FERRARI’S Felipe Massa jump-started his struggling Formula One campaign Sunday by winning the Bahrain Grand Prix for his first victory of the season.

Massa moved ahead of pole-sitter Robert Kubica of BMW Sauber at the start and then held off teammate and new overall leader Kimi Raikkonen to win by 3.339 seconds.

World champion Raikkonen, who started fourth on the grid, had also gone past BMW Sauber’s Kubica by the third lap.

Kubica finished third after a late rally while his teammate Nick Heidfeld was fourth ahead of McLaren’s Heikki Kovalainen to take second place overall on 16 points.

McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton, who won the opening race in Melbourne, had a miserable day as he appeared to stall at the grid and quickly slipped from third to 10th.

The British driver, who had to have a reserve car built after crashing in Friday’s practice, then ran into the back of former McLaren teammate Fernando Alonso’s Renault — leaving both vehicles with damage from which neither could recover.

Alonso finished back in 10th while previous overall leader Hamilton was also out of the points in the 13th.

Massa was delighted to come through unscathed after the drivers were affected by the amount of oil on the track. “I had a good start, whilst Robert didn’t, and then the race was difficult at the beginning because there was a lot of oil on the track,” he said.

Raikkonen was also happy with his result after struggling in practice and qualifying.

“All weekend it’s been pretty difficult. I’ve not been able to get the car right,” the Finn said. “But finishing second after such a weekend is not bad, and now I am leading the world championship so I have to say I am happy.”

Kubica, who was second in Malaysia, was left to rue his poor start.

“We had some problems on the formation lap with a lot of wheel spin and also with the race start,” he said.

The next race is the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona on April 27.