Controversial win for Alonso

Massa leapt from third to first at the start of the race, with Alonso slotting in behind him as poleman Sebastian Vettel - who finished on the podium - fell back to third.

The Brazilian was de facto leader until Alonso moved past on lap 49 of 67, soon after Ferrari had asked engineer Rob Smedley to tell him: "Fernando is faster than you. Can you confirm you understood that message?"

The next message from Smedley was: "Well done. Good lad. Now try and keep with him. I'm sorry."

The incident is likely to come under fire from the media.

Lewis Hamilton held on to his championship lead as fourth place brought him to 157 points ahead of McLaren team mate Jenson Button, who moved to 143 points after finishing fifth. Red Bull’s Mark Webber was sixth after a race in which he was held back by an engine problem. He and Vettel are now joint third with 136 points, as Alonso closed up on 123 and Massa climbed to 85.

As Vettel squeezed Alonso towards the pit wall at the start, Massa sprinted around the outside of both to take the lead and he held it until the 49th lap, when he slowed - deliberately it seemed to the spectator - exiting the hairpin, allowing Alonso to overtake. The previous lap the two Ferraris had been eight-tenths of a second apart, with Vettel 5.1s back.

As Alonso sped home to win, Massa let Vettel close in but always had things under control to take second place, a year to the day since his accident in qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Hamilton didn’t have the pace to hold on to the three leaders, but kept Button behind him as Webber struggled with his oil consumption problem to stay in the damage limitation game.

Behind them, there was a big fight in the midfield for the lower points. Robert Kubica took his Renault to a lapped seventh place ahead of the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher, with Renault’s Vitaly Petrov putting in a strong performance to take the final point in 10th place.

BMW Sauber’s Pedro de la Rosa ran most of the race on a set of prime Bridgestone tyres and finally switched to options on the 51st of the 67 laps, dropping from seventh to 14th. Then Heikki Kovalainen closed the door while being lapped, necessitating another stop for a new front wing. The Lotus driver retired, joining team mate Jarno Trulli who’d stopped earlier.

Kamui Kobayashi took 11th in the other BMW Sauber, ahead of the dueling Williams of Rubens Barrichello and Nico Hulkenberg which both lost out in a first-lap melee when the two Force Indias and the two Toro Rossos all got together. Toro Rosso’s Sebastien Buemi lost his rear wing and had to quit, but Jaime Alguersuari recovered to take 15th ahead of Liuzzi and Sutil, the latter using three sets of tyres.

Timo Glock and Virgin emerged as the winner of the new teams’ race, from Bruno Senna’s HRT, as Lucas di Grassi spun and had to retire after leading his Virgin team mate, and HRT’s Sakon Yamamoto also failed to go the distance.