The result was a win for their Finnish driver Kimi Raikkonen in the 10th edition of the Malaysian Grand Prix here on Sunday. There was some disappointment for their Brazilian driver Felipe Massa, who spun out on lap 31.

Polish BMW-Sauber driver Robert Kubica came in second, while McLaren-Mercedes' Heikki Kovalainen finished third. There was mixed luck for the Force India team, which also uses Ferrari engines. Italian Giancarlo Fisichella led the VJM01 car to a 12th place finish, while German Adrian Sutil had to retire with a hydraulic failure.

Fisichella started in 17th spot, dropped to 20th place at the start, but then a determined effort saw him bringing the car home and create an upbeat mood in the team.

Calm start

The start of the race was incident-free and Massa led at the first corner after starting on pole. McLaren-Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton moved up to fifth place from the ninth place he started from. The Briton and Kovalainen qualified fourth and third respectively, but were penalised five places for blocking other drivers during qualifying.

However, soon after, the incidents began to happen. After one lap, Toyota's Timo Glock (Germany) spun out after he was hit by Williams’ Nico Rosberg (Germany). Toro Rosso's Sebastien Bourdais (France) too crashed out. On the sixth lap, it was Sutil who went out.

Things began to settle down and Massa looked in good touch. Their decision to use hard compound tyres proved right as he was in the lead. He came in for a pit stop after 17 laps. He came out in 10th place and well behind Raikkonen, who took the lead and had a big advantage. Raikkonen came in for his first stop on lap 18, but came out just ahead of Massa. Kubica was in the lead, even as Hamilton had an unfortunate 20-second pit stop as one of the tyres on his McLaren did not come off easily. Kubica went into the pits and Raikkonen was back ahead now.

After all the drivers had finished their stops, things settled down with Raikkonen leading, Massa second and behind 4.1 seconds and Kubica third and 15.7 seconds behind the leader. Kovalainen, Jarno Trulli (Toyota), Mark Webber (Red Bull) and Hamilton were running in fourth to seventh places in that order. Hamilton gave Webber a tough time and he was only three tenths of a second behind. Fisichella was still in 16th place.

Massa spun out of the race on the 31st lap coming off the seventh corner and going into the eighth. This promoted Kubica to the second place but 22.3 seconds behind Raikkonen and Kovalainen third. Meanwhile, Fisichella had moved up to 14th place behind Honda's Rubens Barrichello.

There was a stroke of luck for Fisichella, who was running 13th behind Barrichello. The latter was awarded a drive-through penalty for speeding in the pit lane. That meant the Force India driver moved up to 12th spot.

But things were easy for Raikkonen from then on. He just stuck to the job and made it look very easy as he surged towards his win. He had clocked the fastest lap of the race in 1:35.405 on lap 37 which was bettered by BMW's Nick Heidfeld, who did a 1:35.366 on lap 55.

Raikkonen earned ten points in the drivers' championship in a total time of one hour, 31 mintues, 18.555 seconds. This win comes exactly five years to the day after he first won the Malaysian GP.