Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull Racing successfully continued their winning ways at the Sepang Circuit in Malaysia after a dry, action-packed race. Lewis Hamilton appeared to be his closest challenger, but after hitting tyre troubles it was left to his McLaren teammate Jenson Button to keep the reigning champion honest. However, Vettel had sufficient pace throughout to ensure his twelfth career victory, despite not being able to use KERS for the majority of the race.
Vettel took a narrow pole position from Hamilton on Saturday after a thrilling showdown. Mark Webber just missed out on the front row of the grid, joined on the second row by Button. Behind the four leaders were the Ferraris of Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa in fifth and seventh positions respectively, with Nick Heidfeld's Renault splitting the scarlet cars. Vitaly Petrov lined up in eighth in the second Renault, confirming the black-and-gold cars' pace.
When the race got underway, Vettel made a solid getaway to maintain his lead. Behind him though, there was a considerable reshuffle as the two Renault pilots both made astounding starts. From sixth on the grid, Heidfeld stormed around the outside of the first corner to cut in ahead of both McLarens at turn 2 to snatch second. Petrov tried to follow him, but couldn't quite emulate the feat, leaving him fifth behind Hamilton in third and Button fourth, but ahead of the Ferraris. In contrast, Mark Webber's lack of KERS from the outset consigned him to tenth by the end of lap 1 after a comparatively tardy getaway.
Vettel proceeded to pull out a comfortable advantage ahead of his countryman Heidfeld, who initially appeared to be holding up Hamilton. However, the Renault kept the Brit at bay all the way until the first round of stops as McLaren decided it was best for their man to conserve his tyres at this stage. Meanwhile, Petrov failed to hold onto fifth as the combination of Felipe Massa's Ferrari engine, KERS and DRS at turn 1 on lap 5 proved too much for the Russian. Alonso also found his way past after Petrov ran wide later on the same lap, promoting the Spaniard to sixth.
Webber, after exchanging ninth position with Kobayashi several times in the intervening laps, was the first of the top ten to make their first pit stop on lap 11. Two laps later he was joined by Hamilton, with Vettel, Heidfeld, Button and Massa all rushing into the pits too on lap 14. Massa however suffered a slow stop, putting him behind Webber as well as Alonso, who pitted a lap later to leapfrog Heidfeld as well as his teammate. Heidfeld also lost out to both of the faster McLarens in the stops.
This meant the order after the first round of stops was Vettel from the two McLarens of Hamilton and Button, Alonso, Heidfeld, Webber, Massa and Petrov. At this stage, Hamilton began to steadily narrow Vettel's advantage as it became apparent the KERS system of his Red Bull was not operating, with Button remaining just a short distance behind his teammate. Making use of his fresh tyres to particularly good effect, Alonso then began to catch up to both of the McLaren drivers, easily depriving Button of a net third position at the first corner on lap 17.
The Ferrari's race pace was further underlined by Massa taking sixth away from Webber five laps later, this time at turn 4. Webber was the only leading driver planning to make four scheduled stops, the second of which came on lap 23 which saw him get back ahead of Massa as well as Heidfeld to be in a temporary net fifth position after all the other stops. Substandard Ferrari pit-work then once again cost one of their drivers a position; this time Button retaking third from Alonso.
While Webber made his third stop on lap 33, putting him back down to seventh behind Massa, Button made up another place after his third stop to reach second at the expense of his teammate Hamilton, whose earlier switch to hard tyres had cost him dear. So much, in fact, that after Alonso's third stop, the Spaniard rapidly closed the gap to his old adversary to commence an exciting duel over the final podium place. Hamilton was able to resist Alonso's advances for a few laps with some robust defending, but it was soon evident that Hamilton was fighting a losing battle.
The decisive moment arrived on lap 46, as Alonso got a superior run out of turns 2 and 3. As the two-time champion tried to set himself up for a pass at turn 4 however, he sheared off his front wing endplate against Hamilton's right-rear wheel. Alonso was thus forced to pit for a new nose, dropping behind Heidfeld, Massa and Webber in the process. Hamilton's tyre surprisingly remained intact, but his poor pace was hardly aided by minor aerodynamic damage sustained in the collision.
This meant Heidfeld was able to easily pass Hamilton for third, and after a clever pass on Massa at turns 1 and 2, Webber did likewise to the ailing McLaren driver for fourth. After this, Hamilton made a fourth stop, dropping him to eighth, but this became seventh when Petrov annihilated his Renault's steering column after taking off and landing hard after driving over a crest in the grass run-off area of turn 8 with two laps to go.
All the while, Vettel was able to manage the closing gap to Button to secure yet another well-deserved win. Heidfeld, after fending off the rapidly-closing Webber in the final stages of the race, bagged Renault another superb podium finish. Massa finished in fifth ahead of a disappointed Alonso who remained sixth after a 20-second penalty for his part in the incident with Hamilton. The despondent Brit also received a similar penalty for weaving, dropping him to eighth behind Kobayashi.
Schumacher came home ninth on a bitterly disappointing weekend for Mercedes, the team simply lacking raw speed. Di Resta clinched the final point for tenth place after another fine effort. The other Force India of Adrian Sutil recovered to eleventh after an early collision with Rubens Barrichello which necessitated a stop for a new nose. Barrichello was forced to complete the majority of lap 1 with no rear-left tyre on his Williams, before eventually succumbing to gearbox failure twenty-five laps in. This compounded a miserable race for Williams as Pastor Maldonado retired just ten laps in with mechanical failure.
Nico Rosberg came twelfth in the other struggling Mercedes, ahead of the Toro Rosso pair of Sebastien Buemi and Jaime Alguersauri, Buemi not helped by a ten-second stop-and-go penalty for pit-lane speeding and shedding bodywork that accounted for Sergio Perez's race. Heikki Kovalainen for Lotus and Timo Glock for Virgin completed the list of finishers, with their respective teammates as well as both Hispanias retiring with various mechanical woes.
As for the rule changes, admittedly DRS did make a significant contribution to today's action after a slow start at Melbourne, although some are already complaining that the system combined with KERS makes overtaking too easy. On the point of KERS, while it's true that Vettel won without use of the device for much of the race, looking at Webber one would have to presume the German would definitely not have been leading the race to begin with without it for that all-important run to the first corner.
While Vettel now enjoys a 24-point advantage over Button and the rest in the championship standings, the Malaysian Grand Prix at least reassured us that Red Bull are not as dominant as we first perhaps feared. McLaren and Ferrari seem to be a match for the Anglo-Austrian cars in race trim – with seventeen rounds still to run the championship is still wide open. We only have to wait a week until the third round of the championship at the Shanghai International Circuit, China, to see if either of Formula One's two most illustrious teams can finally bring the Vettel steam-roller to a halt.
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