F1 Malaysia 2011

Well, we are still looking for someone to beat Vettel who took both the pole and the win again. Hamilton looked like a contender when he missed pole by only 0.1s after he made small mistake on his qualifying lap. Unfortunately, while his pace was good in the early part of the race, he was not able to maintain it throughout the race. However, McLaren have clearly drawn closer to the Redbull, which is encouraging.

Redbull's weakness is KERS which completely failed on Webber's car, and had to be disabled during the race on Vettel's. Without KERS, Webber was a sitting duck on the start where he lost six places and on the long straights the lack of KERS boost was very obvious. Redbull still has an overall performance advantage which is what enabled Vettel to score the win, but Mclaren is improving quickly so Redbull's advantage may not last long. They need to get KERS sorted out soon, like by next week end! Lack of reliable KERS will hurt in China, as the Shanghai circuit has the longest straight in F1.

Despite the loss of of KERS on his Redbull, Webber drove an excellent race and recovered from the poor start to finish a respectable fourth. With a few more laps and fresher tires he might even have passed Heidfeld for third. While it was only a modest success, he was clearly miffed in the post race interviews, instead of focusing on the fact that he scored the most points that he could have given the condition of his car. It's an important skill and it's a shame that he brushed it aside to easily.

Renault had the most incredible start, with both Heidfeld and Petrov hurtling through the pack from sixth and eighth respectively. With a longer run to turn one, it's entirely possible one of them could have taken the lead, which would have been very entertaining. It was actually one of the cleanest starts when consider how tightly packed everyone was through the first few corner ones. One the other hand, Petrov's exit from the race on lap 52 was spectacular (and a little scary).

Unlike Australia where tire wear was not very high, in Malaysia we got to see the true impact of Pirelli's high-wear tires. Each set of tires only has an around 15 laps of useful life before the performance "falls off a cliff", so there were lots of pit stops and strategy was very important. Of all the changes introduced this year, there is no doubt that the tires are going have the greatest effect on the racing.

This is good because it makes the racing less predictable. The bad side is the high number of the pit stops also makes it a little harder to follow the race. Martin Brundle mentioned that there is talk of adding the tire compound that a car is using to the timing feed. This is actually useful information now as it might explain relative performance differences a little bit better.

Does DRS work? Absolutely! It created many more passing opportunities than we usually see in a race. What most of the nay sayers don't seem to realize is that DRS only creates the opportunity for a pass. Getting along side is one thing, but actually make the pass stick is a totally different matter that depends on many more factors, such as driver's skill, aerodynamics, and tires.

DRS is new, though, and some teams are having problems getting to work right, which means that the benefits are not evenly distributed yet. There is also a loop hole. If a car passes another between the DRS available and enable lines, the passing car still gets to use the DRS, which allows it to pull away easier. This is unfair and hopefully will be disallowed later.

After only two races, I'm going go out on a limb and predict that this season will be better than the 2010 season was.

F1 Malaysia 2010

Qualifying was an example of old school strategy versus technical strategy. In old school, the wet conditions dictated getting a qualifying lap on the books. The technical strategists looked at the weather prediction data and believed it. The weather patterns around Sepang is generally unpredictable and Ferrari and Maclaren both paid dearly for putting their faith in the data.

After the third qualifying session resumed, Webber's bold choice to use intermediate wet tires when every one else was on full wets, was another example of old school, seat of the pants racing. Webber put in an awesome qualifying lap in absolutely atrocious conditions to grab only his second career pole. Webber effort really made up for his mistakes in Australia.

The race start saw some amazing driving as Vettel made a bold move on Webber in the first corner to jump from third to first position in the first corner. But Hamilton's magnificent charge from twentieth to twelfth had me on the edge of my seat. Even more impressive was that everyone got through the first corner with no serious contact as those faster cars carved their way through the field.

The rest of the race was very enjoyable as there were plenty of fights all the way through the field. There was even some passing! Alonso was outstanding as he wrestled with a car with a down shift problem which finally overstressed the engine, causing it to expire. It always amazes me that drivers can wring so much out of a sick car. Sutil and Hamilton's fight was also worth a mention. The Force India was very quick and forced Hamilton to eventually concede there was no way past. Sutil drove perfectly even with Hamilton breathing down his neck. Redbull finally shook off the reliability monkey to finished with a well deserved one-two.

Malaysia demonstrated a couple of things. First, a dry race can be exciting. Yes, passing is definitely a problem, there's no doubt about that, but this circuit offers classic passing opportunities which a few bold drivers used to good effect. Second, there's more to racing than passing. Sometimes it's little things like the air wrench getting stuck on Webber's right front wheel which cost him two seconds in his pit stop. Other times its getting the strategy all wrong. So yes, the passing needs to be improved, but there are other reasons folks like me enjoy this sport.