Sunday April 27, 10:36 PM

Raikkonen extends lead with Spanish win

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By Alan Baldwin

BARCELONA (Reuters) - Ferrari's world champion Kimi Raikkonen stretched his Formula One lead to nine points with a dominant win from pole position in the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday.

Brazilian Felipe Massa sealed Ferrari's second successive one-two finish, and third win in a row, with McLaren's Lewis Hamilton taking third place to revive his title challenge after a disappointing last race in Bahrain.

Raikkonen's 17th grand prix win left the Finn with 29 points, nine clear of closest rival Hamilton, and catapulted Ferrari back in front of BMW Sauber in the constructors' standings.

"If we wanted, we could have gone a bit faster but there was no point in pushing more than we need to," said Raikkonen, who still set the fastest lap.

Spaniard Fernando Alonso, who started on the front row for Renault, retired on lap 35 with a blown engine but he had already fallen down the field after being the first driver to refuel.

Massa, winner in Bahrain, had got past double world champion Alonso at the start while Hamilton slotted into fourth place after muscling past BMW Sauber's Robert Kubica from fifth.

"When we qualified fifth we knew it would be very difficult to beat the Ferraris," said Hamilton. "The key was to get a good start and make up as many places as possible.

"We had two bad races and to come back on the podium is fantastic."

KOVALAINEN CRASHES

While Raikkonen had an uneventful afternoon in the sunshine, his compatriot Heikki Kovalainen was flown to hospital with concussion after his McLaren plunged across the gravel and into a tyre wall.

Kovalainen had been leading at the time after both Ferraris and Hamilton had made their first pitstops.

"He banged his head in the accident and has concussion. As a precaution he is going to hospital to have more checks," McLaren chief executive Martin Whitmarsh told reporters outside the circuit's medical centre.

Briton Hamilton, who suffered a similar accident at the Nuerburgring last year, said he had been concerned until team boss Ron Dennis had assured him on the radio that Kovalainen was conscious and stable.

The safety car was deployed following Kovalainen's crash, having already been brought out after Sebastian Vettel's Toro Rosso and Force India's Adrian Sutil collided on the first lap.

Poland's Kubica finished fourth, moving him up to third in the championship with 19 points, ahead of Massa on 18, with Australian Mark Webber fifth in a Red Bull.

Britain's Jenson Button finished sixth for Honda's first points of the year while Japan's Kazuki Nakajima was seventh for Williams and Italian Jarno Trulli eighth for Toyota.

Ferrari lead the constructors' standings with 47 points to BMW Sauber's 35. McLaren have 34.

The first European race of the season ended with an entirely predictable result, with the Circuit de Catalunya setting a record as the track with the longest run of successive winners from pole position.

Raikkonen, the only driver to have won twice so far this season, was the eighth in a row to have triumphed in Barcelona from pole.