Round 2 - Malaysia 2015 - Qualifying

Greetings Internet,

Well, after all the shouting and complaining since Australia - Saturday in Malaysia was a lot calmer they all set aside their differences and took to staring up into the sky. The grid was looking a little more populated with Manor actually being able to get the car running and onto the track so now everyone is here and accounted for - Bottas and Alonso have returned from medical leave. But what we gained in drivers and cars we seemed to lose in TV personnel, the camera crews for Q1 seemed to be on vacation - or just replaced by folk with slow motion cameras to pick up those all important rain images. 

Q1

Q1 started and it was little Max who was the firs to break the silence and take to

the circuit, you would think there would be greater sense of urgency involved considering that the menacing clouds was amassing on the horizon. But there was an almost lackadaisical stream of competitors venturing out onto the circuit. We were one car down however as Will Steven's Manor was still in the garage with an issue in the power unit. However Will had completed sufficient laps in free practice within the 107% time to be allowed on the grid. Frankly I have no idea what the other Manor was doing, because it appeared that the camera crew have no idea what the Manor cars looked like and didn't bother showing what Roberto Mehri was up to - unless he was running wide on the exit through turn four. 

In fact the camera team was useless in Q1, we saw one shot of a Sauber on plodding around but that was about it, it might have something to do with the race sponsor being Mercedes' title sponsor and thus the silver cars took up 90% of the coverage. Not that it would normally be a problem, just a mere annoyance, because the timing and graphics would keep you up speed with who was doing what, and what time they were doing it in... But those were broken too - it was all going a bit wrong - so while we could sit and watch a bunch of cars circulating round we had no idea what was actually happening. So what was the solution - the powers that be took to pointing the cameras at the clouds to watch the lightening strike the hills instead... while that is all fancy and artistic it didn't really help. They even played a slow motion replay of Alonso's onboard camera because it caught another lightning strike behind turn 7.

During the brief flickers of on screen data we saw that Mercedes were naturally out front but the magin back to Ferrari was a little smaller than it was in Australia. Carlos Sainz had dragged the Toro Rosso up into fourth place, which is particularly impressive and another indication that the issues that Red Bull are facing are not really just Renault's fault. At the bottom end of the time sheets, in and around the relegation zone - which the graphics people didn't colour in correctly anyway - it was McLaren and Manor locking out the back two rows. For a while it seemed as if Lotus would be contributing one of their drivers to the relegation zone but a late charge both Maldonado and Grosjean made ground relegating Felipe Nasr into the final relegation zone. On the same lap Jenson Button also outpaced Alonso in the slightly irrelevant McLaren intra-team battle.

Q2

The second phase of qualifying started with a train of cars at the end of the pit-

lane... because the rain was immanent, and that rain was big and angry. This lead to an argument over track posision in the pit lane as everyone scrambled to be at the front of the queue. In the end it was Sebastian Vettel who lead from Rosberg at the front of the line, the rest of the field were trapped behind Marcus Ericsson's Sauber - which as we know had enough straight line speed to fend off the attentions of the cars behind. We also saw one of the Lotus' cars and one of the Toro Rossos duelling under braking for turn nine. 

There was one lap, and one lap only in order to determine who makes it through to the final part of qualifying - and that was going to be influenced by the on track order. Of course the graphics were still being a little crap, ok - a lot crap. Rosberg set the fastest time, because he has a Mercedes and that makes all the difference. Vettel was second because he had free track. Hamilton was very close to not qualifying because he and Raikkonen were stuck behind Ericsson. The Sauber driver did make it into the top ten, while the Ferrari didn't. Raikkonen ended up 11th, relegated along with the Force India's, Sainz and Maldonado. 

Then the rain came in all of its traditional Malaysian glory drowning the circuit as is often the case in the tropics, so cue the artistic shots of slow motion rain and local wildlife splashing around in the puddles. But hearing the ominous rumbles of thunder over the F1 engines is simply awesome...

Q3

The final part of qualifying took a while to get underway because of the standing water and rivers flowing across the circuit - but as usual the powers that be are irritatingly cautious. What is the point in developing and transporting crates of wet weather tyres if as soon as the situation requires them it is declared unsafe... 

Williams elected to start the session on the wet compound, only to find they were woefully slower than the intermediates used by the other teams - Hamilton's initial lap was over a second faster than anyone else, leading the charge for everyone else was a certain Mr Rosberg - the nearest non-Mercedes was a country mile off the pace. But this was early days in the session and as the track dried the pack was going to rapidly increase allowing everyone to catch up. Both Massa and Bottas retired to the pits, after realising that the wet tyres were not the most appropriate option.

Then things went a little odd, because Rosberg inexplicably seemed to abort his lap for no apparent reason, allowing Massa to pass when the Brazilian had just left the pits. Rosberg then slowed to let Hamilton past but stayed on the racing line in the process. Once the German stopped for some new intermediates he couldn't really match the pace of his team-mate. The real surprise was Sebastian Vettel, who was in a position to attack Hamilton for pole - and considering the only time Mercedes have lost pole position in the last season was Austria - this was a surprise. A strong opening sector put the German bloke ahead but by the end o the lap he was 0.074s down. Which did mean some kind of on screen graphics had been restored. Rosberg tried to pull something together for his final effort but couldn't beat Hamilton, or Vettel demoting him to third alongside Ricciardo on the second row. Little Max lines up behind Daniil Kvyat on row three, and we did see the Russian smiling in the Red Bull garage which is rather compromising the iconic 'death stare' image.

The Bonus Points Championship Points Winners

Even though some of qualifying was curtailed slightly by the inclement conditions and the lightning, and although FOM decided it was a nice idea not to tell us anything regarding lap times and positions in a session specifically engineered for lap times and position... points do have to be awarded.

10pts - Manor - It's alive the car works and the team have qualified with both cars and deserve maximum points today
8pts - Sebastian Vettel - A mere fraction of a second from putting a Ferrari on pole in a world of Mercedes domination
6pts - Carlos Sainz - In the only dry session the rookie put the car up into 4th place in Q1, not that the time information wanted to show us of course
5pts - Marcus Ericsson - From trailing around in last place to sitting inside the top ten is a remarkable achievement... even if Q2 was a bit of a fluke 
4pts - Max Verstappen - Despite being a toddler the little nipper is right up there behind the factory Red Bull cars 
3pts - Daniel Ricciardo - 4th place eh... that Renault engine must be utterly useless - now tell Horner and Cyril to hug and make up again
2pts - Lewis Hamilton - Setting the pole lap when the track was at the wettest point of the session takes some doing...
1pt - Mercedes (not the race team) - I can appreciate the new soundscape of F1, but the note on that safety car is a happy sound...

-3pts - FOM World Feed - It was poor today, cameras pointing at the garages when everyone was on track, losing all the graphics and timing information it was just a mess. Perhaps the storm affected telemetry and it did cut the feed from time to time, but when it was all online the results were still poor
-2pts - Red Bull - Stop whining, that is all
-2pts - Bernie - The mad things Alan Gow does with the BTCC are not good ideas for F1, reverse grids based on qualifying...

Looking To Tommorow

With an earlier start time than previous years the organisers hope to miss the bulk of the rainfall - and certainly avoid the storms we saw today. But even then, the rain in qualifying was a short but extremely intense shower, the track was back to intermediates within half an hour. But because of the rain today we have an interesting grid for tomorrow, there are cars out of position which can often promote fun things on a Sunday morning. Due to Vettel's pace we know the Ferrari is very fast, and that means Kimi's recovery drive will be worth a watch. We also have Nasr and Sainz further down the field than they'd want to be. If Nasr's GP2 driving style is anything to go by, that too could be quite entertaining.

But we can't ignore the fact that Mercedes should just pull away - Vettel's row two start might be more of an anomaly than a sign of a Mercedes/Ferrari fight for a win. Unless of course we do see some typical Malaysian rainfall... which is always an option even with an earlier start time.