There were dark clouds hanging in the sky when the race was about to start but luckily the conditions also stayed dry. Sauber´s Perez was the first driver to hit technical problems: he failed to start to the warm-up lap due to a gearbox issue and was forced to start to the race from the pit lane. Right from the start the Mercedes drivers showed their rivals who owned the race. Hamilton maintained his lead easily and Rosberg stormed past Vettel up to P2. Ricciardo managed to overtake Alonso and made his way up to P4. Marussia´s Bianchi and Lotus´s Maldonado collided on the opening lap and due to the collision Bianchi got two penalty points.
Kimi at the wheel of his F14T had the worst beginning for his race: on the second lap Magnussen´s front wing hit Kimi´s rear tyre which caused the Iceman a puncture. This incident ruined Kimi´s race as the Finn had to pit which cost him dearly. The stewards took this under investigation and the Danish rookie was given a 5-second stop and go penalty, which actually didn´t comfort much because there was nothing that could save Kimi´s race!
By the lap 20 already four drivers had retired: Perez in his Sauber, Maldonado in his E22, Bianchi in his Marussia and Toro Rosso´s Vergne. By this time it was obvious that there was nobody who could seriously challenge the Mercedes duo. Sebastian managed to get close to Rosberg but right when Sebastian might have thought that he was able to catch Nico, the German Mercedes driver improved his pace and vanished away from Sebastian´s reach. To be honest Mercedes´s overwhelming dominance made the race a bit boring!
Ricciardo at the wheel of his RB10 was driving a strong race until lap 41 when the Australian pitted. His front left tyre didn´t locate properly and Ricciardo stopped on the pit lane. Red Bull´s pit crew managed to refit the wheel properly but this proved to be only a start of unfortunate events in Ricciardo´s race! Only a couple of laps after the pit stop drama another missfortune hit the Aussie: his front wing failed and he had to pit again. The team was unsure if the wing had been damaged during the pit stop or if hitting a kerb had caused it to fail. Red Bull was handed a 10 second stop and go penalty due to the unsafe release from the pits. Poor Ricciardo! First the disqualification in Australia and now this! In addition to everything else, Ricciardo will also face a 10-place grid penalty for Bahrain next week. To me it seems quite harsh that there´s a double penalty for a single offence but that´s how the rules are. It also seems very unfair that the driver gets such a harsh penalty for an offence made by the team!
In the closing stages of the race we saw a team order row: this time between the Williams team-mates Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas. Massa was driving in P7 right on tail of McLaren´s Button. Bottas had chased down his team-mate and we heard a message on Massa´s team radio telling the Brasilian to let Valtteri pass him because the Finn had more pace. The team obviously thought that Bottas might have had a chance to overtake Button and score valuable points for the Williams team. Massa, however, chose to disobey the team orders and didn´t let his team-mate overtake him. In terms of the sportsmanship I think Massa made the right decision. There was no guarantee that Bottas could have got past Button if Massa had let the Finn past. And it´s only the second race of the season! Way too early for any team orders! If Valtteri was much quicker than Massa, he should have tried to overtake in the DRS zone. Obviously it was difficult as Massa was also allowed to open his DRS as he was less than second off Button. Claire Williams stated after the race that Bottas would have been told to give his position back to Massa if the Finn had proved unable to overtake Button. What an incident! Malaysian GP seems to be the venue with team orders: last year it was the famous Multi21 in Red Bull team and now this incident between the Williams drivers!
So it was an utterly dominant 1-2 for the Mercedes drivers at Sepang today. I was extremely happy to see Sebastian on the podium! Luckily his Suzie behaved well and no technical issues came up during the race. Alonso finished 4th, Hulkenberg in his Force India 5th, Button 6th, Massa 7th, Bottas 8th, Magnussen 9th and Toro Rosso´s Kvyat 10th. Due to the puncture early in the race Kimi was unable to score points under the Malaysian sun but finished in P12. Rosberg now leads the championship standings with a 18-point gap over his team-mate Rosberg. Kimi has so only 6 points so far... Hamilton´s GP weekend couldn´t have been any more perfect: the Briton made it a grand slam by conquering pole, taking the win, setting the fastest lap time in the race and leading every lap from start to finish!
The Bahrain GP is already next week -oh, how I love these back-to-back races! On Saturday I´ll be at a hotel suite spending time with my sister so I´ll have to find a place to watch the qualifying -luckily there´s a pub nearby ;) I might write my next blog post in a jacuzzi at the hotel, getting some of the glory of F1 to myself for a fleeting moment, hahaha! ;)
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