Raikkonen stretches lead with Barcelona win

BARCELONA, Spain -- World champion Kimi Raikkonen has won the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona to claim his second victory of the season and move nine points clear in the drivers' championship.

The Ferrari driver took his tally to 29 points by coming home ahead of teammate Felipe Massa with McLaren's Lewis Hamilton third.

Hamilton is second in the standings.

It was Raikkonen's 17th Formula One victory and a repeat of his 2005 success in Barcelona.

Robert Kubica of BMW Sauber was fourth and Red Bull's Mark Webber fifth.

There were several retirements, with the most serious being a crash involving McLaren's Heikki Kovalainen -- who was taken to hospital after going into a tire wall at 240kph after suffering a front left puncture.

It took five minutes to extricate the Finn from the wreckage but his team said he was in stable condition with no visible injuries.

Home hero Fernando Alonso of Spain was forced to retire in his Renault after blowing the engine. He had done well to start second on the grid, but failed to capitalize upon that in front of a crowd of more than 115,000 spectators at the Circuit de Catalunya.

Raikkonen made a fast, clean start to take the lead from his 15th pole position and first this year. Massa went left and wide to pass Alonso on the outside as they swept towards the first corner.

Hamilton, starting fifth, took advantage of the cars swerving in front of him to dart down the inside of Kubica and, after almost running off the circuit, to squeeze ahead of him on the inside of turn one.

There was early drama when German Adrian Sutil spun and then hit his compatriot Sebastian Vettel, the Force India car smacking the Toro Rosso with enough force to put both out of the race.

This brought out the safety car for two laps before Raikkonen moved clear by 2.7 seconds on lap 10 ahead of Massa, as the two Ferraris ran away at the front.

Alonso, Hamilton and Kubica filled positions three to five with Kovalainen sixth in the second McLaren.

Another accident on lap eight eliminated Nelson Piquet and Sebastien Bourdais, the Brazilian driving his Renault into the second Toro Rosso with a daring attempt to pass down the inside.

Briton Anthony Davidson then abandoned the race in his Super Aguri. For the cash-starved Honda-supported team, it was another blow at a time when they do not know if they will survive for more than another week.

When Kovalainen hurtled off the track the front of his car was buried deep in the tire barrier and the Finn, in the cockpit, was out of sight.

When he was finally lifted on to a stretcher he was well enough to signal with a 'thumb's up' that he was apparently unhurt.

Slow-motion replays from the cockpit footage showed that his car went out of control when his left front wheel blew.

As Raikkonen completed his 35th lap, Alonso pulled to a halt, his engine spewing out blue smoke. The Renault power unit had failed dramatically but his many fans in the big crowd gave him generous applause and he responded as he walked back to the pits.

Nico Rosberg, of Germany, then retired in similar, if more dramatic fashion, when his Williams car's Toyota engine blew up as he parked by the pit wall on the main straight.

This left only 13 of the 22 starters still running.

Massa was first to make a second pit-stop as Raikkonen set another fastest lap and pulled further clear before pitting himself ahead of Hamilton and Kubica.

This left Raikkonen ahead by two seconds, as they headed to the checkered flag with Hamilton closing the gap on Massa to just nine-tenths of a second as they crossed the line. E-mail to a friend