Massa

MAGNY COURS, France (AP):

Felipe Massa of Ferrari won the French Grand Prix yesterday and moved top of the overall standings after his third F1 victory of the season.

Massa overtook teammate and pole sitter Kimi Raikkonen with 32 laps to go and held on to win by 17.9 seconds for the second consecutive Ferrari sweep at the Circuit de Nevers.

"It was fantastic, I didn't expect that. Sometimes you need a little bit of luck and today we got that," said the Brazilian driver, who has taken half of the races since retiring from the first two of the season.

Leads the race

Massa leads the title race with 48 points, two ahead of Robert Kubica of BMW Sauber, who finished fifth. Raikkonen trails Massa by five points in third.

"It's nice but my dream is not just to lead the championship, my dream is to win the championship," Massa said.

Toyota's Jarno Trulli finished third ahead of McLaren's Heikki Kovalainen, who had started 10th after a five-place qualifying penalty. Teammate Lewis Hamilton's frustrating day was compounded by an extra penalty that left him out of the points in 10th and the British driver now trails Massa by 10 points.

Massa's eighth victory meant F1 has a new leader for the fourth straight GP. The 27-year-old driver is the first Brazilian to lead the championship since three-time champion Ayrton Senna - a span of 15 years.

Impatience

Hamilton, eager to get up into the points from 13th, passed Toro Rosso's Sebastian Vettel at the third corner and got as high as ninth but his impatience earned a drive-through penalty after he went off course in the manoeuvre.

"I felt I had got past fairly and was ahead going into the corner," Hamilton said.

The 23-year-old driver - already dropped 10 places on the grid for causing an accident at the preceding Canadian GP - was lapped by Raikkonen after 20 laps. McLaren's third penalty of the weekend took the steam out of Hamilton's charge to finish in the points.