 Fernando Alonso scored his first victory for
McLaren with a consummate drive at Sepang on Sunday, while Lewis
Hamilton once again provided the fireworks en route to a brilliant
runner-up finish.
Ferrari had to make do with third and
fifth places for Raikkonen and Felipe Massa – a meagre payback from a
race it had been expected to dominate...
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McLaren's dynamic new driver pairing
delivered its first 1-2 since September 2005 and its first race win
since Kimi Raikkonen’s memorable triumph in Japan that year.
Alonso seized the lead at the start and was never seriously
challenged, his only concern being a malfunctioning radio which made
communication with the team on the pit wall difficult.
The win thrust the double world champion into an early lead in the
2007 title chase, as the Spaniard confounded expectations by outpacing
the Ferraris throughout.
Hamilton, meanwhile, showed the same blend of speed, flair and
composure that had been evident on his debut in Australia – pulling off
a superbly opportunistic double pass at the start and withstanding
fierce pressure from both Ferraris at different stages of the race.
Splitting the Ferraris was BMW Sauber’s Nick
Heidfeld, the underrated German again driving beautifully to extract
the maximum from the competitive F1.07 package.
Alonso outbraked polesitter Massa into the first corner, and as he did so Hamilton completed a carbon-copy move on Raikkonen.
Not content with that, Lewis displayed the same audacity he had in
Melbourne and – calm as you like – drove around the outside of Massa in
the next hairpin.
So in the space of the first few seconds, the McLarens had grabbed
the top two places and the Ferraris found themselves bundled back to
third and fourth.
Alonso immediately put some distance between himself and Hamilton, who soon had Massa looming large in his mirrors.
The Brazilian made a number of passing attempts, all expertly
rebuffed by Hamilton – although it was knife-edge stuff as the rookie
needed his razor-sharp reflexes to hang on to his tail-happy McLaren.
On one of these occasions, on lap four, Felipe made a bid down the
inside of turn four but slipped sideways at the apex, allowing Hamilton
to repass him on the exit.
Two laps later, the increasingly frustrated Brazilian made a
concerted bid at the same corner – and this time badly misjudged his
braking move on the dusty inside line and slid across the grass.
By the time he gathered it together again, Hamilton was long gone and Heidfeld had also nipped past.
While all this commotion was going on Alonso had made his escape, and had 7.5s in hand after the first half-dozen laps.
He steadily added to that cushion over the remainder of the opening
stint, and it had swollen to more than 15s by the time he made his
first pit stop on lap 18.
Having suckered one Ferrari driver into a mistake, Hamilton kept the
other at bay throughout the first stint, and by virtue of a later first
stop than Alonso, assumed the lead for the second race running.
McLaren put Lewis on a short middle stint to enable him to pull out a gap over Raikkonen, and the ploy worked to perfection.
In fact, together with a front wing adjustment at the pit stop, it
transformed the handling of Hamilton’s car and he began to take chunks
out of Alonso’s hitherto luxurious lead.
As it turned out, the Spaniard was never in real jeopardy since Hamilton was due to pit several laps earlier than him.
But in the meantime Hamilton was on a tear, posting the fastest lap
of the race on lap 22 and closing to within 7.5s before beginning the
second flurry of pit stops on lap 39.
By this stage Raikkonen had fallen some 20s adrift of the leader,
having been stuck behind the late-stopping Renault of Giancarlo
Fisichella for several laps after his own stop.
Massa, meanwhile, had spent the entire middle stint behind Heidfeld’s BMW and unable to do anything about it.
Alonso’s final pit stop went off without a hitch and he continued
unchallenged to the chequered flag – although he didn’t let up his pace
and padded his margin over Hamilton out to more than 17s.
Lewis, in fact, was back in defensive mode as the handling of his
McLaren appeared to have lost its fine edge on the hard-compound tyres
and he battled dehydration in the cockpit.
But despite heavy pressure from a fast-closing Raikkonen, Hamilton
showed no signs of cracking and withstood the Finn’s late foray to hold
on for second place.
Massa’s spirit seemed to have been broken by his early-race error and Heidfeld ultimately took the flag some 3s ahead of him.
World champions Renault salvaged a few points from a disappointing
weekend, Fisichella finishing a distant sixth ahead of fellow Italian
Jarno Trulli who opened his account for the season for Toyota.
Heikki Kovalainen completed his morale-boosting weekend, erasing the
bad memories of Melbourne by taking the first point of his young F1
career in the second Renault.
The Finn benefited from misfortune that struck his old GP2 rival
Nico Rosberg, whose Williams expired just 13 laps from home while lying
a strong sixth.
Malaysian Grand Prix, Sepang, unofficial result (56 laps)
1. ALONSO Mclaren 56 laps
2. HAMILTON McLaren +17.5s
3. RAIKKONEN Ferrari +18.3s
4. HEIDFELD BMW +33.7s
5. MASSA Ferrari +36.7s
6. FISICHELLA Renault +1m05.6s
7. TRULLI Toyota +1m10.1s
8. KOVALAINEN Renault +1m12.0s
9. WURZ Williams +1m29.9s
10. WEBBER Red Bull +1m33.5s
11. BARRICHELLO Honda +1 lap
12. BUTTON Honda +1 lap
13. SATO Super Aguri +1 lap
14. SPEED Toro Rosso +1 lap
15. R SCHUMACHER Toyota +1 lap
16. DAVIDSON Super Aguri +1 lap
17. LIUZZI Toro Rosso +1 lap
18. KUBICA BMW +1 lap
R. ROSBERG Williams +14 laps
R. COULTHARD Red Bull +20 laps
R. SUTIL Spyker +49 laps
R. ALBERS Spyker +56 laps
source: itv-f1.com
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