F1: The Malaysian GP Winners And Losers

[Rory Phoulorie]

Sunday 23rd March 2008

It was "easy" for Kimi. Easy because his team-mate is finding it so hard...

Star of the Race
Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari 1st
Ferrari won the race on Saturday when the two McLarens were deducted five grid slots. The identity of which Ferrari would win the race was determined in just a couple of minutes on Sunday when Raikkonen, gulping up clean air like a born-again environmentalist, produced two outstandingly quick laps to trump Felipe Massa.

It wasascloseasthat, however, and Raikkonen may not have taken the lead had both drivers been stationary in the pits for the same amount of time (Massa never made it as far as the second pit-stop but he looked to have been given two laps' worth of fuel more than his team-mate). But the speed Raikkonen displayed after taking track position was jaw-droppingly quick - and was probably the reason why Massa then dropped his Ferrari off the track.


Overtaking Move Of The Race
Lap 1, Lewis Hamilton, McLaren
Hamilton went into the first corner side-by-side with Fernando Alonso and with a 50/50 possibility of being shunted off. Alonso doesn't give an inch at the best of times; after the worst of times at McLaren he wasn't giving Lewis a millimetre. So Hamilton simply ducked inside, taking advantage of the Trulli-Heidfeld tangle ahead, and emerged in fifth place - a gain of four positions in one corner.


The PF1 Forum's Overtaking Move Of The Race
The way Felipe managed to make the rear of his Ferrari overtake the front...


WINNERS
Ferrari
A great comeback but their pace should have made a 1-2 a formality.


BMW
A haul of eleven points represents their best-ever race in F1.


The Nation With Two Of Its Drivers On The Podium
Tis bloody strange that a country with a population of just five million and a landscape dominated by lakes and forests has been so prominent in F1's recent history.


The Reminder That There Are More Important Things To Worry About In Life Than Formula One
From the press conference...

Q. There was champagne under the eye-lid there.
Raikkonen: "Yeah, we should put it in the mouth not in the eye. Things go wrong sometimes."


TV Coverage
The shame is that ITV are getting out just when they are getting good and anyone who believes that the BBC will automatically provide better coverage than ITV could be in for a rude awakening next year.

As in Australia, ITV's coverage was excellent this weekend, not least because they are willing to devote the sort of pre-event build-up that the BBC are notoriously unwilling/unable to provide for even the few major sporting occasions it is currently able to broadcast. Football fans, for instance, are regularly short-changed with an unfulfilling fifteen minutes of build-up for international matches.

In twelve months' time, the short inconvenience of adverts on ITV may seem a generous compromise in return for an extra hour of coverage.


Robert Kubica, BMW, 2nd
His best performance in F1 to date. Just don't describe this as a coming-of-age display as Robert is already the oldest-looking 23-year-old in the world.

Raikkonen had the hammer down for most of the race, particularly the first third, so Kubica's proximity to the Finn - a deficit of 19.5 seconds after 56 laps, you do the maths - at the chequered flag is worth dwelling on especially as Heikki Kovalainen, who had a trouble-free day in the McLaren, was a further 20 seconds behind. And the fact that Nick Heidfeld set the fastest lap of the race at a time when Hamilton was going flat out in an attempt to take fourth place from Jarno Trulli is further evidence that BMW had the beating of McLaren in a straight fight.

From a McLaren perspective, that disadvantage is, paradoxically, a cause of minor relief. Why? Because McLaren were considerably faster than BMW in Melbourne and, with no upgrades or testing available in between the back-to-back races, it can be concluded that the turnaround was primarily caused by a loss of performance on McLaren's behalf. In other words, they messed up rather than BMW closed in. The corollary is that, even if they will be wary of the threat, McLaren will be as cheered by Kubica's proximity to Raikkonen as much as BMW.


Heikki Kovalainen, McLaren, 3rd
Solid, but nothing more. Kovalainen's fastest lap was half-a-second slower than Lewis Hamilton's and finishing in front of the Englishman by ten seconds was a pretty ordinary performance considering Hamilton's woes.

Heikki was lucky in another respect: Had Nick Heidfeld not had his qualifying lap interrupted by the two dawdling McLarens then the German would have probably lined-up alongside Kubica and taken Kovalainen's podium.


Jarno Trulli, Toyota, 4th
Jarno didn't crack under pressure when he won in Monaco and he rebuffed Hamilton's late charge by setting his fastest lap of the race. Impressive.


Lewis Hamilton, McLaren, 5th
Anyone who thinks that Hamilton should have done a better job behind Mark Webber should consider the remarks of Kimi Raikkonen in the press conference about the difficulty of racing in dirty air ("When he went into the pits my car got much better because when you are one or two seconds behind it is a massive difference"). And but for a botched pit-stop, Hamilton wouldn't have been behind Webber anyway.

Questions must also be asked of McLaren's decision to deploy Hamilton on soft tyres for two of his three stints. Only when on the harder option in the final third did Lewis finally set competitive times - including a lap time that was essentially the equal of Raikkonen's best.


Nick Heidfeld, BMW, 6th
Questions also tend to be asked when a driver sets the fastest lap of the race on the penultimate lap of the race. But it's also worth noting that Hamilton set his best time on lap 53, Jenson Button (who was actually fourth fastest in the fastest laps timesheets) on 56, Jarno on 53, DC on 55, Nico on 55 and so on and so on.

Conclusion: not only was this the time of the race when all the drivers had a near-empty fuel tank but also the track was most conducive to quick times. The shame is that Raikkonen didn't put his foot down in the final laps to reveal just how fast the Ferrari really was.


Mark Webber, Red Bull, 7th
Webber deserved seventh because he managed to keep Lewis Hamilton behind him for so long even though he knew that Hamilton would eventually finish the race ahead of him. In contrast, David Coulthard, in the sister Red Bull, couldn't keep Fernando Alonso behind him even when the Spaniard's Renault was fuelled to the brim.


Fernando Alonso, Renault 8th
Two Alonso-related stories are bound to appear in the coming weeks: The first that he is racing as well as ever, the second linking him with a move to Ferrari as a replacement for a certain under-performing Brazilian....


LOSERS


Felipe Massa, Ferrari, DNF
Under huge pressure to bounce back in Bahrain and convince the growing number of doubters that he can compete with Raikkonen without traction control.

Ferrari's non-discovery of any anomalies on their telemetry for Massa's car can be interpreted as confirmation that his race-ending spin was the result of driver error. It may not have been related to the absence of traction control, however. It's just as likely that it was the consequence of mental turmoil and an unstable union between the determination to keep pace with Raikkonen and the actual ability to do so.

In the press conference in which Massa was conspicuous by his absence, Kimi remarked that pulling away from the second Ferrari was "quite easy". That he made the remark without any obvious attempt to undermine his team-mate made it all the more damning.


McLaren
A pit-stop blunder, bad tyre choices, two undistinguished performances and a looming threat from BMW. Bahrain, where only Ferrari tested in the winter, will be a tough test and it will be a considerable surprise if McLaren are found to be closer to Ferrari than BMW in the desert.

Reminding their drivers to get off the racing line after qualifying might also be a good idea.


Renault
Alonso was over thirty seconds behind the Ferraris after ten laps. Even battering his team-mate won't satisfy the former World Champion for long unless Renault can make a significant upgrade soon.


The Value Of Eye-Witnesses
Nico reckons he was "alongside" Glock when they crashed. Timo reckons he was "hit from behind by Nico Rosberg".

The jury is still out on what unlikelihood will actually occur first: a drugs cheat in athletics fessing up to a fair cop or a F1 driver actually admitting he was at fault for causing a crash.

Pete Gill

Frank Hopkinson is away, messing about with some snow, and will return for the Bahrain GP

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