F1 News

Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen gave the perfect response to Lewis Hamilton’s easy win last week with an equally dominant victory in Sepang this morning.

But the biggest winner of the weekend was the neutral fan, as it is now clear that we have a real fight on our hands for this year’s World Championship.

Raikkonen led from the first pitstop and never looked back. His team-mate, Felipe Massa, returned to his 2007 ways with a good qualifying performance followed by a silly mistakes in the race. He spun out and leaves the first two races with no points.

McLaren’s weekend was nearly as bad as Ferrari’s was last week. Though Heikki Kovalainen did salvage a podium, Lewis Hamilton was left languishing in fifth place after a problematic pitstop.

Kubica took a career-best second place, making it two podiums in two races for the BMW team. Jarno Trulli impressed with fourth for Toyota, his best performance since the US GP of 2006. Nick Heidfeld (BMW), Mark Webber (Red Bull) and Fernando Alonso (Renault) took sixth, seventh and eighth, respectively.

The title race is now very close, with just three points separating the top three. And, interestingly, we still haven’t seen a straight fight between the two top teams.

It had been apparent in testing that the Ferraris and the McLarens had different strengths, so it is not surprising that we have had a dominant performance from each team in the first two races.

But the gap has been exaggerated by Raikkonen’s qualifying woes in Australia, McLaren’s grid penalty in Malaysia and Hamilton’s pitstop catastrophe. Let’s hope we can see the first proper fight between the two teams in two weeks’ time in Dubai.

Malaysian Grand Prix Result

1. RAIKKONEN Ferrari

2. KUBICA BMW +19.5s

3. KOVALAINEN McLaren +38.4s

4. TRULLI Toyota +45.8s

5. HAMILTON McLaren +46.5s

6. HEIDFELD BMW +49.8s

7. WEBBER Red Bull +1m08.1s

8. ALONSO Renault +1m10.0s

Stumble it!