Malaysian Grand Prix Review

Once again, comment on Button and Brawn's victory is subject to the proviso that the Court of Appeal is, at time of writing, imminently due to hear the diffuser-gate appeal. It is unclear whether the results of Australia and Malaysia will stand regardless of the outcome of the hearing. Our views on the issue have already been set out in our Australian GP review, and we do not need to repeat them here. Suffice to say that allowing the current results to stand would create the least controversy and bad press.

Of course, even if the Brawn, Toyota and Williams cars are deemed illegal, that does not change the fact that Button and Brawn have had to emerge on top out of these six cars. Proving that his suppressed ability is now well and truly thriving again in a competitive environment, he was yet again brilliant in Q3 on a heavier fuel load to claim pole. Beaten off the line by Nico Rosberg, his only error all weekend was to try to hang around the outside of the Williams going into turn one, which caused him to slide and drop to 4th.

Having disposed of the fast-starting Fernando Alonso before the end of the lap, he bade his time behind Jarno Trulli's Toyota, before unleashing his pace before his first stop. The first of those two extra laps when he had clear air in the lead was simply scintillating, allowing him to comfortably leapfrog both Trulli and Rosberg into the lead. It turned out to be the fastest lap of the race, the first time in Button's 155-start career that he has achieved that feat.

Given both Button and Rubens Barrichello's prowess in wet conditions, the impending rainstorm was always likely to play to Brawn's advantage. After Jenson, like most of the rest of the field, initially put on the full wets, he made them work better than anyone except the Red Bulls, such that he almost had a full stop's gap over the inter-shod Timo Glock when he came in for intermediates himself. He came out just behind the Toyota, to retake the lead when Glock did the opposite the next lap and pitted for full wets.

Barrichello might start to wonder if he is destined to play the bridesmaid's role at Brawn. It happened to be his car that needed a gearbox change, which dropped him from 3rd on the grid to 8th. Once again, it was Button who got the better of qualifying. After a terrific start, having cleared Alonso he was in a net 4th position himself, but being further back in the field, the subsequent rain and rash of stops meant he was caught up with the likes of Trulli and overtaken by Nick Heidfeld in eventually being classified 5th.

Rubens' problem is that, even if the Brawn is declared legal in its current form, not only will he need to rely on the BGP001 being the class of the field, but he will need to overcome a team-mate who has risen from his slumber and is surging in confidence. And, even if the double-deck diffuser cars are cleared, there is no guarantee that the Brawns will be the leading car at every race. Toyota have shown enough to suggest that, in current form, the breakthrough first victory is tantalisingly close this season.

Both Trulli and Glock were fantastic in qualifying, although Jarno's opening stint was solid if unspectacular, and Glock had dropped back to 8th after a dismal start, and as far down as 15th after his first scheduled stop. Trulli then struggled as the rain started falling, but that was when Glock came into his own. Timo is starting to build a reputation as a genuinely excellent racer, who takes unorthodox strategy gambles that invariably pay off. Here it was his decision, when the rain started, to put on inters instead of wets.

Of course, it was Glock (and Trulli) who famously stayed on dry tyres when the rain started falling in the dying laps in Brazil last year. Whilst he copped a lot of flak for his slow last lap as he scrambled for grip which handed Lewis Hamilton the world championship, it is easy to forget that up to that point he was lapping on dry tyres in times comparable to those on inters. Here, on intermediates he was up to ten seconds a lap faster than those on full wets.

If any team could have felt that they deserved a lot more from the weekend than they got, it would have been Red Bull. Sebastian Vettel's weekend was already destroyed because of the unwarranted ten-place grid penalty which he received after the clash with Robert Kubica in Melbourne, and so 3rd on the grid on a low fuel-load became 13th. Strategically his race was shot, and when the rain came he also failed to make as much headway as team-mate Mark Webber before spinning into retirement.

Webber would be left cursing his luck - again. 5th on the grid became 7th at the end of the first lap as he got swamped by the KERS cars, and he had to fight hard to overcome Alonso and the Renault's KERS advantage. But it was after the rain started falling that he starred. Glock aside, he was the fastest man on the track despite being on full wets, making a statement to those who thought that Vettel was the renowned rain-master in the Red Bull camp.

His battle with Hamilton was particularly entertaining, as had been his earlier stoush with Alonso. In both fights, he had cornering speed aplenty, but the KERS cars were able to slingshot past on the straights. Both Alonso and Hamilton were also helped by the fact that Mark can be a touch too gung-ho in wheel-to-wheel combat, his Aussie 'have a go' spirit meaning that he can be prone to attacking at not the wisest moments, which often results in Webber getting ahead but leaving himself susceptible to counter-attack.

Webber and Glock caught and past on the track everyone except Button, but Mark went from his wets to intermediates at exactly the time the rain started falling more heavily, such that he was back in for wets the next lap. Had he not done so, he would have been in a position to be leading or in 2nd when the race was stopped. Instead, as he made those extra stops, and slid around on tyres getting up to speed and temperature, he was classified 6th and was down as far as 8th when the race was red-flagged.

He made up for it at the start which was close to perfect, and led commandingly in the first stint, but he was too easily leapfrogged by Button at the first stops. Then, after the rain he struggled to fend off Trulli, became the first to give up on the wets and go to inters, but just kept falling down the leaderboard. Maybe there is something about the FW31 which means that it's super-fast on tyres it likes once enough heat is generated, but it becomes a handful on rubber that's not quite in sync.

That makes for a very narrow prime operating band, which might also explain why the less-talented Kazuki Nakajima can show well in free practice once he and the car can cycle up to speed, but why he's just not there in qualifying or race trim. Once again he disappointed in qualifying, and a poor start meant he spent all race mired in the lower half of the field. Whilst Williams were a midfield team last year, Kazuki's fighting abilities were useful. Now, as a potential frontrunner, Williams may need someone more skilful.

BMW fluked a podium finish with Heidfeld, who in all honesty had once again failed to impress up till then. The German failed to make Q3 again, as the BMW experiment of running one car with KERS and one without continues to suggest that it is better without. Being on a heavy fuel load, Nick's podium came thanks to the fact that he was able to make his first stop and change to wets at the same time, and he persisted on wets and climbed up the field while others switched from the wets and inters and back again.

But it is Heidfeld who has got BMW's first points on the board, and significantly Kubica who is scoreless after two races. He had once again done his utmost in qualifying, only for his engine to start failing on the warm-up lap, before he virtually stalled at the start and his engine caught fire shortly thereafter. This was meant to be Kubica's big chance to challenge for the title; how galling it must be that, with McLaren and Ferrari struggling, BMW are still behind the eight-ball compared to Brawn, Toyota, Williams and Red Bull.

More importantly, from a performance standpoint, the MP4-24 is no better than a midfield car when it comes to the crunch, and rival engineers reckon that there is one fundamental aspect of the design where they have gone wrong, which they simply have yet to identify and fix. The lack of downforce and grip could not have been more vividly illustrated than in those early wet laps, when Webber ate Hamilton alive on the same tyres - the same Lewis who had won the soaking British GP last year by over a minute.

Heikki Kovalainen did not get as far as the rain - in fact, he did not even make it past the first lap without having a race-ending incident as he did in Australia. Like in Melbourne it was his own fault, and this time it was a solo incident as well, spearing off at turn five on the opening lap after getting onto the marbles. He has shown flashes of speed this year, just not when it matters. He could also be trying too hard to make up for his car's deficiencies. Either way, a big race in China is now imperative for the Finn.

McLaren find themselves 8th on the constructors table on a single point, but that's one more point than Ferrari at the moment. As the results stand, it is the first time Ferrari have failed to score in both the first two races of the season since 1992. And frankly, they are looking about as competitive as they were in 1992. They topped second free practice on Friday, and Button cheekily talked them up as race favourites, but really if you leave in the diffuser trio they are no more than the 5th best team on the grid.

The ability to just keep building on a race-winning platform year-on-year having gone, the current Ferrari technical team are being found out, and strategically they have been caught flapping in unfamiliar waters as well. Felipe Massa's embarrassing exit from Q1 was an arrogant failure to read the fact that the entire field is within around 1.5s of each other, even closer than last year, such that no-one can afford to put in a banker lap in Q1 and not go out again after the circuit has been rubbered in.

Interestingly, when the race was red-flagged Raikkonen stopped his car, changed into civvies, and looked as though he would not take a restart even if there was one. Equally interestingly, after the race he said: Òin Melbourne, I was the one to make a mistake and today it was the teamÓ - very different from the 'the team and I win and lose together' spirit of the Schumi days. Without a championship-challenging car at the moment, could Kimi's interest - or what's left of it - run out sooner than anyone could have imagined?

Both Renaults also suffered from making too many stops for tyres towards what turned out to be the end of the race. In Nelson Piquet Jr's case it made little difference, as he had once again failed to make it past Q1, a scenario which the combination of an average car and an average driver is likely to see repeated often in 2009, and he was midfield at best during the race. However, in Alonso's case, the spate of stops cost the Spaniard points after he made it into Q3 and leapt from 9th to 3rd by the first corner.

Such was the KERS advantage, for the Renault was fuelled extremely heavily. He was some 30kg heavier than other Q3 cars, and he had only done one run in Q3. Although he was quickly dispatched by Button and Barrichello, he managed to hold up Raikkonen, Webber and Glock for several laps before finally succumbing. For two races in a row, he has spent much of the time on the defensive. While his fighting qualities still come to the fore, no doubt he would much rather be the attacker, but the R29 is just not at that level.

REJECT OF THE RACE
Bernie Ecclestone
Pushed Sepang into the Twilight Zone

Or is it the drivers? Sebastien Bourdais may have made it into Q2, but in the race and overall he is still showing very little to impress, or to suggest that he can take the team to the heights that Vettel delivered last year. More to the point, Sebastien Buemi may have qualified last, but he went off on his last Q1 run when he was several tenths up, and threatening to make Q2. An early collision with Adrian Sutil forced Buemi in for a nosecone change, and he spun into retirement in the rain. The rookie is still learning.

Giancarlo Fisichella is no rookie, in fact he is the second-most experienced man in the field, but once again there was no joy for him, Sutil or Force India. Sutil passed his team-mate on lap five, but made two stops on laps 15 and 18 which put him a lap down when the rain came, such that he could not excel as he often does in wet conditions. Fisichella, meanwhile, continued to languish at the back until he also spun in the rain. The VJM02 is easily within 2s of the pace, but sadly that's still just not close enough.

And so the Malaysian GP became only the fifth half-points race in World Championship history, after the 1975 Spanish and Austrian GPs, and 1984 Monaco GP, and the 1991 Australian GP. Only the 1975 Spanish GP was stopped before full points could be awarded for reasons other than rain. Of course, the weather cannot always be helped, but one thing that can be is the race start time, to try to avoid the worst of the weather or to allow time for stopped races to be restarted.

All sports, not just F1, are affected by the fact that corporate sponsorship dollars are hard to come by, whereas the appetite for sport on television is as voracious as ever, and so sports administrators milk broadcasters bidding for coverage rights for all they're worth, and in return broadcasters demand to get their way. The recent Qatar MotoGP round had to be postponed 24 hours after rain hit the Losail track, when the race was already a night round, and scheduled to start at 11pm local time at that!

But the recent trend towards unadulterated greed by Formula One Management, its commercial partner CVC, and the man pulling the strings behind it all, Bernie Ecclestone, has become damaging for the sport. The questionable move away from F1's heartland and decreasing value for (too much) money for spectators are all symptoms of the same commercial anarchy that's causing the current financial crisis, and the ridiculous Sepang start time was just the latest example. 'Reject of the Race' to Bernie without doubt.