With a fantastic and thrilling Malaysian Grand Prix, we witnessed the effect of Pirelli's quick degrading tyres and DRS (Drag Reduction System) clearly than the season opener Austrulian Grand Prix.
The race started with a black surprise. Lotus Renaults boosted crazily and managed to overtake Ferraris and McLarens. Nick Heidfeld rose to 2nd place from 6th, while Vitaly Petrov came to 5th from 8th.
The biggest disappointments of the start were Mark Webber and Nico Rosberg. Webber downed to 9th, while Rosberg downed into the midfield.
After the start, polesitter Sebastian Vettel increased the gap and Heidfeld was keeping Lewis Hamilton behind. While overtaking Heidfeld, Hamilton pushed his tyres and that forced him to do a pitstop earlier than planned. This ruined British driver's race as he needed to pit earlier than others througth the race. Hence his tyres could'nt complete the last stint, and one more pitstop put Hamilton into 7th place.
Fernando Alonso had a good pace and climbed up with every pitstop. But while trying to overtake Hamilton for 3rd place, he hit McLaren's right rear tyre and broke his front wing. He pitted and finished at 6th, behind his team-mate Felipe Massa.
Jenson Button proved that he is a great tyre preserver again by coming to the finish line as the runner up. He drove 19 laps with his hard tyres in his last stint, and his pace was still good as Vettel at the last laps.
With the problems of Hamilton and Alonso, Heidfeld came 3rd with a perfect drive. In the last laps, Mark Webber caught him but he was unable to use KERS, while Heidfeld used the system at the overtaking points and kept his place.
Michael Schumacher and Kamui Kobayashi's duels were another fun factor for the exciting race. They swapped positions several times and in the end, Kobayashi came 8th with his 2-stops strategy. While Schumacher came 9th and took the first points for Mercedes in 2011 season.
Another interesting moment of the race starred by Petrov. While he was going for some nice points, he went off-road and jumped from a bump. After the heavy impact on the ground, his steering wheel came off. He retired after this strange incident.
We watched lots of pitstops thanks to new Pirelli tyres and this brung a big thrill to the race. With the pitstops, front-runners mixed with the traffic and lots of overtakings were occurred.
DRS also provided a lots of overtakings on the start/finish straight. So it seems F1 management succeded in putting a benefical rule at last.
---UPDATE---
Stewards punished both Hamilton and Alonso with a 20 seconds penalty. So that Hamilton dropped to 8th place, while Alonso is still 6th. And Kobayashi rose to 7th position.
Hamilton punished because of his too much line changing while defending his position to Alonso.
Alonso is also penalized for hitting Hamilton behind.
result tables taken from Autosport.com, write up belongs to RD.
The race started with a black surprise. Lotus Renaults boosted crazily and managed to overtake Ferraris and McLarens. Nick Heidfeld rose to 2nd place from 6th, while Vitaly Petrov came to 5th from 8th.
The biggest disappointments of the start were Mark Webber and Nico Rosberg. Webber downed to 9th, while Rosberg downed into the midfield.
After the start, polesitter Sebastian Vettel increased the gap and Heidfeld was keeping Lewis Hamilton behind. While overtaking Heidfeld, Hamilton pushed his tyres and that forced him to do a pitstop earlier than planned. This ruined British driver's race as he needed to pit earlier than others througth the race. Hence his tyres could'nt complete the last stint, and one more pitstop put Hamilton into 7th place.
Fernando Alonso had a good pace and climbed up with every pitstop. But while trying to overtake Hamilton for 3rd place, he hit McLaren's right rear tyre and broke his front wing. He pitted and finished at 6th, behind his team-mate Felipe Massa.
Jenson Button proved that he is a great tyre preserver again by coming to the finish line as the runner up. He drove 19 laps with his hard tyres in his last stint, and his pace was still good as Vettel at the last laps.
With the problems of Hamilton and Alonso, Heidfeld came 3rd with a perfect drive. In the last laps, Mark Webber caught him but he was unable to use KERS, while Heidfeld used the system at the overtaking points and kept his place.
Michael Schumacher and Kamui Kobayashi's duels were another fun factor for the exciting race. They swapped positions several times and in the end, Kobayashi came 8th with his 2-stops strategy. While Schumacher came 9th and took the first points for Mercedes in 2011 season.
Another interesting moment of the race starred by Petrov. While he was going for some nice points, he went off-road and jumped from a bump. After the heavy impact on the ground, his steering wheel came off. He retired after this strange incident.
We watched lots of pitstops thanks to new Pirelli tyres and this brung a big thrill to the race. With the pitstops, front-runners mixed with the traffic and lots of overtakings were occurred.
DRS also provided a lots of overtakings on the start/finish straight. So it seems F1 management succeded in putting a benefical rule at last.
---UPDATE---
Stewards punished both Hamilton and Alonso with a 20 seconds penalty. So that Hamilton dropped to 8th place, while Alonso is still 6th. And Kobayashi rose to 7th position.
Hamilton punished because of his too much line changing while defending his position to Alonso.
Alonso is also penalized for hitting Hamilton behind.
result tables taken from Autosport.com, write up belongs to RD.
