But he had already fallen behind Ferrari’s charging Felipe Massa, who was on course for an excellent win before a devastating blow in the dying stages. Keith Collantine reports on the Hungarian Grand Prix.

View our slide show of the Hungarian Grand Prix

McLaren locked out the front row of the grid in qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix with Lewis Hamilton scoring the tenth pole position of his 28-race career.

But by the end of the first lap of the Hungarian Grand Prix Hamilton found himself stuck behind a Ferrari after a quite brilliant start by Felipe Massa.

Massa made a demon getaway from third on the grid and cheekily drove around the outside of Hamilton at the first turn.

The McLaren driver chased his Ferrari rival over the first 17 laps before Massa came in for his pit stop. Hamilton came in one lap later. His McLaren team gave him extra fuel in a bid to get him out in front of Massa when the pair made their final stops.

But they never got the chance to see if it would work. Hamilton’s front left tyre deflated on the 41st lap and he had to drive the full 4.381km of the Hungaroring (2.72 miles) with a puncture, dropping him to tenth.

Lewis Hamilton wasn’t the only one to suffer bad luck, however. Massa was three laps away from winning when his engine died on the start/finish straight.

A despondent Massa said afterwards: “When things looked already finished with only two laps to go and then you just hear something and have a strange feeling in the car as the engine breaks down, for sure it is not a great feeling. I feel really bad, and not happy for what has happened.”

His misfortune let Heikki Kovalainen in to score his first Grand Prix win. After the race Hamilton said: “Congratulations to my team mate on his deserved first Grand Prix victory.”

“The result was nowhere near as bad as it could have been as we could have had Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe ahead of us.”

Raikkonen finished third behind Timo Glock, the German rookie who crashed heavily in the last race in Germany. Hamilton ended the race fifth behind his old foe Fernando Alonso.

The result means Hamilton actually extends his championship lead to five points. He now has 62, with Raikkonen on 57 and Massa 54.

McLaren move up to second in the constructors’ championship on 100 points with Ferrari on 111 and BMW on 90.

View our slide show of the Hungarian Grand Prix

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