time.

It was nail-biting action from start to finish. There were many overtaking moves during the race - especially from McLaren's Heikki Kovalainen fighting through from last place - but the main highlight was definitely the game of chess that McLaren was playing with Ferrari.

At any point of the race, I still wasn't sure who would win. The slightest mistake would have meant an almost definite win from either team.

The Turkish GP also saw a very clean race with few crashes and retirees.

As I mentioned in my race preview, I was glad to see Felipe Massa make the most of his car at a circuit that favoured Ferrari, to take pole and win.

I'm definitely looking forward now to see if McLaren can fight back to win in Monaco two Sundays from now (25 May).

This article was first published in The New Paper on May 12, 2008.