What was your thoughts on the 2015 Petronas Malaysian Grand Prix? Please use the comments section to let us know why you voted the way you did?
thejudge13
F1: Daily International News roundup, inside whispers and insight together with thoughts and opinion
10 from me – this race had everything! 🙂
Rain? Nope. I rated it an 8. Decent race.
I will give you most exciting this year so far. I will not jump to 10 only because there was not any intense on track battles at the front. I enjoyed the strategies, and the midfield did battle, but the battle for P1 was lost by strategy not on track.
Only just woken up, but I look to have missed most of a rather good one.
For once, I won’t mind the Vettel finger if it appears.
Did Merc blunder tactically, or was the Ferrari genuinely quicker ?
Whichever it was, the season is starting to look rather more interesting.
(Slept through the alarm, dammit.)
I’d say the blundered tactically. Pitting behind the SC after 4 laps was the deciding factor. The winning margin was the difference Seb built up after the SC.
But take nothing away from Seb and Ferrari, they earned that victory.
I thought Hamilton fell apart in the later stages of the race. He was desperate, unsure of himself, and panicky. Nico was pathetic. Mercedes was awful.
Both, really. Merc was chewing through the tires, while Allison’s Ferrari was walking on water. Whereas Merc’s gamble to pit at SC backfired as they lost time through traffic, while Ferrari’s gamble to stay out payed out having kept in clean air.
In any case Merc’s stratospheric dominance seemed rather mundane today. Having said that, it seems to me that Ferrari can challenge Merc this way only on very high-degradation circuits, like Sepang.
That option tyre from Q1 yesterday was key as well. Seb saved himself one and was able to use that today. But you may be right about high-deg circuits, we will have to wait and see.
Exactly my thoughts. This was very similar to kimi’s win in Australia couple of years ago achieved by light tyre wear.
And… surprise, surprise… in a car designed by Allison… 🙂
My thoughts exactly.. He knows his onions this one
Oh noez, Seb can only win in Allison cars 😉
@FH
Pft, even Kimi can win in Allison cars… 😉
Gave that a 10…
Was nail biting from start to finish. Congrats to Seb (the hippo is very happy animal today).
Oh Fernando, what must he be thinking right now?
I would say Merc blew it when the pitted for the hard tire during the safety car. It was an interesting race, I gave it an 8.
Very happy for ferrari. Mercedes have cocked it up big time. Thought they should never have stopped behind the safety car.
Q1 yesterday also played a factor. Seb got through on the hard tyres, whilst they did theirs on the option and it was that new set of options Seb used to his full advantage on his first stop.
While that is a fact I guess doing 4 laps on first stop was criminal. Further Lewis’s third stint was also short. In short Mercedes’s complacency cost them the victory.
The SC call was wrong, but I’m not sure they could’ve pulled off a two-stop, and certainly not a med-med-hard two-stop. Med-med-med-hard might have worked, but they needed to save the options yesterday. As someone said, this loss was built on a bit of complacency and an overly conservative pitwall call from Mercedes.
Certainly not stopped both cars. Interesting that Nico even seemed to have Lewis on pace, only poor luck with being behind when stacked in the pits – and his usual inability to cut through traffic stopped him having a decent crack at second.
Merc used to have a bad reputation for tyre wear back when Schumi drove for them – I wonder if it might be coming back to haunt them?
The race also demonstrated how poor the Honda power plant is – Jenson fairly easily passed a few cars but lost out straight away as they could just breeze back past him.
Ferrari were the only team that didn’t suffer tyre deg today. And given Brundle’s comment that the deg wasn’t to do with the tyre surface breaking apart, but rather to do within the compound. So I wouldn’t go as far as that assumption.
Maybe, but even then Seb seemed to have legs on the Mercs or at least be able to keep them honest. All it will need is a few more circuits where he can eeke out one less stop and we may well see him second in the championship by the end. It was impressive how quickly Kimi caught up and finished ahead of the Williams despite many problems so the Ferrari is very much second best car in the field at the moment.
“The race also demonstrated how poor the Honda power plant is – Jenson fairly easily passed a few cars but lost out straight away as they could just breeze back past him.”
Exactly! One thing that astonished me was how Jense (think battling with a FI, maybe Perez) managed to get close and overtake a car through the twisting and chassis-dependent T10-13, then with DRS only barely managing to stay in front on the back straight, then without DRS being a sitting duck on the main straight, then thanks the McLaren chassis re-emerging in front after the T1-T3 complex.
The chassis really seems very good…
I’ve never been a big fan of Vettel, not a hater either, but today wasnt that a great finger leading the Italian national anthem in podium. Just beautiful, giving us hope for the season not being a borefest.
8 from me.A vast improvement on the tedious aussie gp a few weeks back.
Best race of the season. Hahaha
9 never a dull moment.
So it seems Seb sneaked into the MB debrief after all. Kudos…
Did anyone clock that Kvyat was waved passed Danny Ric, twice! RedBull don’t like it wen they have a driver more popular than the team do they. They shafted Seb last year, now Danny Ric, plus they are now totally stand alone in the crying about equalization.James Alison summed it up I think with his comments to skyF1 about if you work hard enough, for long enough, you eventually reap the rewards. Maybe there is a message for RedBull there.
Shame for McLaren, let’s hope Honda continue to work very very hard and don’t go all RedBull on us.
“RedBull don’t like it wen they have a driver more popular than the team do they. They shafted Seb last year, now Danny Ric”
Oh really? 🙂 Is that the reason Vettel was kept under the spotlight for four straight years, in front of poor old dog Webber?
Could be that the tires this year have swung slightly towards Seb and Kimi, and away from Dan and Lewis. Small changes can cause big differences.
Or we could say missing out on FP1 and most of FP2 didn’t give him enough time to properly setup his car.
After FP2, he said that he was using the settings from Australia and I doubt there was enough time to do so in FP3
No that was because vettel is better than webber ever was.
They are clipping his wings before he gets a chance to really fly. Everyone likes Danny Ric, he is a likeable character, much easier to like than RedBull itself, they know from muti21 that is you blow too much smoke up just one of your drivers ass for long enough, he starts to believe he is the chosen one and starts to act accordingly.
Great race and I hope Ferrari will be able to take to the fight to Mercedes for the rest of the season. Young Max Verstappen was also very impressive as was Vettel.
In way this weekend’s race also reminded me of last years Bahrain race. Last year Montezemelo was complaining about Mercedes dominance and that the hybrids were not F1, making taxi drivers out of F1 drivers, etc. and at the earliest possibility F1 proves him wrong. In the running up to the Malaysia race Horner and Marko were complaining that the F1 show was not good and Mercedes too dominant and at the first possible occasion F1 proves them wrong 😀 lol
Seven from me. I was originally tempted to hit above that but in the end, the result was set for the last 10-15laps – even though that was a result that brought much happiness to this lounge. I’ve given myself some space for when we see the bright red racing within 2sec of the silver arrows on the last laps.
Just had to double-check that something hadn’t happened as Classic FM have just reported that Lewis won today…. Mind you as they always have a habit of blurting out the result without warning….
10 for me! Felt the #F1 season finally started. This race had a little bit of everything!