Win!

Well that was entirely unexpected.

Let's deconstruct it a little bit.  In hindsight, two things are clear to me.  First, the Mercedes is not as kind to its tires as the Ferrari is.  Second, Mercedes made two strategy mistakes, in not holding back enough option tires for Sunday, and in making the pit stop under safety car in the first place.

If we game this out a bit, then what would have happened is that after the safety car the Mercedes cars would have led, then pitted for prime tires.  Vettel would have made his only stop under green and come out behind the Mercedes.  Then when the Mercedes cars pitted again, they would be much closer together.  The Mercedes would be a faster car on fresher tires, but with the Ferrari handling its tires much more gently it might have been more interesting in the closing stages.  If Hamilton was truly unhappy with his car, he might have been persuaded by Vettel to make a mistake.  But I think that unlikely, I think Vettel would be more content to not risk his second place.

Mercedes' strategy mistake of not holding back another set of options is probably a direct result of the car being harder on its tires.

But all of this is affected in unpredictable ways because of the heat on Sunday.  Did the Mercedes suffer?  Hamilton's comments suggest that maybe they did.  They seemed to struggle a bit, while both Ferrari cars ran with good pace throughout the race.

Due to the heat I don't think we can call this solid competition yet, or even a championship horse race.  Lets wait and see how things play out in China, or better yet once the series returns to Europe.

But for now, I'll take it.

Unexpected

A win is a win is a win.

One can be less than charitable, claiming that Ferrari only won because

• The changable conditions caused a restart, which
• Made everyone start the restart on wets, but
• Everyone dove into the pits to get their tires changed, but
• Button went a lap early, meaning he ended up behind Hamilton and Alonso, and
• McLaren inexplicably bumbled Hamilton's stop meaning he came out behind Alonso as well

...and while all that may be true, the bottom line is that you have to be fast enough to be present enough to take advantage of both mis-steps.  Even with the Hamilton mis-step, Alonso only came out scant seconds ahead of Hamilton.  And while the Ferrari was clearly faster than the McLaren, I'm not sure Hamilton wouldn't have been able to defend successfully.

That day, those conditions, Alonso and the F2012 were fast enough.  And combined with his results from Australia, Alonso even leads the Drivers' championship.

I'll take it.

I worry for the near future, though -- the F2012 isn't fast enough in qualifying.  Both outings so far suggest that race pace is adequate, at least in Alonso's hands.

Massa again I'm not sure about, he definitely needs better results --immediately -- if he's even going to last the season.  I don't see him being dropped any time soon, but unless things improve there will be someone else in that car come September.

Roll on China.

What We Learned: Malaysia 2011

Quick commentary which boarders on incoherence:

• DRS worked better here than it did in Australia. I think there were two differences between here and Australia. First, the placement of the "determination" point just before the last corner was at the end of a long straight run with only the final corner between the "determination" point and the "active zone", meaning that cars which were faster through the curves than their pursuers were unable to get away as much. So the cars which were faster in a straight line than their targets ended up closer to their targets than they did in Australia. Second, the pit straight is longer and wider than it was in Australia, giving more time and space for the DRS advantage to be realized. DRS still seems gimicky to me, and I suspect the Australia experience will be closer to the norm than Malaysia. That said, DRS will probably work better in China than Australia.
• Ferrari has some qualifying speed, but at Malaysia they were clearly slower than the McLaren and Red Bulls.
• Ferrari's race pace looks much more promising. While still not challenging for the lead, the Ferrari can dice with the Renaults and pick up anything that the McLarens and Red Bulls drop.
• Ferrari's DRS failure on Alonso's car is frustrating. This is a pretty simple system all things told. I point at this failure as the principle cause of Alonso's driving into the back of Hamilton. The collision threw away the podium to be sure.
• Massa had a steadier race, but still doesn't look like he's on Alonso's pace. If the Ferrari was on pace with the McLaren this wouldn't be as much of an issue, but really Ferrari needs both cars coming home higher up than they have been.
• At this point the championship looks like Vettel's to lose. Two wins in dominating fashion, the Malaysian one with KERS unavailable to him. If Red Bull can keep consistent, he'll be uncatchable except perhaps around some specialist courses like Monaco or Spa.
• Nice to see Heidfield back on the podium. It is just hard to hear it over the sound of Kubica weeping.
• Petrov does his audition for the Dukes Of Hazzard sequel. Scary stuff to see the steering assembly come apart in his hands on landing, but not really surprising since the cars are not designed to be bounced over anything. That's the picture of the year so far.
• The current car rankings look like Red Bull, then McLaren, then Ferrari, then Renault. Lots of distance to go, and I think Renault will fade as the year goes on.

Short week then China this weekend.

Idiot Officials

Well here we are race two, and already we have a stupid decision from the stewards to wrangle with*:

Hamilton was penalised for making more than one change of direction as he tried to defend his position from Alonso. The Spaniard, meanwhile, received the same (20 second) penalty for causing a collision with the British driver during the fight.

So basically Hamilton was weaving, while Alonso was penalized for driving into Hamilton -- because Hamilton was weaving.

Either Hamilton defended his line appropriately and Alonso was too aggressive, or Hamilton was defending his position too aggressively and Alonso is blameless.

Can't have it both ways.
---
*= and why the hell is the press release detailing this not on the internet anywhere? All the sites I've checked just itemize the punishment without reprinting the text of the decision (which would be interesting to me, anyways) and the FIA site doesn't have it either.

Update: so OK now that I can actually find details of the penalties -- it looks like Hamilton and Alonso are being penalized for different incidents. Hamilton's transgression happened about two minutes before Alonso's:

The incident which caused Hamilton’s penalty was timed at 17.20 and the incident which caused Alonso’s penalty was timed at 17.22. Given the lap times involved one can say with some certainty that Hamilton’s penalty related to a move on lap 45, while Alonso’s penalty was linked to the collision on lap 46 that led him to pit at the end of the lap.

So the officials can have it both ways. Would have been nice if the text of the decisions had been actually available in a timely manner.

Rain Action

So we've now had two races with rain, and both of them yielded more action than the dry desert race we had before.

Australia featured a lot of action, with cars having more ability to pass each other. Malaysia seemed to be drying faster, and after the initial burst of activity we were left with a high-speed procession -- until mechanical failures happened.

While the track at Bahrain was not conducive to having a lot of passing, one would have hoped that a car which was a second faster than the one it was catching up to would be able to at least have a couple of good goes.

Australia had the tire change gamble that paid off for Button and not so much for the Red Bull cars or Hamilton. Behind the leaders there was quite a bit of action due to the still wet sectinos of the track. Malaysia seemed to dry more quickly and once everyone settled down there wasn't much action.

At this point people are predicting rain for China tomorrow, and while that might be good as far as action goes, it would be nice to see a dry race to see if the 2010 cars are actually any good at providing more than a high speed train.

Driver Stewards: Not Impressed So Far

So one of the new ideas for 2010 is that one of the stewards at an event will be a former driver. The idea is that this driver can bring balance to the stewards council and the stewards will therefore be seen to be more fair and balanced.

The Malasian GP of 2010 pretty much puts lie to that theory.

The stewards made themselves noticed twice during this event.

First, Lewis Hamilton was fighting for position with Dmitri Petrov's Renault. Hamilton got past into turn one, but went deep and Petrov went by on the inside. Second time past, Hamilton went back and forth and back and forth down the main straight, an action that a lesser man might construe as "weaving". Hamilton defends himself:

I wasn’t weaving for him, I was weaving to break the tow.

The stewards took a look at this behavior, and decided that while it wasn't weaving, it wasn't sportsmanlike behavior, and Hamilton was warned.

Warned!

Either it was weaving, or it wasn't. If it was, it deserves punishment. If it wasn't, then it doesn't deserve notice.

Now the problem from this is that drivers may get the idea that they can drive like that once and they will get away with a warning.

Consider this -- had it been Petrov's Renault doing the weaving trying to break the tow, no doubt McLaren would have been screaming bloody murder and Hamilton would have some words about how dangerous it was. And I don't doubt for a second that the stewards would come down hard on Petrov.

The second time the stewards got involved was at the end of the race when it was determined that eventual race-winner Vettel had passed a Lotus under waved yellow conditions during the race:

During Sunday's race, the 22-year-old passed Lotus' Jarno Trulli while yellow flags were waving, and a stewards report said Vettel "did breach ... the international sporting code".

Despite this determination, no penalty was assessed, because...

But the stewards, including former Grand Prix winner Johnny Herbert, said the Red Bull slowed down in the yellow flag area, and noted that Trulli at the time had "an obvious problem".

...the "obvious problem" being that he was recognizing the yellow flags.

We won't see this decision tested, because the driver home in second place was the other Red Bull and there wouldn't be anything to gain by Red Bull protesting their own driver's conduct. But had the Mercedes been home in second place that close to Vettel's car, I'm quite sure there would have been a protest.

Both of these "decisions" are reminiscent of the FIA's clown-court favoritism that results in popular, or championship-leading, drivers being held to one standard while the rest of the field is held to another. The only thing lacking from this weekend was a decision against a back-marker driver that was similarly marginal, defended by the paper equivalent of shrugging shoulders and a "well them's the rules, sorry" explanation.

Having the drivers on the stewards board was supposed to eliminate this type of circus.

I'm not impressed so far.

Nothing, Built on Nothing

Well after that afternoon swim that passed for a Formula One race this morning, there isn't much to say as far as Ferrari is concerned.

The car just obviously is not good enough under these conditions. No points from four starts is not a very good opening for the year and definitely puts Ferrari's quest for the Championships at very serious doubt.

With two races gone, it is too early to nail the coffin on the season, but the team has not even threatened yet this year, and strange tactical decisions (Massa in Australia, Raikkonen in Malaysia) don't seem to be doing any good.

This will be the test of the team. Can they turn it around and become competitive either on the track or in the hearing room?

In previous years, smaller and/or inexperienced teams may have had success early on in the year, but they find themselves unable to keep up with the development that the big teams can continue to do on the car. Brawn/Honda clearly has a huge advantage at this point, having written off 2008 very early in the year, and they are reaping the rewards of that effort now. But can they continue? And more to the point, will they excel next year, having both run a competitive season and had to develop their own car -- all without Honda's deep pockets?

Ferrari and McLaren both have deep pockets -- it will be interesting to see if they can run Brawn down.

But before we see any more action on the track, there's the small matter of the diffuser hearing next week.