KIMI RAIKKONEN drove Ferrari to its third straight Formula One victory, winning the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday to put the Italian team in control of the championship race.

The 28-year-old Finn won his 17th race by 3.228 seconds ahead of teammate Felipe Massa of Brazil. Raikkonen was second to Massa at Bahrain three weeks ago after winning the Malaysian GP last month.

Raikkonen led from start to finish for the sixth time to put him nine points ahead of McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton atop the drivers standings and lift Ferrari into the constructors lead after four races.

Ferrari’s one-point effort at the season-opening Australian GP in Melbourne — its worst start in 16 years — is now a distant memory.

“It would be hard to do better than this,” said Raikkonen, who matched former driver Mika Hakkinen of Finland with 51 career top-three finishes. “We are leading both championships, which I am happy about.”

Hamilton placed third, but the McLaren team was focused on a violent crash that sent Heikki Kovalainen to hospital. A likely wheel rim failure caused the Finnish driver’s front-left tire to explode and his car to fly into the side wall at 150 mph. It took at least 10 minutes for the track’s medical team to remove Kovalainen from the wrecked car, which was missing half its front.

Kovalainen was shaken, but medical scans showed no injuries.

“(Heikki) is safe and well,” McLaren team principal Ron Dennis said.(SD-Agencies)