A despondent Lewis Hamilton stormed away from the Sakhir Circuit after describing his Bahrain Grand Prix as "a disaster".

Hamilton endured two minutes of madness at the start of the race that resulted in the 23-year-old coming home an unlucky 13th, the worst finishing position of his 20 grands prix career.

It was the culmination of a miserable weekend for Hamilton in the wake of his shunt in Friday practice when he slammed broadside into a tyre wall after losing control of his McLaren.

Although clearly lacking Ferrari's pace, Hamilton at least had a shot at a podium finish in starting from third on the grid.

But at the start the Briton failed to hit the anti-stall switch, leaving him temporarily stranded on the grid as the field streamed by.

When he finally managed to pull away, Hamilton found himself in a mid-field battle heading into the first corner and around lap one, by the end of which he had climbed to ninth place.

But then encountering old adversary Fernando Alonso, Hamilton ran into the back of the Spaniard's Renault, losing his nose cone in the process.

Hamilton managed to limp back to the pits for a new nose, but in returning to the track in 19th place, his race was effectively over.

After starting the weekend with a three-point lead in the title race, he now trails world champion Kimi Raikkonen by five after the Finn finished second behind Ferrari team-mate Felipe Massa.

Hamilton then conducted one speedy interview before hastily leaving the track, clearly in an angry frame of mind, but only with himself.

"The race was a disaster. It was a very poor performance, and I let the team down today," assessed Hamilton.

"It was a very poor performance. It went bad from the beginning, and as a professional when you start off bad you need to pick the pieces up and at least deliver some points.

"I didn't do any of that for the team, but I'll keep my chin up, bounce back and move on at the next race.

"There's still a long way to go, so don't count me out yet."

When asked his about his accident with Alonso, he replied: "I had a collision with Fernando which lost us the whole race altogether.

"I was behind him, I went to move to the right, he went to move to the right, and I ended up going up the back of him somehow. It's racing.

"I'm always the first to blame myself, and to be honest I feel that is the right way to go."

It is no secret there is no love lost between Alonso and Hamilton after their fall-out last year during an acrimonious time at McLaren.

However, in this instance, the trouble was all of Hamilton's own making, with Alonso suggesting he was perhaps trying too hard to regain the ground he lost off the grid.

"In the first couple of laps when you are running eighth or ninth, you try to recover places too quickly," explained Alonso.

"On lap one he touched me at turn four, hitting the rear diffuser, and then on lap two he jumped into my rear wing.

"I don't know why. I was flat out, and the McLaren is quite quick in the straights.

"I guess we were running too close, and maybe he didn't realise how close we were."

Renault head of engineering Pat Symonds showed data to a number of media personnel to disprove the theory Alonso had deliberately lifted off the throttle.

"Fernando came out of the turn and accelerated down the straight into fifth gear, hitting 227kph, full throttle, no touching of the brakes or anything like that," said Symonds.

"You can see on the accelerometer the impact, that he got hit from behind.

"So all I can say from our side is there's no blame attributable to Fernando, which is what some of the speculation might be.

"There's no suggestion in any of the data that anything untoward happened. You don't need to be an expert to see that."

After coming under pressure for failing to score a point in the opening two races in Australia and Malaysia, Massa cruised to his second successive victory in Bahrain, and sixth of his career.

The Brazilian spearheaded a Ferrari one-two, with Raikkonen on the podium for the 50th time in 123 grands prix, beating Robert Kubica into third in his BMW Sauber after the Pole had started on pole.

Nick Heidfeld was fourth to give BMW Sauber 11 points from the race and lift them into the lead in the constructors' championship for the first time in the team's history.

Heikki Kovalainen barely salvaged a miserable day for McLaren with fifth, followed by Jarno Trulli in his Toyota, the Red Bull of Mark Webber and Williams of Nico Rosberg.

Honda's Jenson Button retired on lap 19 after an accident with David Coulthard who finished 19th, while Super Aguri's Anthony Davidson was 16th.