Brazilian Felipe Massa was handed victory in the French Grand Prix when Ferrari team-mate Kimi Raikkonen ran into problems with a broken exhaust.

Raikkonen was in control of a race dominated by Ferrari when his right-hand exhaust cracked at half-distance.

But such was Ferrari's advantage that Raikkonen held on to second place.

Jarno Trulli marked Toyota's best race of the season with third while Lewis Hamilton was 10th after falling foul of

officials for the second race in a row.

It was always going to be a difficult race for the Englishman following his 10-place grid penalty for crashing into the back of Raikkonen in the pits in the previous race in Canada.

But the 23-year-old made it even harder for himself by cutting the Nurburgring chicane in the process of passing Toro Rosso's Sebastian Vettel as he sought to make up places on the opening lap.

That led to a drive-through penalty, the most lenient punishment available to the stewards for the offence, which cost him any realistic chance of scoring points.

There will, though, be some debate about whether Hamilton deserved to penalised, with McLaren team boss Ron Dennis claiming after the race that Hamilton was already ahead of Vettel before the corner.

What was not up for debate was the superiority of the Ferraris.

It was obvious from his lap times that even had he suffered no penalties, the McLaren did not have the pace to challenge the Ferraris.

Raikkonen converted his pole position into a lead at the first corner, and set about building the gap he needed to keep his lead, knowing that he was to make his first stop two laps earlier than Massa.

Raikkonen, edging further ahead by the lap, was nearly five seconds clear of his team-mate when he stopped on lap 21.

And any faint hope Massa had of leapfrogging Raikkonen evaporated when he ran into traffic on the two laps before his stop.

Raikkonen then set about making the race his own, extending his lead to more than six seconds by lap 30, only to run into his exhaust problem, and being forced to cede to Massa.

For a short time, he was two seconds off the pace, and it looked as if he might be vulnerable to Trulli and Kubica.

But as he adapted to the problem, he managed to reduce his disadvantage to Massa to about a second a lap.

A rain shower in the last part of the race enlivened the last few laps.

The Ferraris continued untroubled, but Trulli, who has complained about the Toyota's poor handling in the wet, suddenly found McLaren's Heikki Kovalainen and BMW Sauber's Robert Kubica all over him.

But he continued to drive beautifully, and held the two faster cars off, aided by the rain abating with about 10 laps to go.

The rain returned for the last couple of laps, and Trulli managed to hold off one final assault from Kovalainen, banging wheels as they entered the Nurburgring chicane side by side on the last lap.

Red Bull's Mark Webber held off the Renaults of Nelson Piquet Jr, having his most competitive race of the season, and Fernando Alonso for sixth place.

Alonso lost seventh to his team-mate, who scored his first points of the season, when he ran wide with two laps to go while lapping Force India's Adrian Sutil.

The win, Massa's third of the season, puts him into the lead of the championship, two points clear of Robert Kubica, with Raikkonen a further three adrift.

Hamilton, after two disastrous races, is 10 points behind Massa and in desperate need of a good result at the British Grand Prix in two weeks' time.

But in view of the superiority of the Ferraris in France, Hamilton's chances of beating the red cars appear slim at Silverstone, where their advantage should be at least as clear.

(BBC)

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