Alonso carries Ferrari to victory against brilliant Perez

What a race and what a fantastically unexpected win for Fernando Alonso and Ferrari. The even more unexpected Sauber of Sergio Perez was second and pole position holder Lewis Hamilton’s McLaren completed the podium in a race which saw a deluge, a red flag, a grid of gazebo’s, safety car restart and some quite thrilling action.

Perez was phenomenal today, at times his pace and relentless pursuit of Alonso was spellbinding. Perhaps he should have won? In fact he should have because he was in the perfect zone, comfortable in all conditions and his car seemed easy to drive and kind on its tyres.

But that surely promotes the point that here today we witnessed a victory by a car which is not even quicker than a Sauber (as good as it is this year, it generally isn’t quicker than a McLaren or a Red Bull) and a driver who will never ever give up.

Fernando Alonso was simply awesome in the rains and heat of Malaysia. He dragged it into the top 10 in qualifying and from the very start in the wet conditions he was there mixing it towards the front. Pit stops worked his way, and he took advantage of that as well as a decisive move to pass Perez.

When the going was good, he exploited it to the maximum. He was amazingly careful with his tyres, making sure not to take too much from them, so he could at least put up a fight against the charging Perez.

He knows that the Ferrari at the moment doesn’t stand a chance in normal conditions, so when a door of opportunity opens you can count on the Spaniard to step right through it and slam it in the face of his pursuers.

Ferrari still hope to challenge for the title as the season goes on and had wanted just to be able to hang on to the leaders during the opening races while they try to develop the car, so to be leading the drivers championship is a real fillip.

The other Ferrari driver Felipe Massa ended up in a poor 15^th from 12^th on the grid. Little wonder then, especially after this fantastic performance by Perez why there are persistent rumours of his imminent replacement by the Mexican. Massa just isn’t the same driver who was so brilliant in 2008/09.

Sergio Perez should have won in what would have been a remarkable victory for him and his Sauber team. I know this team are not exactly podium regulars and so they should be very satisfied with their second place which judging by the reaction after the race they are fairly ecstatic about it but you can’t help but feel they should be a little disappointed and not just about Kamui Kobayashi retiring.

Apart from a couple of slight off track moments Perez was almost perfect and for a large portion of the race he was the quickest man out there in what is supposedly a midfield car.

As the race started there was a constant drizzle of rain ensuring that the entire field apart from the HRT’s started on intermediate tyres. The rain increased and Perez in conjunction with his team decided to take a gamble.

In for the full extreme wet tyres, he started lapping three seconds quicker than anyone so that when all the leaders had to pit he had floated up to third behind the two McLarens. The rain made the track what Jenson Button described as a ‘lake’ and the safety car was duly deployed on lap six and the red flag came a few laps later followed by the grid of gazebo’s and umbrellas.

This didn’t ruffle Perez though, at the restart everyone was on full wets, but the track was soon ready for inters. During the pit stops Perez emerged in the lead, but Alonso had pitted a lap earlier and with tyres already up to temperature passed him quickly and pulled away.

However as the track dried, the Sauber driver started catching by over a second a lap at times, taking huge chunks out of the seven second lead Alonso had built up. By the time it was ready for slicks Perez was about to make a move, but waiting a lap longer than Alonso to pit meant he was back to a seven second gap.

This was their first mistake, as mentioned in the Sky commentary perhaps they should have been looking for a win and grasping their opportunity rather than protecting a decent result. It had become obvious that slicks were the way forward as Daniel Ricciardo who stopped first for dry tyres was lapping several seconds quicker than anyone else. The experience of Ferrari showed here, as this was also their chance and they grasped with hands and feet.

But the Mexican remained unflustered and calmly set a scorching pace to catch the Ferrari back up, and here’s where I believe they made their second mistake. With six laps to go the team radioed Perez to remind him not to take too many chances and that this was a very good result. This of course prompted him to go off which surely is no coincidence, although it's to be expected he'd deny it caused him to lose concentration. 

Drivers are here to race and to win, valuable though those points are to the team, and perhaps it would be more understandable if it was when he was running third as second is just another spot on the podium, but this was a chance to win.

I think his mind set was thrown off slightly, his heroic pursuit of Alonso was now not the priority and there the lack of concentration came, any conspiracy theories of Sauber backing off to protect their Ferrari engine partners victory have been denied and are just silly. Fantastic result tinged with what could have been.

Bruno Senna was another one to star finishing 6^th after tripping over his Williams team mate Pastor Maldonado and being last after the first lap. At times he was one of the fastest out there and made some great overtakes. Scored the result Maldonado should have had in Australia, but also proved that Williams have got themselves a decent car this year in all conditions, already beating their points total from 2011.

The top teams had a mixed day. McLaren had secured their second successive front row lock out, and Hamilton was leading fairly convincingly. But after the restart, a botched tyre stop left him behind Alonso and Perez and he was never able to get back on terms with them,  again the speed didn’t seem with him. Still he had a more genuine smile about him after the race.

Of course that wouldn’t be because his team mate Jenson Button failed to score a point after breaking his nose against the innocent HRT of Narain Karthikeyan, then having tyre temperature issues resulting in 14^th. Not a good day in conditions he’d usually excel in.

Red Bull had a similar story. They got solid points from Mark Webber in fourth but the damage limitation run to second in Australia was not to be repeated by Sebastian Vettel in Malaysia. Although he had worked himself up to fourth place from fifth, he suffered a puncture while lapping Karthikeyan, pulling in front of him too soon and slicing his tyre on the HRT front wing.

His arm waving from cockpit indicated Vettel was not a happy man. Still it’s just the start and although they were strangely nowhere while the track was wet the dry pace still looks like it will win them some races.

Lotus had another good race from Kimi Raikkonen who charged up from his 5 place grid penalty of tenth, to finish 5^th. He says all he is now craving is a normal straight forward weekend so he can discover where the team really stand. Romain Grosjean threw it in the gravel.

Force India recovered from a poor qualifying to get Paul di Resta up to 7^th and Nico Hulkenberg to 9^th and score his first points of the year. They were split by Jean-Eric Vergne in the Toro Rosso, making up for his last lap disappointment in Australia.

Pastor Maldonado would have been at least 10^th if his engine had survived to the end, but this handed the final point to Michael Schumacher. The Mercedes driver deserves more for the form he is currently showing as the silver arrows flatter to deceive again.

Schumacher had qualified 3^rd, but a sluggish start and Grosjean’s Lotus hitting him on the first lap left him down the field. Despite his Mercedes also chewing the tyres, he was able to manage them for one less pit stop than team mate Nico Rosberg, and completed a decent recovery drive, but Merc’s race pace is nowhere near their qualifying speed. Nico was 13^th and has disappointed so far this year but both drivers will have expected more from the first two races.

And one more mention for Narain Karthikeyan, whose HRT started on wets so that when the red flag came out he was lying tenth. That was one team who were hoping the race wouldn’t be restarted!

The opening races are done and now there’s a three week gap until China, so what have we learned so far? It’s closer than ever at the top and in the midfield. McLaren are very quick, but perhaps not as quick as first thought. Red Bull has problems in qualifying, Sergio Perez is a star, Mercedes should be doing better and Ferrari is being carried on the shoulders of a magical Spaniard called Fernando Alonso.

all photo's taken from autosport.com