MASSA DOES IT AGAIN!

Felipe Massa loves Bahrain for sure. Last year, the Brazilian stoked his championship ambitions in the desert and this year he ended a miserable run of two failed Grands Prix with a meticulous victory to give himself a new lease of life at Ferrari.

The Bahrain International Circuit suits Massa the best. He revels on the long straights and sharp right-handers and if possible he would pack the 5.4-km track into his suitcase and take it to the rest of the races left in the season.

The BIC can also inspire purple prose from him as was evident in his post-race summation. "Finally after a start to the championship under dark clouds, I can see the sunshine again," he said sounding more like a struggling poet coming out of a mental block rather than a fiery driver who fancies rhetoric.

Sunday's victory has come at the right time for Massa. Retirements in the first two races had not only sparked insinuations about his ability to handle the car under new rules which bars electronic aides and traction control, but also put his career at Ferrari under a cloud.

Much like tennis number one Roger Federer, who suffered a string of embarrassing setbacks early in the season, Massa was low on morale and motivation. He was ravaged by self-doubt, and costly errors in Melbourne and Malaysia only added to his misery.

But Massa was able to recover just before crisis turned into carnage. The spark seems to be back in his driving and it glowed right through the 57-lap race at Sakhir. Massa was flawless as he overtook polesitter Robert Kubica of BMW before the first turn, formidable in the middle part of the race and a deserving winner at the end.

The rest of the pack, including his teammate Kimi Raikkonen, could do very little behind Massa who kept disappearing deep into the lead. It was Massa's race all the way and Ferrari's Grand Prix right through the weekend.

The Scuderia is back with a bang and given its present pace and power, the rest of the field have a lot of catching up to do, McLaren in particular who had a wretched weekend and lost both the drivers' and constructors' lead to Raikkonen and BMW respectively.

But I suspect that was only one part of the race. The second part was all about BMW and Kubica and Nick Heidfeld.

BMW was clearly the best of the rest last season, but this year they have made their intentions very clear by firmly displacing McLaren as the second best to Ferrari. They now have the momentum and only need a little bit of luck and inspiration to start pushing Ferrari for victories.

The rise of BMW has added an exciting new dimension to both the drivers' and constructors' championship. On another level, Kubica and Heidfeld are pressing hard for their own place in the Formula One galaxy.

Kubica and Heidfeld may lack the glamour of Raikkonen or the charisma of Alonso, but both are equally talented, fiercely committed and competitive. Three podium finishes in the first three races of the season prove all these qualities quite adequately.

McLaren's fortunes on the other hand have nose-dived. The car was distinctly slow, both the drivers slack and the team overall seemed to lack the necessary drive to push for victory.

Lewis Hamilton, in particular, was uncharacteristically error-prone as a crash in Friday practice and an agonisingly slow start on Sunday proved. He lost six places and many precious seconds even before he could reach the first turn. And from there on he was in a hopeless position to even fight for minor points.

But even in defeat Hamilton made a strong point for sportsmanship, racing ethics and etiquette. He allowed Raikkonen to pass at a crucial phase in the race and was willing to plough his way from the back of the pack in true racing spirit and hard grind.

This is something unheard of and almost unseen in modern Formula One racing where every second on the clock and every inch on the track is won or lost with very little regard to the true spirit of racing.

David Coulthard's collision with Jenson Button, for example, was a classic case of Formula One madness. It left both the cars badly damaged, inflated egos bruised and some costly equipment ruined.

Massa may have won the race on Sunday, but Hamilton won my heart for sure.