Kimi Raikkonen won the Malaysian Grand Prix in a Ferrari revival following the problems of the opening race in Melbourne.

For Lewis Hamilton in the McLaren, it was a return to the bad luck and avoidable mistakes that cost him the title at the end of last season.

Given a five place grid penalty for impeding Nick Heidfeld’s BMW in Qualifying, he was then the hapless victim of a pit-stop blunder by his team and ran out of water during the race.

In the end he finished fifth, probably the best he could hope for in the trying circumstances and the scorching heat of the race.

In the pits it was apparently a £1,000 titanium wheel nut that caused the problem. Hamilton found himself parked up for nearly 20 seconds during his first refuel, with his mechanics panicking over the front, right wheel.

When he finally got underway, he was in midfield and being held up by Mark Webber’s Red Bull. That was it until the next time.

“I didn’t have any water all race,” he said after confessing he could have done with a cold beer. “But the great thing is my fitness. Physically, I felt fine and was able to push all race. I feel better than last year.”

Felipe Massa started on pole and kept in front until the first round of pit stops. Then Raikkonen put in one super-fast lap to come out in front.

A Ferrari one-two looked assured, only for Massa to spin off on lap 31 when he clipped the kerb and lost control entering the next corner. Some commentators are wondering whether Massa can handle the car now that driver aids have been removed. Raikkonen proved he can, despite his poor performance in Melbourne which relegated him to eighth place.

“We’ve had a very complicated start to the season, but I have certainly not lost faith in the team. We can still do better,” said Raikkonen.

Hamilton still leads the Drivers’ Championship by three points. He said: “It was a difficult weekend. So so. Comme ci, comme ca. We can improve but I look forward to the next race still leading. We still got four points and that is key. I did the best job I could. At least the reliability of the car was great and we had good pace. We have to make sure we get the guns working next time and do a better job in qualifying. We can bounce back.”

He will be hoping that McLaren can recapture their mojo at Bahrain in two weeks.

In what was yet another dismal race for Lewis Hamilton, the young rookie driver could only trail in 7th in the Brazil Grand Prix after a bad start and repeated gear box failures.

Kimi Raikkonen winner of the 2007 Drivers’ Championship

Given the wall of ill-fate he encountered, his heroic attempts to claw his way back up the field, once the McLaren team had fixed his gear box remotely, at least got him into the points.

Kimi Raikkonen won the race in his Ferrari and took the Drivers’ World Championship, clocking up six wins in the season to Hamilton and Alonso’s four each.

Raikkonen ended a bad-tempered season on 110 points, while Hamilton and Alonso shared second place one point adrift.

Ron Dennis will probably be grateful that a truly awful season, in which his team was fined an eye-watering $100m, can now be put to rest.

However, he did attempt to appeal against a stewards’ decision not to penalize other teams for using fuel at lower temperatures than are required by the rules.

The result stands.

After being cleared by a FIA inquiry in mid-week into what appeared to be dangerous driving in the Japanese Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton made a pig’s ear of the Chinese GP when only 25 laps from the World Championship title.

Later, he was man enough to admit he’d misjudged the state of his tyres when forced to retire by erratic road-holding.

The race was won by Kimi Raikkonen, with Fernando Alonso second. The result sets up a three-way fight for the championship in the final Grand Prix of the season in Brazil.

Hamilton will kick himself all the way to the bank if he loses the title now.

Here we go again. The gathering feud between Fernando Alonso, who thinks he’s hard done-by because team-mate Lewis Hamilton is not “slowed down” by McLaren, and Hamilton himself, who is just doing his best, erupted in the Belgian Grand Prix.

Kimi Raikkonen, the winner for Ferrari

That’s not even mentioning the feud between Ferrari and McLaren, or the bad blood beween FIA and the British team — fined a massive £50m ($100m) last week for allegedly receiving stolen intellectual property from a disgruntled Ferrari mechanic.

On the first bend Alonso clearly drove the British rookie off the track, but struggled to reach third place. Hamilton came in fourth, losing one point to the big bully ahead of him.

Later, Hamilton complained, “The last few years I have been watching F1 and Fernando has always been complaining about other people being unfair. It was blatant. He pushed me wide quite deliberately. For someone who is trying to set a standard, he is not living up to it. “There was enough room for us both to get round, but suddenly I didn’t have any room. It was not a fair or race manoeuvre. I was lucky there was a run-off area.”

Top Ten Race Result
1 K Raikkonen (Fin) Ferrari 1hr 20min 39.066sec
2 F Massa (Brz) Ferrari 1:20:43.761
3 F Alonso (Sp) McLaren 1:20:53.409
4 L Hamilton (GB) McLaren 1:21:02.681
5 N Heidfeld (G) BMW Sauber 1:21:30.945
6 N Rosberg (G) Williams 1:21:55.942
7 M Webber (A) Red Bull 1:21:59.701
8 H Kovalainen (Fin) Renault 1:22:04.172
9 R Kubica (Pol) BMW Sauber 1:22:04.727
10 R Schumacher (G) Toyota 1:22:07.640

Drivers’ Championship
1 Hamilton 97pts
2 Alonso 95
3 Raikkonen 84
4 Massa 77
5 Heidfeld 56
6 Kubica 33
7 Kovalainen 22
8 Fisichella 17
9 Rosberg 15
10 Wurz 13