Malaysian Grand Prix thread

[airshifter]

Not a single comment yet with qualification already over? :rolleyes:

The front is paired by teams, from P1 to P8. Jenson and Massa round out the top 10. If you take Jenson out of the picture, the cars remain in pairs down to P13.

1. Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes, 1:32.850

2. Nico Rosberg, Mercedes, + 0.414

3. Max Verstappen, Red Bull, + 0.570

4. Daniel Ricciardo, Red Bull, + 0.617

5. Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari, + 0.734

6. Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari, + 0.782

7. Sergio Perez, Force India, + 1.469

8. Nico Hulkenberg, Force India, + 1.639

9. Jenson Button, McLaren, + 1.668

10. Felipe Massa, Williams, + 1.821


I'm not usually a big fan of the race due to the rain often playing with things, but it can be interesting in changing conditions. The Red Bull cars are looking really solid, and seem to have made bigger improvements over the season than Ferrari have. It doesn't look like anyone is really challenging Mercedes yet, but they have at least upped the game to the point they have a chance if Mercedes have issues.

I'm really liking that off camber on turn 15. That was a tricky corner before, and now even better!

[Tazio]

Evening dudes, looking forward to an exciting start!

[steveaki13]

Hi Guys.

I have found a way around my problems and am here to let you all know how boring I think the race is :laugh:

[steveaki13]

Any sign of rain today?

[Tazio]

Slight chance :wave:

[Tazio]

Felipe getting pushed off the grid!

[steveaki13]

Vettel punked Rosberg :eek:

[Koz]

Status on Rosberg?

[Tazio]

Vettel lost his mind:crazy:

[Tazio]

Fred's having a great race!

[steveaki13]

Felipe with a puncture..... not his day

[Tazio]

Brake issue for Rogro

[Koz]

The brakes braked.

[steveaki13]

Lewis and Daniel not pitting. Will that cost them?

[steveaki13]

Verstappen has pitted and is only 16 seconds behind Hamilton... surely that means he leads the race especially on new tyres. Interesting

[Warriwa]

Why wasn't Ricco pitted? Red Bull playing favourites again. They always have. They always will.

[Tazio]

Max hauling in Kimi!

[Tazio]

Nico hauling in Kimi!

[Tazio]

Pushy move by Njco!

[longisland]

Great move from Ric on mx

[steveaki13]

Bit clumsy but I admire Rosbergs determination to pass Kimi for Championship points.

Plus great to see Ricciardo fighting of Max. Saying Nah I aint letting you through mate....

Great stuff. This is what we want to see. Not DRS passes

[Koz]

Omg hmailton on fire!

[steveaki13]

My God..... Hammy out.

Bet Ricciardo is glad he held Verstappen off now.

[Tazio]

Boss' PU has given up the ghost! :eek:

[Tazio]

Ka-blamo!

[longisland]

Oh no!
This is really a big blow to hamilton
He had performers flawlessly and robbed a Good result

[Koz]

Plain sailing till the end?

So team orders? We have been robbed!

[steveaki13]

Sounds like team orders.

Does Max strike you as a guy who will pay attention to that? Lets hope not. :p

[steveaki13]

Come on Max..... disregard team orders and have a go. So long since we saw a battle for the win.

Rosberg has a 10 second penalty.

[steveaki13]

Red Bulls look coasty

[steveaki13]

Palmer doing a good job here today. Can he get that 10th place and a point?

[Tazio]

Palmer should get the point. This has been the most entertaining race in some time. Fred driver of the race. :cool:

[steveaki13]

Boo to Bull orders

[steveaki13]

Fred defo driver of the day

[longisland]

All In All, it's an great action packed dry race in Malaysia.
The venue is not as empty as perceived
For me it's a keeper

[Koz]

Lewis thinks there's a conspiracy afoot!!

[steveaki13]

Hamilton saying it doesnt feel right that its only his engines that fail.

Saying he is having bad luck or saying some underhand tactics are at play..... If that latter thats a big thing to say and might see him loosing any support from Merc.

[Tazio]

Boss just has the bad ju ju this season. I already told you guys that some time back! ;)

[longisland]

hamilton has every right to vent his frustration
He didn't put a foot wrong and the car blew up in his face
Red Bull still owes one win to Ric imho

[Nitrodaze]

Lewis thinks there's a conspiracy afoot!!

I think if you want to be politically correct you would say it is pure bad luck. You may also say it is unthinkable that Mercedes would give a win that is in the bag to rival Redbull with the aim of favoring Rosberg over Hamilton. But if you look at the statistics coldly, you have to say the statistics to not align with the politically correct view.

The cold facts are that Mercedes have the first pick of the engines before allocating engines to customer teams. And the engine in the Hamilton car was a new engine that has done only three races. Based on these facts, you would expect reliability issues to be with customer team as opposed to the Mercedes reigning world champion who you would expect to have the very best choice of the parts.

This situation begins to make one think, how would a team bring about a championship outcome of their choice against a stronger driver? If they were to do that, this would be just the way they would go about it. But there are questions like how really would they make an engine fail during the race without leaving a trace in any computer logs? You have to remember that a gearbox failure cheated Hamilton of his first championship win in his first season in 2007.

What do you think guys and gals, is Mercedes fixing the driver championship?

That said, Rosberg drove a fantastic race and deserved a podium and to extend his lead to Hamilton in this race. For me, Alonso was the driver of the race. I really enjoyed the fight between Ricciado and Verstappen. Verstappen drove like a champion in waiting today. Also congratulations to Palmer for getting his first F1 point today, his chances of keeping his drive just went up big time today.

[zako85]

Oh how the mighty have fallen.. Quite embarrassingly for Vettel, the four-time world champion is now in fifth place in WDC, behind his one-time world champion teammate and an old Red Bull nemesis.

[AndyL]

Has Claire Williams offended Bernie or something? A great 5th place for Bottas from 11th on the grid and we never saw him on TV as far as I can remember.