Lewis Hamilton leads the field away at the start. (LAT photo) » More Photos

Unfortunately for him, the stewards adjudged his original attempt to pass Kimi Raikkonen, which resulted in him cutting the chicane, to have given him an advantage, and the 25-second penalty he was administered dropped him to third in the classified standings., and more importantly cuts his world championship advantage over Felipe Massa to just 2 points.

Massa kept his nose clean to inherit second from his teammate, and ultimately the race victory, on the weekend of his 100th race start, and the second straight race where Hamilton and Massa have been 1-2. Massa is now 17 points clear of Raikkonen in the championship, so Ferrari now have a de facto number one driver for the season run-in.

Behind him, and sneaking up on the rails, was BMW’s Nick Heidfeld, who gambled on intermediate tires and moved up four places on the last lap. In fact, if the race had been one lap longer, he would have won – he was 25 seconds quicker than Hamilton on the final lap, and the gap at the finish line was down to under 24 seconds, with Massa just 9 seconds ahead.

Nevertheless, Heidfeld’s podium finish is the 11th of his career without winning, and he’s only one short of Stefan Johansson’s all-time record of podium futility. Not bad, for a circuit on which he’d never scored a point prior to 2007. He also recorded his 23rd consecutive race finish, and at Monza he will have a chance to tie Michael Schumacher’s all-time record of 24 straight race finishes, set between 2001 and 2003.

In fourth place was Alonso, who pitted for inters at the beginning of the last lap, and will share similar sentiment to Heidfeld on a good result, but not as good as he wanted. Spa was Alonso’s 7th points finish of the year, but he is still yet to finish on the podium, making him the highest driver in the championship not to have done so.