F1

Our Formula One Fan-atic LUKE NETTO is a self-confessed petrolhead and Formula One nut who often heads to the Sepang circuit in Malaysia over the weekends to race cars. This season, he aims to give a fan's easy-to-understand perspective of the highly technical sport. Follow The New Paper's F1 Fan-atic series every race weekend

RACE START

COMPARED to Melbourne last weekend, the Malaysia Grand Prix at Sepang saw a very clean start from the entire group. World champion Kimi Raikkonen - starting from second on the grid - applied early pressure on pole-sitter and Ferrari team-mate Felipe Massa but Massa managed to shrug him off aggressively and close the door going into Turn One. Jarno Trulli - in the Toyota - was unable to hold onto third place when he and BMW's Nick Heidfeld touched wheels at Turn One which allowed a few drivers to take advantage, one of them being McLaren's Lewis Hamilton who swiftly moved up from ninth to sixth after Turn One and then into fifth place after Turn Four of the first lap. The only driver who retired in the first lap was Toro Rosso's Sebastien Bourdais who crashed out.

RACE STRATEGY

McLAREN - having picked up a qualifying penalty for baulking opponents that pushed them five places backwards on the grid for the race - opted to start on soft-compound tyres.

As I mentioned in my race preview, some drivers will do that if they know others ahead of them are on harder tyres. Then, they can use their softer tyres to get more grip on track, which will help them overtake cars and hopefully make up a few places early on in the race.

McLaren's plan was similar to Ferrari's strategy at Melbourne. But this time, Ferrari started the race on hard-compound tyres with a very light fuel load, so they were the first to pit with Massa, followed by Raikkonen. Raikkonen didn't try to overtake him on the track. Instead, he used the pit-stop strategy.

Once Massa pitted, Raikkonen had an open track in front of him to post a quick lap, which he did. His times in every sector improved. He was banking on this because he knew Massa was back out on new but cold tyres that needed some more time to warm up.

Raikkonen could make up time during this phase. Raikkonen then entered the pits, and a quicker stop too from the team, at 7.5secs, saw Raikkonen dramatically emerge in front of Massa.

RACE ACTION
Part 1

ONE of the best overtaking moves in the race was a three-car incident, when Red Bull's David Coulthard was struggling as Nick Heidfeld and Renault's Fernando Alonso closed in on him. In a matter of two turns, both of them spectacularly passed Coulthard with all three of them even being side by side at one time on the back straight.

Heidfeld made a slingshot move to pass both of them then, before Alonso craftily sneaked up past Coulthard eventually on the start-finish straight.

Near the rear of the pack, Williams' Kazuki Nakajima was climbing up the field fast, and after just 10 laps, he had made his way from last to 13th.

Hamilton's race was destroyed when he went in for his first pit-stop, encountered some problems from his front right wheel being replaced and was kept stationery for 19.9 secs, instead of the usual sub-10 second pitstops drivers usually take.
This cost him dearly as he re-entered the race in 12th place, dropping back seven places.

RACE ACTION
Part 2

A FEW laps later, Massa in second spot, made a terrible mistake again for the second race in a row.

It looked like a driving mistake again - similar to the one in Melbourne - as he spun out on Turn Eight, putting the car into the gravel and forcing his own retirement.

Towards the end of the race, the focus of the race shifted to Hamilton and Trulli who were fighting for fourth place. With 10 laps remaining, Hamilton was six seconds behind but he caught up at almost a second a lap. Hamilton did eventually catch up with Trulli with two laps left, but was again unable to find a way past the car in front of him, which was the story of his race yesterday.

RACE SUMMARY

I THOUGHT it was a typical race at the Sepang track again, where the excitement level wasn't the same as Melbourne. But it was still an interesting race.

There were 17 finishers this time compared to when only seven cars finished in Melbourne. Fans may have expected more overtaking moves again - like in Melbourne - but with Sepang's rough surface and high heat levels, drivers have to be more careful with their cars in order to finish.

This means the drivers would have taken fewer risks. It was a slightly disappointing weekend for McLaren as they were unlucky to pick up the grid penalty during qualifying, and they couldn't make up places on track.

BMW managed to pick up their best result in recent times, with a second-place finish for Robert Kubica. This shows us BMW really do have a car this season that is competitive. I'll be waiting to see now what happens at the next race in Bahrain (6 Apr) as the competition is closer among the top teams, it's not just Ferrari and McLaren.

This article was first published in The New Paper on Mar 24, 2008.