CANADIAN GRAND PRIX RESULTS

Everybody made good on the start. Exiting pit lane, however, was a unique challenge.

Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Raikkonen, arguably the two best drivers in the race, joined together in an accident near the exit of the pit lane as the Ferrari driver sat at a red light. (Yes, a red light.) Hamilton's McLaren-Mercedes and Raikkonen's Ferrari completed just 19 laps. Only Adrian Sutil, with his Ferrari-powered Force India car, finished abaft of the race's main attractions. Sutil's teammate, Giancarlo Fisichella, failed to finish as well.

With the two Renault cars (Nelshino Piquet and then Fernando Alonso) aborting the race early, the race was blown wide open. Last year's champion from Ferrari and his two best competitors, now divided at McLaren-Mercedes and Renault, were out, and the race was ripe for the taking.

In his 29th career Formula 1 start, BMW's Robert Kubica took the win and gained first place in the driver's standings to boot, just one year since his near-deadly crash in Montreal. Nick Heidfeld drove his BMW to second place, some 16 seconds back. 

Renault engines enabled David Coulthard to grab his first podium in who knows how long, while the other Red Bull Renault of Mark Webber finished in twelfth spot. Timo Glock and Jarno Trulli made things interesting in their Toyotas, powering to fourth and sixtth. Ferrari got a decent finish out of Felipe Massa to split the Toyota cars. Nico Rosberg managed to finish in the top ten with his Toyota-powered Williams. Teammate Kazuki Nakajima completed just 46 laps.

Heikki Kovalainen finished in ninth position; just one spot out of the points. Ferrari will savour the four extra points Massa earned on their behalf, bumping McLaren-Mercedes down 20 points in the team standings. BMW causes worry, with a 1-2 finish and a total just three points lower than Ferrari's 73.

Sebastian Vettel helped Scuderia Toro Rosso add their seventh point with his eight place finish and Sebastien Bourdais actually finished the race, in thirteenth no less. That leaves the Honda cars of Rubens Barichello and Jenson Button; seventh and eleventh respectively.

For the normally accident-prone Canadian GP, one extra driver finished compared with last year, two more than in '05 and three more than in '04. Meanwhile, the planet's two most prominent racers were involved in the most embarrassing shunt of them all.