Vettel wins in Japan in front of Truli and Hamilton

Only team-mate Mark Webber could stop Sebastian Vettel from recording a perfect weekend this afternoon in Japan, as the young German romped clear from pole position to win his third race of the season, leading every lap of the race in the process. Had it not been for Webber’s late pitstop for new tyres on low fuel, Vettel would also have recorded fastest lap, but more significantly his 10 points and Brawn’s struggle to 7th and 8th means he remains in title contention with just two races remaining.

From the start, Vettel was challenged strongly by the KERS-boosted Lewis Hamilton, and after successfully fending him off, was never again under pressure for the lead. With more fuel on-board than his nearest rivals, he kept the lead even during the pitstops, and shrugged off a late-race safety car period to record a comfortable five-second victory.

Vettel takes pole in Suzuka qualifying

Sebastian Vettel will start from pole position in tomorrow’s Japanese Grand Prix after an action-packed qualifying session at Suzuka this afternoon. The scheduled qualifying hour was delayed by three red flag periods courtesy of three separate crashes in Q2 and Q3, eventually ending half an hour late.

With Red Bull’s Mark Webber having been ruled out of qualifying after damaging his chassis in final practice, just four drivers would be eliminated in Q1. After a largely trouble-free session for most drivers, Giancarlo Fisichella (1m31.704s) dropped out at the first hurdle for the second successive time, followed closely by home hero Kazuki Nakajima (1m31.718s) who was unable to turn local knowledge into a Q2-worthy laptime.

Bahrain Team Previews

After such a tremendous race at China only one week later we are already counting back for Bahrain Grand Prix. Most of the drivers arrived Bahrain early on to get used to the time difference and hot weather conditions.

Toyota, BMW and Ferrari have already tested their 2009 contenders here during winter testing and collected valuable data for the race. Other teams will start their preparations at Friday’s first practice session. Brawn, Toyota and Red Bull teams come here as favorites, whereas Ferrari, McLaren and Renault will try to show catch up. With only one week break after China, big updates are not expected. It will be interesting to see who will use KERS here, after we saw only three cars used KERS at Chinese Grand Prix.

Driver Quotes after Chinese Grand Prix

BMW Sauber’s Robert Kubica and Toyota’s Jarno Trulli on their dramatic collision; Force India’s Adrian Sutil on being less than six laps from scoring his team’s first points; and Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber on their spectacular one-two victory. All 20 drivers and senior team personnel report back on Sunday’s race…

Before the Malaysian Grand Prix

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;