News

Brazilian Grand Prix: Lap by Lap Report

The Brazilian Grand Prix is the seventeenth and final race of the 2007 F1 Season. Felipe Massa will start from pole position in front of his home crowd for the 71 lap race around the Autódromo José Carlos Pace in the suburbs of São Paulo, Brazil.

Lewis Hamilton, Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso start from second to fourth positions respectively, and all three could win the 2007 F1 Drivers World Championship today.

The track surface has been resurfaced for this year, and drivers already having to cope with the unusual forces exerted from the anti-clockwise circuit design, will have to overcome the challenges of high track temperatures and blistering tyres. Drivers must use both compounds brought to this race by Bridgestone, Soft and Super-Soft. The Super-Soft is expected to blister badly on a record track temperature of 64 degrees.

Parade Lap Massa leads all drivers away. Mechanics leave the track by jumping the walls surrounding the pit straight. Cars are slow to form up on the grid and the temperatures will not help the front runners.

Lap 1 Massa moves across and blocks Hamilton. Raikkonen passes Hamilton into turn one. Kovalainen is knocked off by Ralf Schumacher, but rejoins. Alonso then passes Hamilton and Hamilton runs wide into Turn Four, falling back to eighth place.

Lap 2 Hamilton passes Jarno Trulli. Yamamoto loses his front wing after hitting a recovering Fisichella. Meanwhile Liuzzi is in for a new front wing. Fisichella lost his rear wing during the incident and looks set to retire. The incident is covered by double waved yellow flags.

Lap 3 Hamilton is three tenths of second behind Heidfeld.

Lap 4 Drivers avoid debris at Turn Three. Yamamoto retires.

Lap 5 Raikkonen sets the fastest lap of the race so far on a 1:14.165, holding Massa s lead to 0.7 seconds.

Lap 7 Hamilton passes Heidfeld, as the German runs wide into Turn One, to take sixth position. Next target for the Brit is Heidfeld s BMW team-mate Kubica for fifth.

Lap 8 Kubica passes Webber into Turn One. Hamilton loses thirty seconds and it looks as though the Brit is suffering gearbox problems. Hamilton falls to eighteenth.

Lap 10 Hamilton starts to set personal best sector times. Barrichello goes through the pits to serve his penalty having jumped the start.

Lap 12 Raikkonen sets another fastest lap.

Lap 13 Hamilton is up to sixteenth behind Sutil.

Lap 15 Hamilton overtakes a number of cars, moving up to twelfth. Webber retires. Massa sets another fastest lap.

Lap 18 Hamilton passes Nakajima for eleventh. Button is his next target.

Lap 19 Massa sets another fastest lap, pulling out the lead back to Raikkonen by 1.8 seconds. Hamilton is 53 seconds behind the race leaders.

Lap 19 Kubica pits from fourth and stays with the harder of the two soft compounds.

Lap 20 Massa pits, allowing Raikkonen to take lead of the race. Raikkonen sets a fastest lap.

Lap 21 Raikkonen pits and rejoins behind Massa. Alonso now leads the Brazilian Grand Prix.

Lap 22 Alonso pits as Jenson Button retires. Hamilton is up to tenth position.

Lap 23 Hamilton pits and is fuelled for a short stint on the super soft tyres. He rejoins in fourteenth. Hamilton was slow to come into the pit, were his earlier problems related to the pit lane speed limiter?

Lap 25 Sutil runs into the side of Davidson at Turn One, both spin but recover back onto the circuit. Davidson attempts to recover the pits with a left rear puncture.

Lap 26 Heidfeld pits. Raikkonen is slow at present with a heavy fuel load. He is three seconds behind Massa at this stage of the race.

Lap 29 Coulthard locks up into Turn One as he tries to pass Rosberg.

Lap 30 Hamilton passes Barrichello into Turn One in a brilliant move down the inside from a very long way back.

Lap 31 Kubica is starting to put Alonso under pressure.

Lap 32 Nakajima makes his first pit stop in F1 and runs over three mechanics.

Lap 34 Kubica passes Alonso into Turn One. Hamilton passes Vettel into Turn Four and tenth position.

Lap 35 Sutil takes a drive through penalty for sliding into the side of Davidson.

Lap 36 Hamilton pits and takes on the harder tyre, he stops for 6.5 seconds. Kovalainen crashes on the exit of Turn Three, probably from suspension failure following his contact with Schumacher on Lap One. He emerges the car shaken but ok.

Lap 38 Kubica pits, stopping for 5.7 seconds. He takes on the harder compound tyre again, meaning he will have to stop again.

Lap 41 Barrichello retires with engine failure. It s the first season in fifteen years in which he has failed to score a single World Championship point.

Lap 47 Massa leads Raikkonen by just 1.5 seconds. Alonso trails the two Ferraris by 36 seconds.

Lap 51 Raikkonen leads as Massa pits. Massa rejoins in second but in traffic.

Lap 52 Raikkonen starts to break his best sector times as he tries to get ahead of Massa at his next pit stop. Heidfeld pits.

Lap 53 Alonso pits for super soft tyres. Raikkonen also pits and rejoins ahead of Massa.

Lap 55 Hamilton has unlapped himself and has started to chase down Trulli.

Lap 57 Hamilton pits and rejoins in ninth, surely his title hopes are now over?

Lap 59 Kubica pits from third. Hamilton sets the fastest lap of the race.

Lap 61 There is a close battle between Rosberg and Heidfeld. Both run wide into Turn One, and Kubica passes them both. Trulli now follows the pack in seventh. Coulthard and Nakajima come together, Coulthard spins.

Lap 64 Trulli pits, moving Hamilton up to seventh, although a lap down.

Lap 66 Raikkonen sets the fastest lap of the race on a 1:12.445.

Lap 67 Rosberg and Kubica fight over fourth position. Three laps later Rosberg does pass Kubica.

Lap 71 Raikkonen wins the race and the World Championship. Felipe Massa finishes second, ahead of Alonso, Rosberg, Kubica, Heidfeld, Hamilton and Trulli.

Most Popular

To Top