What a Spanish Grand Prix, and another exciting race for the season. It’s so noticeable that this season is different from the last few years, in fact I don’t remember races this exciting since before Ferrari’s latest run of dominance.

If the 2007 Spanish Grand Prix is any indication to go by, this season could prove to be one of the most exciting we’ve had in a long time and marks the return of meaning of racing to Formula 1.

From the aborted first start the promise of an exciting race was there, Jarno Trulli stalled just before the start and was pulled back into the pit lane to start from the back of the grid while the rest of the pack continued on a second formation lap.

This time the pack started well, and Fernando Alonso raced forward trying to take Felipe Massa on the first corner, he pushed him to the inside but Massa kept his line and pushed him back onto the gravel. There was a rather risky moment as Alonso poured a cloud of gravel behind him and bounced back onto the road in front of other cars hitting their accelerators.

This meant that Massa was leading with Lewis Hamilton right behind him and Kimi Räikkönen taking third place, poor Alonso was back in fourth.

It was a good start for the British drivers and we saw that there really have been huge improvements with the Red Bull-Renault as David Coulthard raced up to seventh on the first corner.

Jenson Button was doing well too as he headed up to eleventh and teased us that perhaps the Honda’s were going to do much better this race.

On the second corner the action kept happening. Alexander Wurz was unsighted and was coming out of a slow corner expecting all the cars ahead to be accelerating too, but they weren’t, and he hit the rear of Ralf Schumacher. Yes, Schumacher was in an accident and it wasn’t his fault.

Unfortunately Wurz’s car was damaged beyond repair and the twisted and broken suspension allowed him to limp back to the pits and retire. Schumacher was luckier and only had a damaged nose cone which he could easily repair with a trip back to the pits.

Meanwhile Alonso was on fire and tried to take Räikkönen, however he couldn’t make it stick and he had to pull back, giving Räikkönen’s Ferrari the time to get up to racing speed.

Up front Hamilton was trying to catch Massa, but he wasn’t making it. During this first stint it seemed to be a fuel issue, perhaps Hamilton was carrying more because Massa was making off with the race, slowly but surely.

Then the hopes for Red Bull-Renault started to crumble as seven laps in Mark Webber pulled out with transmission failure. Suddenly his team were on the radio telling him it was all over.

He was the first of the retirements as nine laps in one of the front runners fell to car failure, and more than that it was one of the drivers fighting for the championship lead. It was a shock to see Räikkönen’s Ferrari struggling to keep going and to see it crawling into the pit lane, struggling to even get enough power to make it back. Räikkönen was out of the race with electrical problems and it looks like he could be falling behind in the championship race for first place.

On lap nine Trulli, who had the disappointing false start, had fuel line problems with his Toyota and had to pull into the garage and retire.

Ten laps in it was Scott Speed that was the next to fail with an exploding tyre at the end of the start-finish straight, dramatically caught on the rear car camera. It was off the track for Speed leaving a chunk of tyre behind him.

Alonso and Massa pitted on lap 20 within seconds of each other, but the real excitement was when the fuel rig was pulled away from Massa’s car and sprayed fuel across the rear, it caught fire as he drove away and a flaming Ferrari raced down the pit lane. The safety features kept the fuel in the tank from catching fire and the flames did nothing but burn off the excess fuel. Still, it sent a clear message to the other teams, Massa is on fire.

Then there was more drama, yes it was turning out to be one of those races. Vitantonio Liuzzi was having hydraulic problems with his STR-Ferrari and was limping into the pits and turned the corner of the pit lane entry, hidden by the high walls on either side.

It was at that moment that Coulthard, continuing his superb race and currently in fifth place, pulled into the pit lane and turned the blind corner and almost hit Liuzzi. However he had been clever enough to pull into the side and Coulthard’s reactions kicked in and he pulled around him making it safely into the pits.

The Honda’s weren’t going so well and on lap 21 Button was racing out of the pits and tried to pass Rubens Barrichello on the first corner, he cut the corner on the inside and he slid off the kerb and bumped Barrichello’s Honda losing his front wing in one stroke.

So he limped around the track and headed straight for the pits once again for a replacement nose cone.

Lap 24 and Nick Heidfeld gave us the second most exciting moment of the race, next to that of the fiery Ferrari, when he raced away from his pit stop with a wheel gun still attached to the front right wheel, as he raced off he realised too late and screeched to a halt as the gun came away from the wheel and we watched the wheel nut come off and roll away.

One of the Toyota pit crew grabbed the rolling nut and held it up to the BMW put crew, motioning to them. There was a second of uncertainty with no one knowing what to do, and Heidfeld tentatively headed off.

The member of the Toyota pit crew waved the wheel nut madly, trying to get the BMW team to go get Heidfeld back, they didn’t, and he struggled around the race track for another lap to get a replacement wheel.

Amazingly he gets right round and they replace the wheel nut without any damage to the car.

Without anyone but the race Marshalls noticing, Christijan Albers receives a drive through penalty for ignoring blue flags.

Lap 46 sees Schumacher casually retiring into the pits with damage from his accident, with Heidfeld doing the same on lap 48 carrying gearbox problems.

In the closing stages of the race Alonso seems to magically find some speed and starts racing down his team mate Hamilton, but he’s sitting in third and there’s quite a distance between them. Massa is safe in the lead though and it looks pretty set for the finish line.

It’s not over in the drama department though, with Coulthard doing amazingly in fifth place, he suddenly develops a gearbox problem. You can see as he’s racing that he’s avoiding third gear, and all the while Nico Rosberg was gaining ground on him, and fast.

Luckily though he manage to get to grips with the ailing gearbox and pull the car around to the finish line, still ahead of Rosberg, taking fifth place.

The biggest surprise was that with Hamilton finishing second he is now leading the Driver’s Championship. An amazing feat for a driver in his opening season and only four races in.

Honda managed to secure a point too, but they should still be feeling embarrassed as two places ahead of Barrichello’s tenth place finish was Takuma Sato in his Super Aguri-Honda, one of the customer cars.

Here are the final positions for the race.