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After a very surprising start to the 2009 season at Melbourne, we are about to see second race of the season at Malaysia. This season the race will start two hours later than past years. There is a %80 chance of rain during the race and since the race will start late, it may be darker and this may cause visibility problems for the drivers.
At Friday during both practice sessions, teams were very closely matched and the competition was very high as expected. Ferrari seemed better than last race and both drivers managed to do very consistent and fast laps during their long stints. RedBull and Williams seemed to be in a good position too whereas Brawn’s and Toyota’s struggled with their cars balance a bit. One thing very clear is that the softer tires offer better durability and less performance drop during the long stints than Melbourne. For example almost all the fastest lap times came during the long stints (13 – 15 laps) with softer compounds. This was not the case at last weekend’s grand prix. Let’s look at the times deeper and try to analyze the practice lap times;
In second practice; Massa did five of his laps under 1,37 while Raikkonen did 11, Webber did 10, Vettel did 14, Button did seven, Barrichello did eight, Truli did six and Rosberg did three of them. Also only Raikkonen, Massa and Vettel managed to do two laps under 1,36 on their long stints (Kimi at 12th and 13th laps of a 15 lap stint, Massa at 10th and 12th laps of a 13 lap stint, Vettel at 2nd and 4th laps of a 13 lap stint) with softer tyre. Ferrari drivers improved their times near the end of their stints, while Vettel started lapping faster, and his pace dropped near the end of his stint. This puts Ferrari and Redbull in a strong position for the race, but tyre management will be crucial.
But at qualifying things changed a bit. Toyota and Brawn seemed to overcome their problems and improved their performances. They were the ones fighting for the pole position at qualifying. BMW was better than yesterday as they were completely doing race preparations during both practice sessions yesterday, but they were not clearly at where they wanted to be as Kubica was 8th fastest and Heidfeld was 11th. It was a disaster for Ferrari as they knocked out at Q1 with Massa while they were trying to save tyre for the upcoming sessions. Raikkonen was better but he could only qualified 9th. McLaren was more competitive than they excpected but they were 13th and 14th respectively. After Vettel and Barrichello dropped from their positions due to their penalties the provisional grid shaped as below;
Pre-race weights & provisional grid
1. Jenson Button, Brawn GP, 660kg
2. Jarno Trulli, Toyota, 656.5
3. Timo Glock, Toyota, 656.5
4. Nico Rosberg, Williams, 656
5. Mark Webber, Red Bull, 656
6. Robert Kubica, BMW-Sauber, 663
7. Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari, 662.5
8. Rubens Barrichello, Brawn, 664.5
9. Fernando Alonso, Renault, 680.5
10. Nick Heidfeld, BMW-Sauber, 692
11. Kazuki Nakajima, Williams, 683.4
12. Lewis Hamilton, McLaren, 688
13. Sebastian Vettel, Red Bull, 647
14. Heikki Kovalainen, McLaren, 688.9
15. Sebastien Bourdais, Toro Rosso, 670.5
16. Felipe Massa, Ferrari, 689.5
17. Nelson Piquet, Renault, 681.9
18. Giancarlo Fisichella, Force India, 680.5
19. Adrian Sutil, Force India, 655.5
20. Sebastien Buemi, Toro Rosso, 686.5
After FIA declared the car weight levels, it became clear that Button who will start from pole position is heavier than Truli, Glock, Rosberg and Webber who are behind him. He will probably stay two more laps than Truli, Glock, Webber and Rosberg and pit at lap 17. One lap later at lap 18, Kubica, Raikkonen and Barrichello will pit. Vettel will pit probably at lap 12 thanks to his ten place grid penalty, he clearly aiemed for a very aggressive start and first stint. It will be interesting to see if his strategy works. He will be very fast and consistent but he will start behind four KERS equipped cars and his task will not be easy. We will see tomorrow. On the other hand five KERS equipped cars will be very heavy during their first stint. It seems they are all going for a one stop where Hamilton will pit at lap 27, Kovalainen and Massa at lap 28 and Heidfeld at lap 29. They are definitely relying on their KERS system which will help them to jump a couple of places at start and defend their positions from lighter and faster cars at behind. We will see which of all these different strategies will work tomorrow. If it rains it will be a different story though and become a lottery. Some of the cars may chose starting from pit lane and change their setups for rain if it starts raining before the race and this will give them a huge advantage. Massa, Vettel and McLAren’s will be the ones who will eavalute this option.
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