Some of you might have noticed that it is indeed Friday, that part of the week where everyone forgets that they have jobs to do and spend the entire day being lazy - and in certain unfathomable circles is concluded with a confusing amount of alcoholic beverages. It is widely accepted that Friday is one of the few days of the week many humans have developed a tolerance for. However a Friday is also the day after this particular publication should have been released... because somehow I actually managed to forget there is a GP this weekend. In fact this weekend is one of the most hectic racing weekends of this part of the year as BTCC and Indycar have their opening races along with the V8 Supercars competing in Tasmania. How all of that managed to escape my cranium makes no sense whatsoever, but many, many other things have been performing the same disappearing act recently.
Anyway, back with the program, and the grid has arrived in the tropical environment of Malaysia still feuding about some niggling little complaints that arose in Melbourne. Several people have jumped on the 'F1 is too quiet' bandwagon including a certain Mr Vettel - yet I assume that his car is quiet because it doesn't work... Red Bull are set to protest the fuel flow rate infraction which cost Ricciardo a home race podium by challenging the FIA. It does seem that since Red Bull have fallen off their all dominant plinth they've lost the plot slightly - Red Bull overlord Dietrich even threatened to withdraw support if the sound didn't improve. Of course this is all just ludicrous nonsense geared to score some big headlines, even Bernie now is retracting some of his criticism of the engine note. Here at Blog HQ I don't see why everyone is complaining - the cars are fast enough, and go sideways a lot now, but we get to hear exactly what's going on - how is that a bad thing. Lotus for one would be glad to hear an engine running in the present climate - because neither of theirs has for any prolonged period of time. Even after FP1 and FP2 this morning neither Lotus car has completed a continuous race distance - in the tropical humidity that is going to be a bigger challenge this race.
The Venue
Sepang arrived on the calendar towards the end of 1999 season and was the scene of more controversy when Ferrari were excluded for barge-board illegalities (but being Ferrari they were re-instated) later on. It does carry the stigma of being a Tilke designed track as one of his first contributions to the landscape of F1 we have come to know and despise. It is a track of contrasts, some of it is well designed and flows well from corner to corner - while other elements look like he ran of scalextric pieces and the two edges of the track didn't quite meet up. Just like so many of his other designs it appears that the facilities for the hospitality and sponsors (the people with the money) were prioritized above all else. Although in Sepang that attention to detail is less pronounced but no less present - just built to 1999 levels of design and architecture, so there was some room in the budget to actually work on the track... Unlike what seems to have taken place in Abu-Dhabi.
The first noticeable characteristic is that the track is massively wide, which I think was an initial plan to improve overtaking but has only resulted in being a template for all hyper-modern venues to follow. In places it dwarfs the cars, especially on the two main straights. With all this space and evidently money, how did the first two corners end up so mangled and compact - I don't mind slow corners at the start of the lap - but having two increasingly tighter hairpins it taking that concept too far. I can only assume it was one of those designs that looked nice and arty on paper and impressed some rich investors, but out in the real world is a horrific miscarriage of track engineering. If the whole track looked like this it would be a broken twisted abomination. Fortunately it isn't...
Outside of the hideous opening complex the track opens up nicely, a gentle descent through turn three feeds into an uphill entry to a DRS free overtaking spot in turn four. This opens out into a couple of high speed sweepers - which in these new cars I am hoping are far more of a challenge than they used to be - Max Chilton had a slight spin here in FP2, but that's no real yardstick of downforce and drive ability really. The next two corners however saw Fernando pointing the car in the wrong direction in FP1, the formerly easy double apex corner has become more noteworthy now some of the rear wing is banned. At which point we conclude the really fun part of the track.
The final sector, initiated by a slow uphill hairpin introduced us to another Tilke favorite of the time, one which never really caught on thankfully. The decreasing radius corner, which tightens the further round the corner you are - a nightmare for cars with an understeering setup problem as it is rather easy to run wide. At least there is some grass on the outside to run onto instead of those health and safety tarmac wastelands (although I see they have started to infect turn 8 with such a curse). The last of these decreasing radius corners is coupled with a high entry speed just make it more annoying (but at least they are not as bad as the ones in the latest upgrade of the Fuji circuit...). It gets rather simple after that with two long straights split by a 180-ish degree corner to end the lap - it almost makes me wonder whether Tilke knew about the coming plague of DRS by putting these long straights in from the very beginning - Malaysia,China, Bahrain and Istanbul all had them and all were devised before DRS was introduced... it is all very odd.
The Form Guide
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| More monsoons in Malaysia? |
Because so many teams are closer to the front running pace, the mid-field seems more thinned out - like we saw in Australia - Sauber appear to be battling with Lotus (In the fractions of time their cars are running for) all by themselves. Force India and Toro Rosso have vanished off ahead and the financial rift in F1 has well and truly opened up. The two teams who were honest about their money troubles are the ones struggling to keep ahead of Caterham and Marussia. The only car that upset those rankings last race was Perez, running down the field while Hulkenberg was scoring points - admittedly the Mexican was hit by fellow countryman on the opening lap in Melbourne. So when Sergio moves forward as well the is central group gets even less populous.
Then we have the two bottom teams, in this new era of F1 it is a chance for these cars to get forward and steal points when others retire... It hasn't quite worked so well only one of the cars finished in Australia - which obviously was Chilton - his finishing record is about as bizarre as Kvyat's death stare. So unless they can cure some reliability woes those points seem as far fetched as they have always been - and you'd think given how conservative Caterham had gone on cooling they'd have finished. Anyway Malaysia is a very different test in very different conditions (although the same tropical monsoons that have affected the search for flight MH-370 may dampen proceedings once more)
The Malaysian GP is never the most memorable event on the calendar - except for that washed out race in 2009 which introduced the world to Kimi's love of ice-cream and Bermuda shorts in the pouring rain. So much so that I managed to forget it was on this week, but the cars are different and have found challenges that didn't exist before. Challenges that can make a track like the Sepang circuit be as difficult as it was originally designed to be before downforce ironed it all out. It is going to be another intriguing weekend and another voyage into the unknown - but for out an out entertainment and action, make sure to catch the BTCC session from Brands Hatch, that promises to be spectacular.
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