14.4.10

You will remember that last year's race had to be stopped because of a monsoon. This year's event was rain-affected too, but against all the odds not the race itself. This year the weather in qualifying was a vital factor and that's where much of the interest lay.

At the start of Q1 it was raining intermittently and the circuit was wet in parts and dry in others. Most of the teams sent their men out on inters, but not Ferrari and McLaren. They stayed put as the weather radar showed that things would get better later in the session. I presume this was to save tyres. Each driver is allowed four sets of inters and three of wets per event and don't want to be using them up in a period that does not decide grid position. This is particularly important with wets as they are so much better when new with nice sharp edges to the treads, also they overheat and get burnt out ever so quickly if it's too dry.

Conditions worsened and the number of spinners increased including the great and the good. Lewis Hamilton, on inters, just squeezed the throttle exiting a corner and spun. Seconds later his similarly shod team mate aquaplaned off. The big difference between the two was that Lewis was lucky enough to stay on-track but Jenson went deep into a gravel trap, got beached and was not allowed to take any further part in qualifying despite setting a good enough time to get him through to Q2.

Next we saw Schuey in for full wets, out again and still slip-sliding away. Meanwhile Vettel sat comfortably in the pits in third place, Red Bull having sent him out at the right time. As the session ran out Hamilton slithered about futilely and Alonso dropped it with a full 720 degree spin. Both Ferraris and both McLarens and three world champs were out! This meant we would have a mixed-up grid. Kubica was quickest for Renault who, like Red Bull, had got their men out at the right time. This was also true for Lotus who got through to Q2 for the first time with Kovalainen as did Virgin with Glock.

For the first half of Q2 half the track was wet and the other half damp and halfway through Michael Schumacher was in P1 - just like the old days. Then Vitaly Petrov went 1.9 seconds quicker! Schuey went back on top but it was changing lap-by-lap and soon he was just ninth. On his last-but-one lap Mark Webber was 12th, which meant he would have been eliminated, but that lap got him up to seventh, now Schuey was 10th and in danger of being bumped. When the session finished he had just hung on. Vettel was quickest with Kubica second.

When Q3 was due to start there was a thunderstorm so the session was suspended. When it abated and the session started Sutil went quickest for Force India from Kubica, then new boy Nico Hulkenburg pinched second for Williams. With half a second of the session to go Mark Webber, the only one on inters, went quickest by half a second then took another second off on his last lap to grab pole! Rosberg was second for Mercedes, Vettel third for Red Bull and Sutil a great fourth for Force India ahead of Hulkenburg, Kubica, Barrichello (Williams), Schuey, Kobayashi (Sauber) and Liuzzi (Force India). So with Button in 12th, Alonso 19th, Hamilton 20th and Massa 21st we were set for an interesting race, especially as it was bound to rain....

At the start Webber got away well, as did his team mate behind him, both were comfortably ahead of Rosberg, spearing right for the first right hand corner. Then Webber swung left leaving a gap a mile wide which Vettel dived into. This left Webber with no option than to let him through - other than hitting him which never goes down well with the management. At the front that was pretty well it.

Lower down the field though there was lots of action, most notably Lewis Hamilton's charge through it. 20th on the grid, he was 13th at the end of lap 1 and by ninth by lap 7. This included a right good ding-dong with Vitaly Petrov as a result of which the Stewards warned Hamilton for weaving. Hamilton got as high as second due to pit-stop timings, but when the stagger unwound he ended behind Sutil's Force India. Hamilton seemed to be using the straightline speed advantage of the "F Ducted" McLaren as the basis for most of his moves, but the Force India is slippery too and has the same engine as the McLaren. This meant Hamilton was stuck behind him for the last 25 laps despite regular feints.

The Ferraris too made reasonable progress through the field. Massa jumping from 21st to 14th on the first lap, his victims including his team mate. He worked his way up to sixth with Alonso seventh in an F10 that was clearly struggling to downshift properly.

The sole pit stop for the leaders was going to be interesting as it would probably be Webber's only chance to pass Vettel. Vettel was right on the ragged edge coming in, putting a wheel on the grass in the pit lane. Crucially he got out in front of second-placed Hamilton and although his tyres were "cold" they were new, the opposite of Hamilton's. You could see the extra traction as the Red Bull rocketed out of the corners. Poor old Webber's bad luck struck twice. Not only did Vettel get out in front of Hamilton, but a wheel gun stuck on in his stop. Game over.

When Hamilton did stop we saw Button draw up level with him as he exited the pits, but Button didn't push it and Hamilton stayed in front. Button had started on the softer tyres and stopped early, whereas Hamilton had started on the harder tyres and stopped late, which rather suggests that there was nothing between either strategy. although the harder tyres did seem better. We saw Jaime Alguersuari catch up, race hard and pass both Petrov and Hulkenburg with good moves. The young Spaniard said he had learned a lot racing against Schuey for so long in Australia. One lesson being just how aggressive you have to be to get past, something Hamilton demonstrated too on his charge through the field.

One piece of cheer for us Tifosi was Massa passing Button for seventh late on. Alonso was all over him too, but the Ferrari's gear change problems meant he could not make a pass stick. In his last attempt Alonso lunged past on the outside only to go wide and for Button to come straight back underneath him. Immediately Alonso's car began trailing a thin stream of smoke which soon became a cloud billowing out behind when the engine blew up; the third Ferrari engine to do so over the weekend (inc. both Saubers).

The rain stayed away for the first time that week. Vettel and Webber swept to a comfortable 1-2. Almost un-noticed Rosberg annexed the first podium for the mighty Silver Arrows since Fangio won the 1955 Italian GP, if you swallow the publicity material about the Brawn really being a Merc.... Kubica again flattered his car to take fourth, Sutil was fifth, Hamilton sixth, Massa seventh, Button eighth, Alguersuari's tigering was rewarded by his first-ever points for ninth and Hulkenburg got his first for tenth. Of the new teams Virgin did best from Hispania and Lotus.

All-in-all not a bad race, made more lively by the shake up in qualifying - Bernie has suggested a lottery type draw for the top ten. Red Bull and Vettel finally got their just reward. At the top it's all very tight. Massa and Ferrari lead the championships, but for how much longer? Also engine unreliability this year is concerning, though Ferrari say there is not a problem.

Click here for FIA lap chart.

Stefano Domenicali: “There’s no way we can be happy with the outcome of this third race weekend of the season. We came to Malaysia with very different objectives and taking home a mere seven points is a disappointment. Today’s result is down to yesterday’s qualifying: when you start that far back on the grid, it’s difficult to do better. On top of that, we had a few reliability problems which should put us on our guard: if we want to.phpire to the title we absolutely have to sort this out. ”

Felipe Massa: “All things considered, we did a good job in these first three races, as proved by the fact we lead both championships. However, there are still sixteen races to go and we know there is much room for improvement in terms of car performance and in making it totally reliable. Given where we started from, seventh place is probably the best we could hope for. The duel with Button was very complicated: down the straights, he could always pull away, but when he made a mistake at the final corner, I was able to get close enough to overtake under braking for the first one. Today’s race proves the need to fight on every lap of the championship: we have a lot of work to do, so we must keep focussed and not lessen our efforts.”

Fernando Alonso: “This was a very difficult weekend. We made a big mistake in yesterday’s qualifying and today in the race, I had to retire with an engine problem. My race was an uphill climb from the start: I found I had a problem with the gearbox right from the start and I had to drive without a clutch for practically the whole race. Trying to look on the positive side, at least the engine failure only cost me two points: it would have been much worse if I had been in the lead! Seeing what happened in the previous days, it made sense to expect rain and so we made the first stint as long as possible, but unfortunately, it did not happen. Today, we gave Red Bull a little gift: if we had qualified in a normal fashion then we would certainly have given them a hard time. ”