Malaysia driver of the race

[AndyL]

Pretty tough question this week I think! Hard to pick anyone who was beyond reproach today. Bianchi maybe :)

[N4D13]

Grosjean? Well, I don't really know if he did anything special, but he didn't bin it, which is a good start.

Rosberg should also have an honourable mention. Webber should also get an award for not punching Seb before the podium.

[Koz]

No one stands out.

I'll go for Bianchi, too.

[henners88]

Webber without doubt for me.

[ShiftingGears]

Webber was on fire.

Edit: As was Rosberg.

[steveaki13]

I dont know how anyone can look past Mark Webber. He had a good start, brilliant drive and won the race in may ways. If he had been pitted first and had not turned the engine down he would have won.

Other mentions.

Bianchi - A 13th already and once more decent pace.

[donKey jote]

Hulk, Nico and Webber

[rjbetty]

I was going to decline choosing Webber as I saw it as he'd still been beaten by a superior Vettel, much as it pains me to say it.

But then I remember the little cheater turned his fuel up while Mark was lulled into a false sense of team order security.

Yep, Grosjean put in a pretty strong drive while Kimi was the one going off and making contact. Maybe they swapped cars and helmets today and no-one noticed.

Bottas for almost getting a point despite my mocking of his chances over on FGP.

Rosberg for not being destroyed by Hamilton, and for not being a little rat about the orders, despite being justifiably unhappy.

Jules Bianchi; ended up 13th(!) well ahead of the other 3, despite being held up by them early on.

Button did well until that pit stop.

Force India for continuing to increase in competitiveness each and every year since 2008. Amazing really since every year, people say they've reached their performance ceiling and yet they just find more.

[AndyL]

On reflection I'm going for Nico. Accepting the team orders was probably the smart move. And being faster than Lewis Hamilton in the same car for most of the race is pretty impressive.

[A FONDO]

Gotta be Bieber for ignoring team orders. Despite I dislike him, this is what I want to see more often.

Mark did a strong (for his standards) performance - especially at the launch.

Good impression from Hulk, solid drive and tough battle with Kimi.

[Garry Walker]

Rosberg. Unlike the guy from the same country, he is a man.

[pino]

Webber followed by Nico !

[Ranger]

Webber, Rosberg.

[henners88]

Yeah full credit to Nico too. He was robbed a bit and its down to Lewis to up his game in the next few weeks. Red Bull and Merc have arguably the strongest pairings on the grid after that race.

[Tazio]

Nico, Webber, Bianchi, Hulk, and yes The Boss, in that order.

[steveaki13]

Yer I agree Nico did a good job. Professional rather than petty.

Also Button well but as he is in my FGP the Mclaren team decided to screw his race.

[Knock-on]

Button was driving a very solid race and looking good for 5th at least. Real shame.

PdR was similarly on fire. Had a compromised qualifying and first pit stop but in the race passed Sutil and was looking like scoring solid points. Very impressed about how he's responded to the challenge from Sutil.

Webber did everything right and Rosberg too. Probably Webber seeing as how he was cheated by Vettel.

[Dave B]

Webber. He had a decent getaway and made the harder tyres work, and had an answer to Vettel whenever he looked threatened. His only weakness was trusting his team mate to obey orders, leading to being overtaken while saving the tyres. That was without question his race, and he's got some thinking to do about "Multi 21" and whether he'll continue to be such a good team player.

Button was doing well until his pitstop catastrophe, and both Mercedes drivers had a good run and didn't do anything stupid.

[The Black Knight]

Easy for me to pick driver of the race today. Rosberg. No question about it. Class drive from a class driver. I always said he was better than people gave him credit for and for the last two races, even though he has been out-qualified by Hamilton in both races, he has been more than a match for him on pace and was definitely the quicker of the two today. I think he would have actually outqualified Hamilton in Malaysia had it not been wet.

[Garry Walker]

Easy for me to pick driver of the race today. Rosberg. No question about it. Class drive from a class driver. I always said he was better than people gave him credit for and for the last two races, even though he has been out-qualified by Hamilton in both races, he has been more than a match for him on pace and was definitely the quicker of the two today. I think he would have actually outqualified Hamilton in Malaysia had it not been wet.

Maybe that will make people reconsider the performances of Schumacher the last few seasons.

[The Black Knight]

Maybe that will make people reconsider the performances of Schumacher the last few seasons.

Yup, for an old dawg he was not too shabby at all. I doubt Rosberg has upped his game this year. He's always been driving on this level.

[Knock-on]

Lets see how things work out over half a season before giving Schumacher any undue praise shall we?

[The Black Knight]

Lets see how things work out over half a season before giving Schumacher any undue praise shall we?

I am not surprised that Nico is matching Lewis like this is all I am saying. He's exceptionally quick and totally underrated. Lewis has his hands full this year. Mind you, as Lewis gets more comfortable in the team and finds better set ups in the car he may very well start to outpace Nico but time will tell :)

[zako85]

It's difficult to answer this question. The Lotus drivers did spend almost the entire race in a fighting mode. While their points count is low, they put a fine show. I am also impressed with Massa and his car. It was also refreshing to see Massa not trying to help Alonso on the start. Amazingly Alonso did end up second into the first turn, but as we know that didn't help him much...

[keysersoze]

Bianchi had great pace but I have to think that if Charles Pic doesn't lose 25 seconds after getting run over by the STR (Vergne?) he may have been right with Jules.

Lots of solid drives. Hulkenberg was 6th early. Webber, Rosberg, Vettel, Grosjean, Kimi (one slip up), Massa, and Perez handled the conditions well.

[AndyL]

Bianchi had great pace but I have to think that if Charles Pic doesn't lose 25 seconds after getting run over by the STR (Vergne?) he may have been right with Jules.

Good point, I had forgotten about that bit of misfortune for Caterham.

[gloomyDAY]

Nico - Blazing fast and only disallowed a podium by Brawn.

Webber - Only mistake he made was to be believe the **** coming out of Horner's mouth.

Bianchi - Can't wait for DiResta to get canned and Jules to get his seat.

RoGro - Unequal parts and still bests his teammate.

Massa - Quiet, but consistent.

JEV - Points for STR!!

Bottas - Riding a hog and almost getting into the points.

Button - One hell of drive that was once again compromised by a sloppy McLaren stop.

[i_max2k2]

Webber and Rosberg, even though Massa lost places in the beginning, he did well in the end to finish 5th.


Easy for me to pick driver of the race today. Rosberg. No question about it. Class drive from a class driver. I always said he was better than people gave him credit for and for the last two races, even though he has been out-qualified by Hamilton in both races, he has been more than a match for him on pace and was definitely the quicker of the two today. I think he would have actually outqualified Hamilton in Malaysia had it not been wet.


Maybe that will make people reconsider the performances of Schumacher the last few seasons.

Exactly what I was thinking, Schumacher actually was faster then Rosberg in almost all the races I remember, Hamilton definitely got his money's worth in Sepang, I don't actually remember seeing Rosberg hound him like he did to hamilton, ever.

[i_max2k2]

Did you mean, undue praise to a 7 time WDC?


Lets see how things work out over half a season before giving Schumacher any undue praise shall we?

[The Black Knight]

Webber and Rosberg, even though Massa lost places in the beginning, he did well in the end to finish 5th.





Exactly what I was thinking, Schumacher actually was faster then Rosberg in almost all the races I remember, Hamilton definitely got his money's worth in Sepang, I don't actually remember seeing Rosberg hound him like he did to hamilton, ever.

Mind you, Hamilton is going to get quicker as the season progresses when he embeds himself further into the team and gets used to the car and set ups more. Still, in Australia there appeared to be a 0.3 gap, same in testing and same in Malaysia. I've a lot of time for Rosberg, he's one of my favorite drivers, so I'll be happy to see him do well against Hamilton and finally get the credit he deserves.

[ioan]

Rosberg. Unlike the guy from the same country, he is a man.

Yep, he can bend over in style! Oh wait... that's how you define a man?

PS: The Brittney name springs to mind.

[ioan]

Yep, he can bend over in style! Oh wait... that's how you define a man?

PS: The Brittney name springs to mind.

[steveaki13]

ioan your back in the F1 forum. :eek:

[wedge]

Vettel - for spanking Webber, brilliant dogfight and showing the world his true self.

[BDunnell]

Maybe that will make people reconsider the performances of Schumacher the last few seasons.

I was never in much doubt that many assessments of Rosberg's pace relative to Schumacher's were unduly favourable to Rosberg.

[BDunnell]

Yep, he can bend over in style! Oh wait... that's how you define a man?

I think the F1 forum has done quite nicely without this sort of thing, personally.

[massafan4]

In my opinion both RedBull pilots were very quick throughout the all race and both of them deserve this award, but Vettel was very rude, silly and very reckless as he ignored the team order. Both would have forced out of the race easily due to an accident.

But I think it was a very good race, i'm just a little bit sad about Massa's rank, because in my opinion he would have gone faster, as the car seemed to be quite fast. He will hit back in China hopefully. :)

[steveaki13]

Vettel - for spanking Webber, brilliant dogfight and showing the world his true self.

Yes, for all the moaning around this. Lets not forget in was a good fight. Vettels attacking and working of Webber was great and even Webbers defense was defiant.

Good hard stuff.

[AndyL]

After reading this I'm going to concur with those giving Button an honourable mention:
Malaysian GP: McLaren says Button's pitstop mess was human error - F1 news - AUTOSPORT.com (http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/106349)

I was reserving judgment on his performance because I suspected he might have been to blame for launching too soon from the pit stop. On the TV coverage you could see a couple of red lights on the back of the traffic light panel as he left the pits. But according to Martin Whitmarsh he got a green light for 0.12 seconds and immediately reacted to it. So all in all a good performance from a guy who supposedly can't do well in a car that's less than perfect.

[Tazio]

Agreed! I also have to give JB credit, he was having a very good race until the botched pit stop.

[airshifter]

After reading this I'm going to concur with those giving Button an honourable mention:
Malaysian GP: McLaren says Button's pitstop mess was human error - F1 news - AUTOSPORT.com (http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/106349)

I was reserving judgment on his performance because I suspected he might have been to blame for launching too soon from the pit stop. On the TV coverage you could see a couple of red lights on the back of the traffic light panel as he left the pits. But according to Martin Whitmarsh he got a green light for 0.12 seconds and immediately reacted to it. So all in all a good performance from a guy who supposedly can't do well in a car that's less than perfect.

I'll guess it was the person who waved him off. The wheel man on the failed wheel was obviously not ready when the car was released, and immediately crossed his arms to clarify that he wasn't. I'm not sure who made the bad call but it was without doubt one of the crew. Shame Jenson got far enough to inflict more serious damage before they got it sorted. Had they caught it right at the release they might have salvaged his race.

[Mia 01]

Kimi - not this time :) Bot Seb and Mark was fast and consistent but they will not get my vote this time. I will give it to Nico, he kept his powder dry to the latter part of the race and deserved the third spot. Nico is a fast and clever driver.

[massafan4]

Kimi - not this time :) Bot Seb and Mark was fast and consistent but they will not get my vote this time. I will give it to Nico, he kept his powder dry to the latter part of the race and deserved the third spot. Nico is a fast and clever driver.

I agree absolutely. He was very likeable, and seemed to be a very nice team player. He is a great value and an enormous treasure for Team Mercedes. :) Hope he will be more lucky and successful on the subsequent races... :)