Robert Kubica confirmed his status as Formula 1’s next emerging superstar with an accomplished maiden victory for himself and BMW Sauber in a typically dramatic Canadian Grand Prix.
In the process he made history as the first Polish driver to win a Formula 1 race and took the world championship lead from McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton.
Nick Heidfeld came home second to ensure a historic 1-2 for BMW, while Red Bull’s David Coulthard took full advantage of shrewd pit strategy and strong race pace to finish on the final step of the podium, his first visit to the rostrum in two years.
Watch race highlights here
Hamilton and Kimi Raikkonen, who held the top two positions in the points table going into the race, both went away empty-handed after a bizarre collision in the pit lane under safety car conditions.
Hamilton, who had dominated the race’s early stages and appeared to have victory in his pocket, failed to notice a red light at the end of the pit lane and smashed into the back of his title rival.
The blunder had unfortunate echoes of Hamilton’s similarly ignominious exit from last year’s Chinese GP, which ended up costing him the world championship – and it left the Briton similarly shell-shocked.
Half an hour earlier Hamilton had made a perfect getaway from pole position, leading a surprisingly orderly pack of cars through the usually troublesome bottleneck of turns one and two.
Behind Kubica and Raikkonen, Nico Rosberg snatched fourth from Fernando Alonso around the outside of turn two, leaving the Spaniard to fend off Felipe Massa on the short sprint to the next corner.
Hamilton immediately put some distance between himself and his pursuers, pulling out a three-second margin by the end of lap five.
By lap 14 he had stretched his advantage to seven seconds, while Kubica started to come under serious pressure from Raikkonen, who was carrying a heavier fuel load and was now beginning to make his presence felt.
On the same lap Adrian Sutil parked his stricken Force India by the side of the track approaching turn three, and after some deliberation the officials elected to deploy the safety car.
That decision, as it turned out, would transform the complexion of the race.
It wiped out Hamilton’s lead and triggered the first round of pit stops – but it was what happened when the leaders jostled for position on their way out of the pit lane that caused pandemonium.
Hamilton, who according to the paddock conjecture had started with a lighter car than the other front-runners, was held longer in his pit stall, allowing both Raikkonen and Kubica to leapfrog him.
These two then stopped at the end of the pit lane, heeding a red light. Hamilton, however, apparently did not notice the light and accelerated toward the pit exit as normal.
By the time he realised why Raikkonen and Kubica were stationary, he had no time to react and slammed into the back of the Ferrari – sidelining both cars on the spot.
Rosberg also got caught unawares and, in turn, hit the back of Hamilton’s car, although the Williams escaped with only a broken nose cone.
While McLaren had called Heikki Kovalainen in for service at the same time as Hamilton, and a problem with the refuelling rig at Ferrari saw Massa have to pit a second time, BMW opted to leave Heidfeld out on the circuit and switch him onto a one-stop strategy.
Rubens Barrichello (Honda), Kazuki Nakajima (Williams) and both Red Bull drivers did likewise, putting this quintet at the head of the leaderboard prior to the restart on lap 21.
Kubica, in 10th, now led those who had pitted under the caution, followed by Alonso and Kovalainen – but these three were embroiled in traffic while Heidfeld had a clear road ahead of him.
The German’s task was simple: to pull away from Barrichello as fast as he could and build a big enough cushion over Kubica to maintain the effective race lead following his one and only pit visit.
Simple, perhaps, but not easy – especially as Heidfeld had been much less happy than his team-mate with his car’s handling all weekend.
But he found the F1.08 to his liking on the harder tyres and promptly streaked away from Barrichello, building a 26s margin by the time he made for the pits on lap 29.
Despite being held for an almost eternal 12.4s, he emerged still ahead of Kubica – but only just.
Robert, with a much lighter car and another stop still to make, wasted no time in dispatching Nick, slicing ahead at turn one with what looked like full cooperation from his one-stopping team-mate.
The lead changed hands several times in the next few laps as the pit stop cycle played out, with Barrichello, Coulthard, Jarno Trulli and Timo Glock all enjoying brief spells at the front before Kubica reassumed control.
The Pole had lost some time following Glock, however, and led Heidfeld by just 11s when the Toyota finally pitted and handed him a clear track.
Now he had to match Heidfeld’s earlier feat, make every lap count and more than double his advantage if he was to stay on course for his first win.
He was more than equal to the challenge and got the gap out to 26s, which enabled him to comfortably retain the lead following his final stop on lap 49.
Meanwhile Alonso, who had been putting Heidfeld under intense pressure for second place and made at least one failed attempt to pass the BMW, had ended his bold challenge in the turn seven wall on lap 45.
Although the track surface became increasingly treacherous, particularly off-line, there wasn’t the wholesale carnage that many drivers had feared – the organisers’ various quick fixes having done enough to keep the track together, albeit looking decidedly second-hand by the end of the 70-lap race.
And while the lap times were light years away from the track record, there was plenty of hard racing going on all the way down the field.
The top three had a relatively straightforward run to the flag, with Coulthard slotting into third place after all the pit stops were completed and impressively finishing less than seven seconds behind runner-up Heidfeld.
But the remaining points-paying positions were hotly contested in the closing stages.
Barrichello let fourth place slip through his fingers with a grassy excursion on lap 59, allowing both Toyotas to nip past.
Glock held on for an excellent fourth place, a career-best and his first points finish since he placed seventh on his grand prix debut at this very track back in 2004.
The German may have inadvertently cost Trulli fifth when he ran wide on the marbles in turn two and forced his close-following team-mate to back off – whereupon Massa smartly put the power down and darted ahead on acceleration out of the corner.
After his unscheduled extra pit stop the Ferrari driver put in a spirited recovery drive spiced with opportunistic overtaking moves.
He salvaged fifth place from another disappointing race for the Scuderia – thereby moving into joint second place with Hamilton in the points standings and ensuring that Ferrari retains a slender three-point lead over BMW in the constructors’ contest.
Trulli nursed fading brakes to finish sixth and complete a banner day for Toyota, while Barrichello was shuffled back to seventh for rival Japanese marque Honda.
Sebastian Vettel staved off the advances of a marauding Kovalainen to take another hard-earned point for Toro Rosso to add to the four he scored in Monaco.
Canadian Grand Prix result - 70 laps
1. KUBICA BMW 1h36m24.4s
2. HEIDFELD BMW +16.5s
3. COULTHARD Red Bull +23.4s
4. GLOCK Toyota +42.6s
5. MASSA Ferrari +43.9s
6. TRULLI Toyota +47.8s
7. BARRICHELLO Honda +53.6s
8. VETTEL Toro Rosso +54.1s
9. KOVALAINEN McLaren +54.4s
10. ROSBERG Williams +57.7s
11. BUTTON Honda +1m07.5s
12. WEBBER Red Bull +1m11.2s
13. BOURDAIS Toro Rosso +1 lap
R. FISICHELLA Force India +19 laps
R. NAKAJIMA Williams +24 laps
R. ALONSO Renault +26 laps
R. PIQUET Renault +31 laps
R. RAIKKONEN Ferrari +51 laps
R. HAMILTON McLaren +51 laps
R. SUTIL Force India +57 laps
Fastest lap: RAIKKONEN 1m17.387s (lap 14)