I had considered it pretty odd that we had seen no rain during the GP weekend in Malaysia. I had been happy about it too soon! The rain started to fall 10 minutes before the lights went out. Everyone on the grid was on the intermediate tyres. Both McLarens had a strong start and Hamilton was able to stay in the lead. Schumacher had close battle with Lotus´s Grosjean and they hit each other which forced both of them to pit. The conditions were absolutely terrible in some areas and soon all the drivers pitted to put the full-wets on. Sauber´s Perez was the first driver to do so and he benefitted hugely from the wise call. Perez rose to third right behind the McLarens!
Due to the intensified rain the safety car was deployed and just after a couple of laps behind the safety car the race was red flagged on lap nine. I consider it kind of a wonder that no other driver except Grosjean drove off the track and had to retire the race due to the monsoon! Button described the last sector "being a lake" on team radio so that told a lot about the amount of water on the track! It took an hour before the rain had decreased so that the race could be restarted.
After the restart it was Ferrari and Fernando Alonso who had the perfect pit stop strategy! Alonso pitted at exactly the right time and was able to take the lead. Hamilton´s pit stop was slightly delayed because he accidently shut down the engine of his car and it took some extra seconds before he got back to the track. Button had an unlucky clash with HRT´s Karthikeyan. After the race the Briton admitted that he accepted full responsibility for the clash. He locked the rears and was just unable to avoid hitting the Indian. Button damaged his front wing and an extra pit stop cost him dearly putting him at the back of the grid!
Finally the track had dried enough and the drivers pitted to put the slicks on. Alonso was leading the race but the Mexican Sauber driver Perez was catching him very quickly! Perez managed to make the gap to Alonso less than a second but then he made a mistake and went wide! So it was Alonso who took the victory at Sepang today! Who would have believed it before the race? It´s obvious that Ferrari definitely doesn´t have the best car at the moment but they surely had the best strategy in the very acceptional circumstances today! I feel kind of ashamed of my yesterday´s blog post: I wrote about the current pecking order and I didn´t even mention Ferrari among the four top teams!! Though I guess everyone agrees that in more "normal" conditions Ferrari would have had no chance to fight for the victory!
The driver of the day was definitely Sergio Perez! Though he made a mistake and lost his chance for the victory I appreciate his attempt! I´m impressed by his courage and passion to try and overtake Alonso and not to settle for the second. That´s what true Formula 1 racing is all about! Hamilton finished 3rd and Red Bull´s Webber 4th. Kimi drove an impressive race by driving to the chequered flag 5th scoring valuable points :) Kimi was able to set the fastest lap time at the end of the race so there´s definitely potential in the E20! Off the track "the incident of the day" has been the free ice-creams given in the circuit media centre as a courtesy of certain Mr Räikkönen...! Kimi and ice-cream became legendary in Malaysia in 2009 when after retiring the race Kimi went to get an ice-cream from Ferrari´s fridge ;) Kimi´s sense of humour is utterly awesome!
But then: what happened to my favourite driver Sebastian Vettel today? He didn´t have the perfect race, actually quite the opposite! After the last pit stops he was driving in P4 behind Hamilton until... he was lapping the Indian HRT driver and they had a clash which lead to Vettel suffering a left-rear puncture! The clash destroyed the German´s race and he finished the race 11th not scoring any points! In addition to the clash with Karthikeyan Vettel also lost all the radio communication at the beginning of the race so in the chaotic conditions it made his race extremely difficult. Karthikeyan was penalised for the clash after the race and he was given a drive-through (which meant 20 seconds added to his time) but it doesn´t comfort Vettel who lost a handful of valuable points today! I hope Sebastian will be able to turn all these setbacks into success in China in three weeks.
I have to admit I really needed a 8-kilometre walk in the forest after the race! I was extremely happy for Kimi, he has now proved that he has what it takes to fight for the podium finishes! But I shared Sebastian´s frustration for the absolutely unnecessary clash with Karthikeyan... Alonso is leading the championship and Vettel with no points scored today is 6th... Red Bull has a lot of homework to do so that they can turn a whole new leaf in China! But whatever happens on the track... Winning or losing, success or obstacles on the way, I will always support Sebastian! Roll on China!
P.S. I still have to write a few words about Vettel´s incident with Karthikeyan. Sebastian lost his temper after the race and called the Indian "an idiot" and "a cucumber" which I consider completely unnecessary. This reminds me kind of the season 2010 when Sebastian was involved with a few clashes as well and had very strong reactions... Red Bull has lost the edge in 2012. Now that the RB8 doesn´t have the dominant performance like its predecessor did it´s up to the driver to get the best out of it. I hope that Heikki (Huovinen) turns out to be as skillful psychological coach as Tommi (Pärmäkoski) turned out back in 2010... Back then Seb managed to learn from his mistakes and turned all the setbacks into huge success and was able to maintain his feet on the ground. There are three weeks to calm down and get over this! There are 25 points to be caught in China again :)
P.P.S. It seems frighteningly that I´m unable to finish this blog post! ;) But a few more words... We have a Second Step class at our kindergarten with my group every Monday. For those who don´t know, the Second Step is a programme which teaches social and emotional skills for children aged from 4 to 12 years. A week ago we talked about strong emotions and how people get overwhelmed with such feelings every now and then. Today we continued from that and talked about ways to calm down when overwhelmed with anger for example (like take a deep breath or count slowly from 1 to 5...). I couldn´t help mentioning a certain German Formula 1 driver who got carried away with his anger and frustration after the race...! I put a poster on the wall of our class room which reminds the children of the ways to calm down... Just wondering if I should send a copy of that to the above-mentioned German driver ;) No, just kidding. A reaction like his is totally understandable and makes him human. So let´s forget this incident right away and focus on the upcoming races instead! :)
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