The David Coulthard Museum

It would have been hard for anyone to bet against Ferrari on Saturday evening. They had looked consistently fast all weekend and a strong showing in qualifying put Felipe Massa on pole followed by Fernando Alonso in the McLaren and the second Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen. However by turn two of the Malaysian Grand Prix everything had changed with McLaren dominating the red cars. Fernando put a textbook move up the inside of Massa to take the lead and the ever impressive rookie, Lewis Hamilton went right up the inside of Raikkonen in turn one and in another great display of driving went round the outside of Massa to take second at turn two. Most of the field managed to follow the leaders through to lap 2 but Adrian Sutil became the only casualty after bumping into Jenson Button’s Honda and shattering his suspension.

In these opening laps it became clear that Lewis was doing the job of holding up the Ferrari’s so that Alonso could get as far away as possible to protect his lead. This infuriated Massa who was desperately trying to get passed the young Brit. On Lap 4 Massa tried to make the move at turn three but overshot himself going into the corner and ran wide leaving Lewis to simply retake his position. Two laps later though Hamilton made a mistake into turn two which left him on the back foot the whole way up the straight going into turn three. This allowed the Brazilian to quite easily take second place but in a stupid move Massa missed the braking zone and stumbled on into the gravel not only losing his place to Raikkonen but also the BMW of Nick Hiedfeld.

On lap 9 for the second race in a row Albers retired with engine troubles and spectacularly caught fire whilst in the pit-lane. Back at the front Hamilton did his job perfectly holding back Raikkonen and allowing Alonso to build a gap of twelve seconds. After the first round of pitstops the order didn’t change up front. In the second stint of the race
Hamilton appeared to be faster on his second set of the Bridgestone soft tyres going as far as setting the fastest lap of the race with a 1.37.701. The last car to pit was that of David Coulthard on lap 27 which suggested at that time it was a one-stop strategy for ‘our boy’. However not long after this stop the steering column started to rub against the brake pedal making it impossible to drive and forced him to retire once again. Both he and Albers are yet to finish this year.
Back at the front of the field Alonso was leading comfortably but was still pushing hard to his second stop, this was seen in his rage at Liuzzi for holding him up on lap 29. His cause for concern was probably his team-mate who had closed on him to bring the gap down to eight seconds by this time. Also by this point in the race both of the Renaults had risen
into the top ten with Fisichella in the points zone. This was an impressive result for the Renaults team who were having a dismal weekend but were solidly getting through the afternoon. In stark contrast Polish driver, Robert Kubica had a horrendous afternoon after problems with his nose for most of the race however he struggled through to finish last of the
finishing runners.

After the second round of stops the order remained unchanged however the tables had turned on Hamilton, now on the hard tyres, as he started to slip back away from Alonso and into the clutches of the flying Finn still in third. With about fifteen laps to go Raikkonen started to close in on Hamilton at roughly three quarters of a second per lap. This led to a nail-biting closing stage as Raikkonen got closer and closer to the McLaren but just as Alonso crossed the line to win the Malaysian Grand Prix he was followed by Hamilton who managed to hold back the Ferrari driver to secure second place.
Judging by both practice and qualifying this was a race that Ferrari should have quite easily won, however, a superb race for both the rookie and the reigning champ secure the first McLaren one-two since the 2005 Brazilian Grand Prix and put them very much n control of the constructors championship at this early stage in the season. Other strong performances included that of Nick Hiedfeld who had a solid drive to hold onto fourth in front of Massa who never recovered from his mistake. The German was also to kick off the silly season rumours with talk floating around the paddock of a potential move to Toyota for ‘08. For the second weekend Williams looked strong through the race with Alexander Wurz battling his way through from 19th up to ninth and Nico Rosberg running very strongly in seventh until
his Toyota engine packed itself in. Honda managed to do slightly better this time round beating both Super Aguris and both Toro Rosso but both Button and Barrichello were a long way off all through the race. However, nobody could argue to 2002 and 2004 it would seem that McLaren and Alonso are right back in this.