On Sunday, but a week after a stunning Australian Grand Prix from Melbourne, the Formula One circus makes its way to the Sepang Circuit in Malaysia.
Now, Ross Brawn stunned the F1 world last week by taking a team that was hopelessly lost (Honda), injecting a little organization into the team, plugging in a couple of old but proven drivers (Button and Barrichello) and taking an emphatic 1-2 at Albert Park. With Lewis Hamilton and McClaren (more on them in a bit) nowhere near their 2008 form, the British press jumped all over Button and Brawn's victory, saying it's about damn time Button got into a good car.
As is the usual between race weekends in F1, the fallout from the last race was almost as ridiculous as the race itself. The story-du-jour probably would have been Vettel and Kubica getting together while battling for 2nd in the closing laps, but peculiar things happened during the resulting safety car period that sent the world into an uproar.
Jarno Trulli, for reasons beyond comprehension, drove far wide on the penultimate corner and Hamilton, as he should have, drove past to take 3rd. Trulli then passed Hamilton to take the spot back. In a post-race meeting Hamilton and one of his bosses, Dave Ryan, claimed there had been no instruction for Lewis to let Trulli back by and Trulli was subsequently penalized for passing under the safety car.
But then, the FIA got a listen to this radio conversation. Apparently, Hamilton had received instruction to let Trulli back by, and therefore Hamilton and Ryan lied to the stewards. The FIA, appropriately, struck Hamilton's name from the Australia results and restored Trulli's 3rd-place finish. Also included in the fallout was the McClaren team's suspension of Ryan for this weekend.
What does that mean for this weekend? I'm not entirely sure. What I can say is that Lewis still obviously has not come to grips with his car, as his results in the first two Malaysia practices were 7th and 11th -- not where McClaren would like their defending world champion to be. Teammate Heikki Kovalainen isn't doing much better, with results of 20th and 9th.
Also of note in the Friday practices at Malaysia: Kimi Raikkonen topped the charts in practice 2, but in practice 1 this happened. The smoke coming out of the cockpit is from a busted KERS battery -- the first such failure we've had while a car was running. Ferrari shut the KERS system off for practice 2, from what I heard on their radio convo late in the session, but Raikkonen and Massa still went fast. The best account of the event came from Peter Windsor, who strolls the pit lane for Speed Channel and described the smell of the smoke, saying, "imagine parmesan cheese that's been left out in the hot sun for about six months."
As for the race itself, it's hard to know, really. Looking at the practice times, though, I see the red cars trying to make a statement coming off of their massive disappointment in Melbourne. Last year, after a disastrous Australian race, Raikkonen blitzed the field to take the win at Sepang. Honestly, I'm going to have to give the advantage to the red cars this time around too. The engine reliability (KERS failure notwithstanding) that Ferrari is known for will serve them well in the heat and I think Kimi will be the one to take the top step again.
...unless a late-summer monsoon flops on the track. All bets are off at that point.
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