Raikkonen remains confident

Kimi Raikkonen's is still confident for the rest of the season despite having his French race ruined by a broken exhaust.

Kimi Raikkonen's hopes of a French Grand Prix victory were wrecked by a broken exhaust, but he is confident of firing on all cylinders for the rest of the season.

After failing to score in the previous two races in Monaco and Montreal, Raikkonen appeared poised to take the chequered flag until the exhaust problem just before the midway point that resulted in a loss of power.

Leading the race up until that point from Ferrari's 200th pole of their illustrious history, Raikkonen slowly started to go backwards.

It was not long before he was passed by team-mate Felipe Massa who went on to win by 18 seconds and become the fourth different leader of the championship at the end of the last four races.

There was natural disappointment from reigning world champion Raikkonen that the win had slipped through his grasp, but then relief also he managed to finish the race at all.

"We maybe should have won, but I still took eight points and we're in a more comfortable position in the championship," said Raikkonen, who trails Massa by five points and BMW Sauber's Robert Kubica by three.

"A few laps after the exhaust broke the situation seemed better, but towards the end of the race I ran the risk of stopping.

"This sort of thing can happen in racing, and I have to look on the bright side because luckily I had built up quite a good lead in the first part of the race.

"But it shows the car is definitely strong because usually when you have this sort of problem, retirement is almost inevitable.

"At this stage there is still a long way to go in the championship, and I am in a better position now than I was at this stage last year.

"At the end of the day it was a great result for the team, a one-two, and everybody did their best. So now let's see what I can do in the next part of the series."

Massa now leads the way for the first time in his 95-race F1 career and is the first Brazilian to do so since the late Ayrton Senna in 1993.

Although such a position is special to him, it will mean nothing if he does not win the world title at the end of the season.

"It's a great pleasure to lead, and hopefully we can stay in this position to the end," said Massa after his third victory of the year.

"But for the moment we've won nothing, just some races, and the championship is open 100%, with many races to go.

"We just need to keep doing our job race by race, thinking about the points, about winning, although second and third are good.

"We also need to think about the championship until the last race, and then we will know if we did the right job, had the right luck and did everything we could to win.

"Because my dream is not just to lead the championship, it is to win the championship.

"I am going to do the best I can to try and achieve that. That is my goal, and hopefully one day we can celebrate that."

Lewis Hamilton could only finish 10th, and now trails Massa by 10 points, as a drive-through penalty for an apparently illegal pass on the Toro Rosso of Sebastian Vettel on lap one scuppered his chance of a top-eight finish.