It barely seemed like a Formula One race at all. We had overtaking, clashes, thrills and spills aplenty throughout the 56 lap event in Sepang on Sunday, which was peppered by moments of amateurish driving, ultra-brave passes and contentious decisions. It all seemed to belong to some random lower form of motor racing far more prone to delivering entertainment than F1 ever threatens to.
And yet, the Malaysian Grand Prix was still a Formula One race, and appeared to be the glorious end point for delivery of the new 2011 'make action happen now' rules package. With drivers contending with questionable Pirelli tyres and running a range of strategies from cautious two-stoppers all the way through to dodgy four-stoppers, and drivers also securing the welcome artificial boost from their new DRS wings, which took to the long straights of Malaysia as well as most had predicted, there was plenty to keep your attention focused on the racing in Kuala Lumpur.
And although the slight blip in the overall sheen of the entertainment package was the young German merrily cruising around to another finger-wagging date on the top step of the podium, even Vettel's merry domination couldn't prevent this from being an eminently watchable race. And there were even plenty of signs to suggest that the Red Bull man won't have it all his own way at the head of the field for the rest of the season.
Practice and Qualifying
Before the start of the weekend, all of the giddy pre-race excitement and optimism about how the ruddy hell we were going to be able to take any entertainment away from 2011 Vettel Win #2 was based around the weather, with early forecasts predicting a bevy of late-afternoon showers on each day of the race weekend, all set to disrupt the plans of the frontrunners and provide fans with excitement aplenty.
In the end, barely any precipitation came, save for a smattering of drizzle in the middle of the race, and the Pirelli wet weather tyres went untouched. All that meant was that attention instead turned to the Pirelli slicks, and the probability of multiple pit stop races following Melbourne's more gentle range of strategies.
The first practice session of the weekend was surprisingly action-packed, largely thanks to cars falling apart. Both Renault drivers suffered front-end failures, with Nick Heidfeld suffering a locked-on front-right brake, and Vitaly Petrov's left-side wheel collapsing, pitching him into the gravel. The team kept the cars in the garage for most of the afternoon session as they traced the problem down to a dodgy batch of suspension uprights. Also suffering was Virgin driver Jerome d'Ambrosio, who had a late suspension failure that pitched him off at high speed into the final hairpin.
Through the carnage it was Mark Webber who led the way for Red Bull, ending the morning session some 1.6 seconds clear of his nearest rival as the yellow flags for the various car failures meant that none of his rivals completed genuine quick laps. The Aussie followed that up with the quickest time in a less-frantic afternoon session, though this time the #2 Red Bull was just a fraction of a second ahead of the McLarens of Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton.
After closing the gap in FP2, McLaren hit the front in FP3, with Hamilton singling himself out as a potential pole sitter thanks to a quick lap that left him three tenths of a second clear of Webber. Meanwhile, pole position favourite Sebastian Vettel was only fifth fastest, and the German looked to be under the sort of pressure that nobody could have predicted after his dominance in Australia two weeks ago.
With McLaren now a competitive prospect and Webber recovering his form after his Melbourne failures, qualifying itself turned into a genuine four-way battle at the head of the order, with the Red Bull and McLaren men going head-to-head in the closing stages of Q3 for the pole. Hamilton led the way after the first round of runs from the quadruplet of quick men, and even managed to improve his benchmark time a fraction on his final run, but the F1 grid is increasingly learning that you should never bet against Sebastian Vettel's unerring abilities over a single lap.
The German driver took his second pole position in 2011, and his fifth in the last six grands prix, with a scintillating lap of the Sepang track, meaning that Hamilton had to settle for second place. It was an identical top five to the Australian grid, as Webber and Button made up the second row behind their respective team mates, while Fernando Alonso took fifth place in his anaemic Ferrari.
Nick Heidfeld recovered from his pitiful Q1 elimination in Australia with 6th place for 'Lotus Renault GP', with Felipe Massa and Vitaly Petrov ensuring that the four fastest teams locked out the four front rows. Nico Rosberg's Mercedes and Kamui Kobayashi's Sauber completed the top ten, with Michael Schumacher again missing out on the top ten qualifying shootout having been eliminated in Q2.
The Race
Overnight, the FIA decided to shift the pole side of the Malaysian GP grid from the left to the right-hand side, in what a few mad people muttered was evidence of trying to fix the race against Red Bull, but was in actual fact an effort to move the pole slot away from the marble-covered area of the track off the racing line. Tyre debris was an issue all race long, as the flip-side of Pirelli's brave new multiple pit stop era reared its ugly head. Fortunately for the chances of overtaking during the race, the debris wasn't enough to completely nullify any off-line runs into corners.
Red Bull chose to enter the race with KERS attached to their cars for the first time, after Vettel praised the addition of the power boost as the main reason he had been able to grab pole position on Saturday, but teething problems with the new energy recovery device were obvious right from the start of Sunday's action, with Webber reporting on the formation lap that his KERS unit was broken. The Aussie's afternoon suddenly got a lot more difficult.
As the lights went out at the start of the race, attention became focused on the four Renault-powered cars in the top places, as three of them made sensational starts, and one made a terrible one. Vettel led away fairly comfortably from the pole, defending stoutly from Hamilton on the run down to the tight turn one, while his team mate simply went backwards, with Webber's KERS-less Red Bull bogging down at the start. Meanwhile, the two Renault drivers made sensational starts, with Nick Heidfeld moving up from sixth place on the grid to run around the outside of Hamilton at turn one and take second place with a smidgeon of wheel-banging in the switchback at turn two, while his team mate Vitaly Petrov moved up from eighth to fifth.
It was pretty much a perfect start for Vettel, with his main rival for the race win immediately becoming stuck behind a slower rival, and the young German extended a 1.9 second lead over Heidfeld by the end of the first lap, while Hamilton harried the Lotus-painted Renault from behind. Button was dropping back in fourth, with Petrov, the Ferrari duo of Massa and Alonso, a typically fast-starting Schumacher, the recovering Webber and Kamui Kobayashi completing the early top ten. Nico Rosberg had made a dismal start to his own race, and found himself 13th in the early stages, struggling to even keep the likes of Force India rookie Paul di Resta behind him. Das Beste Oder Nichts indeed.
Once the DRS wings were activated at the start of lap three, then the entertainment really began, with the new pit straight 'overtaking zone' working much better for the drivers in Sepang than it did at Albert Park. As Vettel streaked away at the front of the field, the early fun was provided by his team mate and Kobayashi, the pair squabbling over ninth place in a back-and-forth overtaking encounter made more even than perhaps it should have been by Webber's ongoing KERS issues. Alonso was also on the move, surging past the slightly hapless form of Petrov into turn one on lap five. The Russian felt so elated over the sight of a Ferrari passing his car that he then ran off the track midway through the same lap, thereby allowing Massa to follow his team mate through. Whatever floats your boat, Vitaly.
The early laps were also filled with some nervy glances up at the skies, with rain still expected to arrive at some point in the race. The teams were hoping that the weather would sort itself out one way or the other before the first sets of tyres crumbled completely to necessitate a first round of stops, but it didn't happen. It was Webber who kicked off the pittery on lap ten, choosing to take on fresh rubber and slot back onto some clear track in an effort to finally pass the impish Kobayashi for good. By that point, Vettel was now 7.4 seconds up the road from Heidfeld, with Hamilton still unable to find a way past the traction-heavy Renault R31, which was doing enough on the exit of the final corner to thwart the McLaren man's DRS-assisted efforts.
Sensing that his attempts to actually overtake on the track might not be the way to go, Hamilton was into the pits at the end of lap 12, in what initially looked to be a no-brainer tactical move to clear Heidfeld and go after the race win, but ended up setting up the final indignity of what would become a long and miserable race for the 2008 champion. That precipitated a dash for the pits from everyone else, with all the cars working to cover off either Hamilton or each other, and although it had started to drizzle by this point, everyone had little choice but to stick to slick rubber for their pit stops. And that turned out to be the right call, as the drizzle never really amounted to anything aside from an excuse for Ted Kravitz to burble excitedly about something for a bit.
By lap 18 then, all of the frontrunners had made their stops, and Vettel continued to lead the way, albeit now by just 5.7 seconds from Hamilton, who had managed to leapfrog Heidfeld after the bearded German took one too many laps on his first set of degrading Pirellis and slipped down the order. Fernando Alonso moved up to third place in amongst all of the stopping, passing Button into turn one on lap 17 for good measure, and Button now ran fourth ahead of the out of position Heidfeld. Webber's early stop had promoted him up to sixth once the order sorted itself out, but the bad news was that the Australian was now locked in to a four stop strategy, with the rest of the frontrunners only planning on stopping three times, while behind the Red Bull it was Massa, Petrov, the yet-to-stop di Resta and Schumacher completing the top ten.
Throughout the middle portion of the race, the fight for victory looked to be boiling down to a hugely dramatic three-way shootout, as Hamilton slowly but surely reeled in Vettel's advantage, with Alonso closing in on both of them. It seemed as if the three fastest men from the three best teams were destined to fight it out for victory on a track where overtaking was proving to be very much possible, but as it transpired, only two of those three would become involved in an on-track squabble, and then it would not even be for the lead.
Webber kicked off the second round of stops on lap 22, having earlier suffered the humiliation of being passed for position by Felipe Massa as his rubber degraded. The rest of the frontrunners got their own second stops out of the way over the following half-dozen laps, but while Vettel had a comfortable stop, he did have the minor worry of emerging from the pit lane with the non-stopped duo of Heidfeld and Massa ahead of him. Fortunately, the German's early-season Midas touch continued, as Heidfeld immediately dived for the pits, and Vettel DRS-ed his way past Massa to retake the lead on the track within a single lap, and once Massa made his own stop the Red Bull was once again clear in front and set about extending a lead over Hamilton.
On lap 30, that lead was 4.4 seconds, with Button having managed to leap back ahead of Alonso during the latest round of pit stops to retake third from the Spaniard, who was still just over 10 seconds behind Vettel. Webber was now back up to fifth, but still had an extra visit to the pits to make over his rivals - and he dropped back when he made his third stop on lap 32. Heidfeld was now well back in 6th, but ahead of Massa, Kobayashi, Petrov and Di Resta. The chances of Vettel's lead extending by much more appeared to vanish after lap 30, when the team reported to their driver that he was now no longer allowed to use his KERS device, the pit wall fearing for the reliability of their fragile take on the energy storage system.
That seemed to hand something of an advantage to Hamilton and the chasing pack, but instead Vettel's lead continued to grow, with Hamilton now feeling the effects of his early first couple of pit stops. He would now have to stretch his last couple of sets of hard tyres over the rest of the race with only one more stop scheduled, and the British driver's pace dropped back as a result. A few laps later he was in for what should have proved to be his final stop, but a sticky front left tyre dropped him behind team mate Button on the track, and left him fractionally ahead of the out-of-sequence Webber and his old sparring partner Alonso.
Once Webber completed his final stop and dropped back to 8th place, attention was now focused on the Hamilton vs Alonso fight, with the McLaren man looking uncomfortable on his prime tyres and the Spaniard harrying the back of the MP4-26 ahead. It proved slightly tricky to harry the back of the car on lap 45, as Hamilton gently weaved one way and the other up the start/finish straight, in what was precisely the sort of crime that he had committed against Petrov 12 months ago, and exactly the sort of crime the new 'fair driving' rules had been brought in to stamp out. Little did he know it at the time, but he had just secured a 20-second post race penalty.
Joining him on the post race naughty step would be Alonso himself, whom a couple of laps after the spot of weaving managed to clip the back of Hamilton's car with his own when fighting for position through the first sector of the lap. The net result was a broken front wing and a costly pit stop for the Spaniard, but the stewards were to prove that punishment for the crime of causing an accident in 2011 will be applied regardless of the net result of the contact, and the Ferrari man was penalised for a clash that had only adversely affected, erm, himself.
The extra stop dropped Alonso out of contention, promoting Heidfeld and Webber up the order, the Aussie dealing with Massa earlier with what was arguably the pass of the day into turn one on lap 50. Meanwhile, Hamilton's struggles to make his tyres last the final few laps proved to be beyond him, and after being caught and passed by Heidfeld and then running off the road to allow Webber through, he finally cried enough and pitted for more tyres. The final indignity of his post-race penalty was yet to follow, but it was a dismal afternoon for the 2008 champion. "We pitted too early, then we had to pit earlier, all the time we were pitting before everyone and my tyres were just finished at the end," he whined after the race.
None of these issues concerned Vettel, who coasted home in the end to cross the finish line just over three seconds ahead of Button and take win number two from two 2011 races. Heidfeld's pass on the grip-less Hamilton ensured a second consecutive podium finish for the Renaultus team in third, as the German substitute held off a determined charge from Webber over the final couple of laps as his own Pirellis began to lose cohesion.
A frustrated and boost-less Webber had to settle for fourth, from the two Ferraris of Massa and Alonso - the Spaniard keeping the place despite his 20-second penalty. Hamilton crossed the line in seventh, but dropped to eighth after his own penalty, with the entertainment magnet Kobayashi inheriting seventh. The final points were taken by Schumacher and Di Resta, who both moved up a spot in the closing stages after Petrv ineptly retired when he decided to recover from an off-track moment by powering flat-out across the grassy run-off, resulting in a brief flight and a broken steering column on his R31. After impressing in Melbourne, it was business as usual for the paydriver in Malaysia.
Outside the points came Adrian Sutil, who had been forced to make an early pit stop to repair damage from contact with Pastor Maldonado's Williams and a hopeless Nico Rosberg. The two Toro Rossos ran anonymously, with Sebastien Buemi winning the latest round of the battle not to be replaced by Dan Ricciardo with 13th, ahead of Alguersuari. Heikki Kovalainen ended a promising weekend for Team Lotus on Algie's tail in 15th, with Timo Glock the final runner at the end of the race for Virgin.
Aside from Petrov's spectacular retirement, the retirees were mainly backmarkers. Both HRTs were withdrawn over safety concerns with parts of their cars, ending hopes of following up their first qualification of the season with their first race finish, while both Williams drivers withdrew after seeing their races destroyed with early moments of contact. Jarno Trulli's Lotus retired with clutch issues, while Jerome d'Ambrosio's Virgin suffered a loss of power and Sergio Perez damaged his car running over some debris.
With two races down in F1 2011 then, Vettel already has an entire race win in hand over nearly every one of his rivals. The way that McLaren have caught up in qualifying and Ferrari have closed in on race pace will offer his rivals comfort, but with the next race in China in just a few days, you'd be hard pressed to bet against the German making it three from three.
Still, there should be some DRS-based action further back, so our advice would just be to block out the very top of the standings and enjoy what promises to be a thrilling season-long scrap for second place.
Driver of the Race
Paul di Resta - Obviously he was not the outright stellar performer of the race, with Vettel, Button, Heidfeld, Webber and Kobayashi all potentially deserving the award over the Scotsman. But hey, he's doing his best to start up a new UK-based driver bandwagon, so we'll give him as much of a helping hand as we can.
Joking aside, it was a solidly mature performance from the DTM champion, who has now picked up points in both of his first two F1 events. He made a two-stop strategy work for himself while others around him went for three, executed a few canny overtaking maneuvers when the situation called for it, and also made the score 2-0 to himself in the qualifying head-to-head with the experienced Adrian Sutil. Not too shabby at all.
Moment of the Race
Lap 45 - Alonso tags the right rear of Hamilton's car in ungainly fashion, to secure his first real self-inflicted points drop of the season, and allow the race stewards to keep us all entertained with some random usage of the new 2011 'safe driving' rulebook.
Interestingly, for some reason, although the clash mirrored the incident at Bahrain 2008 when Hamilton ploughed into the back of Alonso's Renault on the exit of a corner, Martin Brundle didn't even contemplate the theory he had used back then regarding the car in front potentially 'brake testing' the car behind. We honestly have no idea why he didn't bring that up. Honestly.
Quote of the Race
"From my side I'm not allowed to move more than once. Do I class it as dangerous? No, but that's the rule. Twenty seconds is not such a bad penalty for it. As for Fernando, he hit me, he got a 20-second penalty, but it didn't really do anything to him. It doesn't exactly work out as a penalty, but again, that's racing." - Lewis Hamilton magnanimously accepts his post-race penalty, via insisting that he didn't really do anything wrong and surreptitiously hinting at FIArrari trickery with Alonso's own time penalty. Still, at least he's fine with it.
Patronise F1's Malaysian GP Coverage
Race Preview - Malaysian Grand Prix
Minute-by-minute reports:
Free Practice 1
Free Practice 2
Free Practice 3
Malaysian GP Qualifying
Malaysian GP Race
Session reports:
FP1 - Webber clear in front in opening practice
FP2 - Webber stays top as McLaren close in
FP3 - Hamilton moves ahead in final practice
Qualifying - Vettel nicks Sepang pole in quali thriller
Race - Vettel makes it two from two in Malaysia
Post-race coverage:
Patty Chatty - Malaysian Edition
Five talking points from the Malaysian GP
Fifth Column - Malaysia
The Results
| 2011 Malaysian Grand Prix | ||||
| Race Result after 56 Laps | ||||
| Pos | Driver | Car | Time | Grid |
| 1 | Sebastian Vettel (Ger) | Red Bull RB7 Renault | 1hr37:39.832 | 1 |
| 2 | Jenson Button (Gbr) | McLaren MP4-26 Mercedes | +3.261 | 4 |
| 3 | Nick Heidfeld (Ger) | Lotus Renault R31 | +25.075 | 6 |
| 4 | Mark Webber (Aus) | Red Bull RB7 Renault | +26.384 | 3 |
| 5 | Felipe Massa (Bra) | Ferrari 150˚ Italia | +36.958 | 7 |
| 6 | Fernando Alonso (Spa) | Ferrari 150˚ Italia | +57.248* | 5 |
| 7 | Kamui Kobayashi (Jap) | Sauber C30 Ferrari | +1:07.239 | 10 |
| 8 | Lewis Hamilton (Gbr) | McLaren MP4-26 Mercedes | +1:09.957* | 2 |
| 9 | Michael Schumacher (Ger) | Mercedes W02 | +1:24.896 | 11 |
| 10 | Paul di Resta (Gbr) | Force India VJM04 Mercedes | +1:31.563 | 14 |
| 11 | Adrian Sutil (Ger) | Force India VJM04 Mercedes | +1:41.379 | 17 |
| 12 | Nico Rosberg (Ger) | Mercedes W02 | +1 Lap | 9 |
| 13 | Sebastien Buemi (Swi) | Toro Rosso STR6 Ferrari | +1 Lap | 12 |
| 14 | Jaime Alguersuari (Spa) | Toro Rosso STR6 Ferrari | +1 Lap | 13 |
| 15 | Heikki Kovalainen (Fin) | Lotus T128 Renault | +1 Lap | 19 |
| 16 | Timo Glock (Ger) | Virgin MVR-02 Cosworth | +2 Laps | 21 |
| 17 | Vitaly Petrov (Rus) | Lotus Renault R31 | +4 Laps - Damage | 8 |
| * 20 second penalty | ||||
| Not Classified | ||||
| Driver | Car | Laps/Reason | ||
| Vitantonio Liuzzi (Ita) | HRT F111 Cosworth | 46 Laps - Rear wing | 23 | |
| Jerome d'Ambrosio (Bel) | Virgin MVR-02 Cosworth | 42 Laps - Power | 22 | |
| Jarno Trulli (Ita) | Lotus T128 Renault | 31 Laps - Clutch | 20 | |
| Sergio Perez (Mex) | Sauber C30 Ferrari | 23 Laps - Damage | 16 | |
| Rubens Barrichello (Bra) | Williams FW33 Cosworth | 22 Laps - Hydraulics | 15 | |
| Narain Karthikeyan (Ind) | HRT F111 Cosworth | 14 Laps - Water Temp | 24 | |
| Pastor Maldonado (Ven) | Williams FW33 Cosworth | 8 Laps - Misfire | 18 | |
| Fastest Lap | ||||
| Mark Webber (Aus) | Red Bull RB7 Renault | 1:40.571 |
| Drivers Standings | Constructors Standings | |||||
| Pos | Driver | Pts | Pos | Constructor | Pts | |
| 1 | Vettel | 50 | 1 | Red Bull Renault | 72 | |
| 2 | Button | 26 | 2 | McLaren Mercedes | 48 | |
| 3 | Hamilton | 22 | 3 | Ferrari | 36 | |
| 4 | Webber | 22 | 4 | Renault | 30 | |
| 5 | Alonso | 20 | 5 | Sauber Ferrari | 6 | |
| 6 | Massa | 16 | 6 | Force India Mercedes | 4 | |
| 7 | Heidfeld | 15 | 7 | Toro Rosso Ferrari | 4 | |
| 8 | Petrov | 15 | 8 | Mercedes | 2 | |
| 9 | Kobayashi | 6 | ||||
| 10 | Buemi | 4 | ||||
| 11 | Sutil | 2 | ||||
| 12 | Schumacher | 2 | ||||
| 13 | Di Resta | 2 |
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