2007 Petronas Malaysian Grand Prix Weekend

The 2007 Malaysian grand prix achieved to produce a battle of tactics and skill from the very first corner, as McLaren drove to a 1-2 finish, ahead of both Ferrari’s. Kimi Raikkonen came 3rd, after putting the pressure on Hamilton in the closing stages. Massa lost out on his pole position advantage being occupied with Alonso’s manouvre into turn 1 and then also allowed Hamilton to sneak through for 2nd position. Kimi kept his position for the following laps while Massa desperatly tried to claim back Hamiltons position, and he ended up braking too late into turn 4 and went off track, falling back to 6th place. Kimi was able to take 3rd position and Alonso increased his lead gap mainly thanks to Hamilton keeping the two Ferrari’s at bay.

The rest fell into pit stop tactics, and Alonso pitted first after radio communication problems caused him to enter following a pit-board command, and Hamilton fuelled a short stint to keep up with his teammate. The Ferrari’s fuelled heavier than both McLaren’s but were caught up in traffic to McLaren’s advantage, being 20 seconds behind. Massa con tinued to be stuck behind the BMW of Heidfeld as Kimi remained the shadow of Hamilton’s McLaren. Thankfully, Kimi’s engine didn’t suffer any problem in the double heat of Sepang and the dirty air of the car infront. Kimi steadily paced his way through the race, until Hamilton lost pace in his car after the last pit-stops and Kimi clawed back into the timesheets, edging out Hamilton in each sector. However, due to this amount of pressure, the rookie claimed the fastest lap of the race, a spectacular performance and what was the hardest race for him yet. Kimi had only 4 laps to try to launch an assault upon Hamilton but it wasn’t enough, as he hasn’t been comfortable with his car all weekend. Good job by Kimi though, well done to him! McLaren have taken the lead of the driver’s championship with Alonso by 2 points ahead of Raikkonen, and are 9 points ahead of Ferrari in the Constructors.

My personal comments: It seems Kimi has a fight on his hands this year, but will he come out on top this time? I hope so, he deserves the break! And its not like he is not capable of defending his own line and going super fast when he needs to. Anyway, I’m quite happy for McLaren, Lewis and Alonso did a fantastic job!
They absolutely capitalised on the first corner and the typical noobish
racing of Massa (sorry, but I expected he will struggle). Kimi did good
(thumbs up darlin’!), he hanged in there and when there was a chance to
catch Lewis he gave his best but there wasn’t enough time to even cut down the
gap, his Ferrari didn’t have the speed. Lewis was just brilliant, and also setting the fastest lap after
all the pressure. I hope Ferrari realise they need to be keeping the
Finnish guy in front of the grid after today’s example. He has lost the title lead
which was expected but it shouldn’t have happened that badly on Massa’s
behalf. That kid has some serious thinking to do, he got beaten by his
teammate again and even more, by a driver participating in only his second F1 race.
This is the raw speed and talent and racer’s instinct that makes all the difference in these situations. I saw it in Kimi in 2001 and only a few current F1 drivers have this. Ferrari must benefit from Kimi as much as they can now.

I was getting annoyed at how frustrating it was watching the cars
just following each other, I was thinking "it can’t be that flipping hard
to overtake!!?" but really, after watching carefully and every step of
the drivers, it IS hard. Don’t blame them, pity of how the cars and the
F1 system currently works, not to mention the poor coverage of the race from the Malaysian race director, whoever it was.

I don’t doubt a few million of us F1 fans did
think at one point "Michael would have owned these lot". Then, his Fiat
advert came on and I did feel sad. He really wouldn’t have let that
happen on pole. Anyway, you win some, you lose some. Ferrari shouldn’t
feel bad about it because Michael and Ross weren’t there. There is
still a team there and they didn’t work it out, tough. They’ll be back
to working hard for Bahrain next weekend.
But this was so typical of McLaren, I enjoyed this win of theirs,
its special (they are my favourite team). Despite them complaining about the floor board issue and
then saying if it hampers anyones performance its their problem, they
benefited from it as well as working hard. ‘Tis Formula One and McLaren
know how to play it just as race it. Haug must be well chuffed, his
engines did a great job.

Kimi did lose out because of having to adhere to reliability rather than speed today, but chin up lad!. Keep Flying Kimi.

Video:

Full post-race press conference: Click here to start download…

Kimi’s comments of the race: We needed to compromise something," said Raikkonen of the engine.
"It was not an ideal start to the weekend, we wanted to be on pole
position but we couldn’t. It is still early in the season and we are in
a good position. It is going to be close fighting in the next races but
that is F1.

"I think we knew the engine wasn’t 100 percent, so we had to be on
safe side, and there were things that were not perfect so we could not
risk to do anything stupid. Hopefully next race we can get the car working 100 percent again like in the first race."

Comments from Kimi’s team: Q. Did you give Kimi full revs in the last lap to catch Hamilton?

Luca Baldisserri: We had seen Hamilton struggling a bit, especially at the
beginning of the last stint, and we asked Kimi to try to attack him but
at the end of the day, we knew that, as Jean said before, this engine
we compromised and we closed to him but it was not enough.

Ex-Ferrari tactician Ross Brawn to Honda? When asked by autosport.com, Nick Fry refused to confirm that
talks were going on, but he fell short of denying it. He said: "I’ve
got no comment to make on that."

However, Fry did later admit that the addition of a leading technical figure like Brawn would be a huge boost to his team.

"I think every team would benefit from Ross Brawn," he said.
"Whether it be us or others, but I am sure Ross has some sort of
arrangement with Ferrari, so we will see."

Pos  Driver        Team                      Time
 1.  Alonso        McLaren-Mercedes     (B)  1h32:14.930
 2.  Hamilton      McLaren-Mercedes     (B)  +    17.557
 3.  Raikkonen     Ferrari              (B)  +    18.339
 4.  Heidfeld      BMW Sauber           (B)  +    33.777
 5.  Massa         Ferrari              (B)  +    36.705
 6.  Fisichella    Renault              (B)  +  1:05.638
 7.  Trulli        Toyota               (B)  +  1:10.132
 8.  Kovalainen    Renault              (B)  +  1:12.015
 9.  Wurz          Williams-Toyota      (B)  +  1:29.924
10.  Webber        Red Bull-Renault     (B)  +  1:33.556
11.  Barrichello   Honda                (B)  +     1 lap
12.  Button        Honda                (B)  +     1 lap
13.  Sato          Super Aguri-Honda    (B)  +     1 lap
14.  Speed         Toro Rosso-Ferrari   (B)  +     1 lap
15.  R.Schumacher  Toyota               (B)  +     1 lap
16.  Davidson      Super Aguri-Honda    (B)  +     1 lap
17.  Liuzzi        Toro Rosso-Ferrari   (B)  +     1 lap
18.  Kubica        BMW Sauber           (B)  +     1 lap

Fastest lap: Hamilton, 1:36.701

---

Saturday, Qualifying

< Kimi in the top 3!

Coming into Sepang after brilliant dominance with Ferrari in Melbourne, Kimi faced a few challenges on all sides this time. Keeping a steady pace through qualifying sessions 1 and 2, the Ferrari’s were caught up by McLaren Mercedes who look to have improved their qualifying pace so far. As well with the Silver Arrows, Kimi had his teammate to keep in check as Massa looked strong since Friday practise and continued to do so throughout all qualifying sessions. BMW were not as upfront as they were 3 weeks ago, perhaps lacking the pure mechanical grip for the sweeping curves of Sepang. The McLarens were quick to get their laps done and infront of their rivals, as rain was evaluated to be arriving during mid part of qualifying 2, Alonso being the experienced driver to take advantage of this from his teammate Hamilton, who eased off cautiously to avoid any slippery mistakes. Kimi, though, kept up with it and seemed consistant enough to challenge for the top 3, having a car not as great as it was in Melbourne. Keeping in mind the searing heat on Malaysia, going fastest too early in qualifying was not Ferrari’s priority, but clearly McLaren’s who aimed to flash their shiny cars in the eyes of the Ferrari drivers.

When the time came for the pole position shoot out, the soft tyres were smacked on though Lewis and Kimi kept ther harder compounds. Kimi was infront of the rest to put in his lap, only one of which everyone had enough time for. Kimi closed the gap to Alonso by a hundreth of a second on each sector, Alonso consistantly cut back in however and despite Kimi taking the fastest first sector time, Massa was on a flyer. It was a close finish! I’m looking forward to quite a ‘desperate’ start in tomorrows race between the Ferrari’s and McLaren’s. Can Kimi catch Alonso in the first lap? Don’t miss it, 8am GMT. Keep Flying Kimi.

Pos.	Driver	Team	Time
1	F. Massa	Ferrari	1:35.043
2	F. Alonso	McLaren	1:35.310
3	K. Räikkönen	Ferrari	1:35.479
4	L. Hamilton	McLaren	1:36.045
5	N. Heidfeld	BMW	1:36.543
6	N. Rosberg	Williams	1:36.829
7	R. Kubica	BMW	1:36.896
8	J. Trulli	Toyota	1:36.902
9	R. Schumacher	Toyota	1:37.078
10	M. Webber	Red Bull	1:37.345
11	H. Kovalainen	Renault	1:35.630
12	G. Fisichella	Renault	1:35.706
13	D. Coulthard	Red Bull	1:35.766
14	T. Sato	Super Aguri	1:35.945
15	J. Button	Honda	1:36.088
16	V. Liuzzi	Scuderia Toro Rosso	1:36.145
17	S. Speed	Scuderia Toro Rosso	1:36.578
18	A. Davidson	Super Aguri	1:36.816
19	R. Barrichello	Honda	1:36.827
20	A. Wurz	Williams	1:37.326
21	C. Albers	Spyker F1	1:38.279
22	A. Sutil	Spyker F1	1:38.415

Kimi’s Comments:

Q. A lot of the drivers are talking about changing conditions and how difficult it is for you to get the cars set up for the Sepang circuit. Can you talk a little bit about that?

KR: The conditions when I tested were a bit different. The car was good but it only needs a little change on the surface and it can be much more difficult. It has been slightly hard but anyhow we are in a good position for the race which is the main thing and we will see what happens tomorrow.

Q. Kimi, you weren’t happy with the set-up yesterday; were you happier today, even though you didn’t do that many laps this morning?

KR: Yeah, we needed to be a little bit on the safe side with the engine. It didn’t help but I think the car is better now than it was yesterday, still a bit difficult for one lap but I think third place is a good start place for the race so I think we can expect to have a good race.

Q. What about the heat out there?

KR: It’s hot but it’s the same for everybody, it’s pretty normal.

Q. Doesn’t affect you badly?

KR: You’re sweating more but I always sweat a lot so it doesn’t affect my driving. I think the race is going to be hard anyway, but I think it will be OK.

(Kimi Raikkonen Space)