Felipe Massa leads the World Championship for the first time in his career following his victory in the French Grand Prix at Magny-Cours.
A broken exhaust pipe on the Ferrari of team-mate Kimi Raikkonen aided his cause, and for the first time since Ayrton Senna in May 1993, a Brazilian now sits on top of the drivers' standings.
Massa has a two-point cushion over BMW Sauber's Robert Kubica, and is five ahead of Raikkonen who held on for second place at the Circuit de Nevers, while McLaren's Lewis Hamilton is 10 adrift after he finished a troublesome race in 10th.
In a helter-skelter season, arguably more enthralling than last year, there have now been four different leaders of the championship at the end of the last four races.
Appreciably, it is the man in possession of that lead come the end of the final race in Brazil that matters, and Massa is determined to be that man.
"It's a great pleasure to lead, and hopefully we can stay in that position to the end," said Massa.
"For the moment we've won nothing, just some races, and the championship is open 100 per cent, 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."
Starting from what was Ferrari's 200th pole of their illustrious history, Raikkonen made the ideal start and did not put a wheel out of place until the exhaust issue began to materialise around lap 30.
On lap 39, Massa passed the reigning world champion who admitted he was lucky to finish and avoid a third successive race without scoring a point.
"It's disappointing in the end," assessed Raikkonen.
"I had a good car all weekend, was comfortably on pole, but then I had a problem with the car.
"In a way I was still lucky to finish the race because in the last couple of laps the car almost stopped, but I came home second which is better than nothing.
"I was also lucky to be fast enough at the start that even with the problem I was able to match the speed of the others and keep second.
"For me, it's still a long championship, and we've been in a worse position, so we will see what we can do."
It is now Hamilton who has failed to score in his last two races, primarily as he again incurred the wrath of the stewards.
Starting from 13th due to a 10-place grid penalty stemming from Canada when he drove into the back of Raikkonen in the pit lane, Hamilton was given a drive-through penalty after he was deemed to have illegally passed Sebastian Vettel in his Toro Rosso on lap one.
Running in ninth, he was then relegated to 13th, and then 19th and last shortly after when he pitted officially for the first time.
Despite a brave charge, Hamilton missed out on a points finish he would clearly have claimed but for another infringement.
"It was an extremely close call," reflected Hamilton.
"I felt I'd got past fairly and was ahead going into the corner, but I was on the outside and couldn't turn in in case we both crashed. Then I lost the back end of the car and drove over the kerb.
"After that I got my head down and pushed hard until the end."
But it was not enough, leaving Hamilton now fourth in the standings behind his three main rivals, and McLaren 33 points behind Ferrari in the constructors' title race, and 16 behind BMW Sauber.
Canadian race winner Kubica could only manage fifth behind Toyota's Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen in the second McLaren.
For Italian Trulli, it was his first time on the podium since May 2005 in Spain, and Toyota's first since Ralf Schumacher was third in Australia in April 2006.
The remaining points were claimed by Red Bull's Mark Webber in sixth, Renault's Nelson Piquet - in the top eight for the first time in his rookie season - and team-mate Fernando Alonso.
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