• French Grand Prix 2009

Ferrari hit back with French one-two

Felipe Massa leads Ferrari team-mate Kimi Raikkonen © Sutton Images

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• Race:
• French Grand Prix

• Championship:
• FIA Formula One World Championship

• Drivers:
• Lewis Hamilton
• |
• Felipe Massa
• |
• Kimi Räikkönen

• Teams:
• Ferrari
• |
• McLaren

Ferrari hit back at Magny-Cours as Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa finished one-two in the French Grand Prix, following McLaren's dominance in North America.

Massa started from pole and led Raikkonen up to the first round of pit stops but it was at this point that the race turned. Approaching his first stop, Raikkonen put in a sequence of fastest laps and was able to vault ahead of Massa. Once ahead, he hung on by 2.4 seconds to win from the Brazilian, while Lewis Hamilton continued his unbroken run of podium finishes by securing third place in his McLaren. He had switched from a two to a three-stop strategy to try to combat the Ferraris but he didn't have the pace of the Italian cars.

"This win certainly helps," said Raikkonen, his championship challenge back on track after a run of subdued races. "The car was good all the time and I couldn't ask for more." Massa felt that his chances of a third win of the season were dashed by traffic as he seemed to suffer more in the back markers than Raikkonen did, while Robert Kubica took fourth behind Hamilton on his return to tracing after his massive accident in Canada.

The second BMW-Sauber of Nick Heidfeld took fifth ahead of Giancarlo Fisichella's Renault and Fernando Alonso (McLaren) who suffered a brake sensor problem in qualifying and started 10th. Honda's Jenson Button picked up his first point of the season in eighth place.

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