JENSON TAKES SECOND WIN DESPITE WASHOUT
Previously in Formula 1. Lewis Hamilton was given 3rd place in the Australian Grand Prix after Jarno Trulli was hit with a 25 second penalty for overtaking him behind the safety car. Slight problem, there was more to that incident than met the eye. It turned out that when Lewis had originally passed the stricken Toyota behind the safety car. That was fair and square apparantly. However McLaren didn't think so and ordered Lewis to let Trulli past, which they shouldn't have done. In a desperate attempt to get Lewis's third place back, team manager Dave Ryan nudged the reigning world champion into not telling the stewards about the earlier team orders. A quick check of McLaren's radio logs later...and the team found themselves at the FIA's mercy. As a result, Lewis has been disqualified from the Australian Grand Prix, meaning that he had now officially yet to score coming into the following race.
That following race was the Malaysian Grand Prix at the Sepang Circuit. Straight off the back of the Aussie race this event was another race that was affected by Bernie's idea of pushing back the start times of the Asian races. So we had a late afternoon start time which meant the biggest unanswered question was "was Brawn's dominance in Oz a fluke?". Brawn were saying that they were expecting a rougher time in Malaysia and practice form certainly proved to be iffy. It looked like it would be the best chance for some kind of competition to make itself known, the question was, who? The traditional powers McLaren and Ferrari were still off the pace.
Well both Brits survived Q1 relatively smoothly though the same couldn't be said for Massa who was the victim of early Ferrari overconfidence. Q2 proved to be relatively straightforward for Jenson but again the '09 McLaren clearly has little straight speed and Lewis had to settle for P13(which at least was an improvment on Oz). Then came Q3 and Raikonen was the first man out of the blocks, though he was soon beaten by Rosberg. Barrichello then grabbed provisional pole before being beaten by Trulli and then Jenson bit the front. Barrichello bettered his teammate only for the Brit to grab his last chance to take pole, his second in a row. There was a little bit of good news for Lewis as Vettel was given a ten-place grid penalty as a result of his Australia crash, this promoting the reigning world champion to P12.
As for the race itself, well Lewis made to up to 10th at the start and then made it up to 9th before getting overtaken by Vettel only to retake 9th after Heidfeld had an off-track moment. Then came the rain and Lewis found himself in the points despite multiple tyre changes when trying to keep up with the weather. Lewis even went off the track before the safety car came out and then finally the race was red flagged with him in 6th. This is where Bernie's idea of a late afternoon race wound up biting us all. The rain kept coming down and the sky darkened. And there were no floodlights available for this race. Eventually it was it was outright abandoned and Lewis was credited with 7th place after a lap countback. His Oz DSQ makes them his first official points of the season, even if they were only half points given that less than 75% of the race had been completed.
As for Jenson, well he had a poor start and found himself 4th early on only to take care of Alonso not long afterwards. He then set after Trulli and grabbed 2nd after early leader Rosberg pitted. Trulli then grabbed some new tyres which gave Jenson the lead and then the rain came down, Jenson's lead surviving till the red flag. Apparantly there were cheers in the Honda garage when the red flag was shown but I certainly wasn't particularly happy early on, it was the first time a race had been abandoned early for as long as I can remember(the last time was Australia 1991). It's not how you want your guys to win races. Still, Jenson was able to collect his second win in a row, I suppose that's all that matters.
So, that leave Jenson still leading the world championship(and his lead increases to five points) with 15 points. Further down, Lewis has got off the mark(again) in 10th place with 1 point(and his 7th place here).
Comments go here
Click here to return to sports homepage
Click here to return to Matt G's homepage