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Kubica & BMW maiden win in Canada -Full Report
By BMW Sauber F1 Team
June 8 2008
In an eventful Canadian GP, the BMW Sauber F1 Team not only secured the maiden win of its still short history, but even celebrated an amazing one-two. Robert Kubica claimed victory, with Nick Heidfeld finishing runner-up. .
 It was a stunning Canadian Grand Prix for the BMW Sauber F1 Team, with a safety-car period on lap 17, due to Force India's Adrian Sutil being left stranded on the track, proving to be crucial. At the start, Robert defended his second place while Nick was passed by Honda's Rubens Barrichello and dropped back to ninth position. On lap five, however, the German struck back and passed the Brazilian at the hairpin.

From this point in time, the race ran rather uneventfully - until Sutil was left stranded on lap 16 with a technical failure and the safety-car deployed on the following lap. When the pit lane opened, the top seven pitted simultaneously and Nick was the new race leader.

Now, drama struck in the pit lane: Robert and Ferrari's Kimi Räikkönen both pitted faster than the previous race leader Lewis Hamilton (McLaren) and approached the pit lane exit side by side - but stopped as the light was still red. Hamilton, however, didn't realise that the two had stopped, accelerated and hit Räikkönen's Ferrari from behind.

Robert, however, wasn't involved in the incident and rejoined the action as soon as the light went green again. Nick, who had not yet pitted, was the race leader while Robert held the leading position of the cars that had already made their first pit stops.

In the following laps, Nick increased his lead consistently and when he came in on lap 29, the team opted for a one-stop strategy and filled his tank up to the very last centimetre. Nonetheless, Nick's lead had been big enough to rejoin the race ahead of Robert, thus he remained the race leader.

On an extremely heavy fuel load, however, Nick was unable to match Robert's pace and was passed by his team-mate. Robert extended his lead consistently over the following laps, despite being temporarily hampered by slower cars. Following his second and final stop, on lap 50, he rejoined the race some six seconds ahead of Nick. In the closing stages of the race, the German had to go easy on his tyres, and therefore did without trying to pressurise Robert.

At the end of the day, the pairing not only achieved the BMW Sauber F1 Team's goal of securing the first Grand Prix win this year, but did even better by making it a one-two. The fact that Robert also took the championship lead with this fantastic result represents the icing on the cake of this memorable day in Montreal.
 

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