KUALA LUMPUR — After scoring pole position at the first two races and dropping from the lead with a technical problem each time, Sebastian Vettel leaped from third on the grid at the Malaysian Grand Prix on Sunday in Kuala Lumpur to take the lead from his Red Bull teammate by the first corner. He never dropped it.
Through the extreme heat and humidity, Vettel and his car held it all together, and the German driver took his first victory of the season, the sixth of his career and his first at the Malaysian Grand Prix. Mark Webber, his teammate, held on to to second place, giving the Red Bull team a one-two finish.
“A big relief, sorry,” said Vettel, before apologizing that he felt a little tipsy from drinking too much champagne on the podium to cool down from the extreme heat. “I’m very pleased. It’s a great day for us, for Red Bull, with the first two races not finishing where we wanted to be.”
Nico Rosberg, who started the race in second position in his Mercedes and slotted into third by the first corner, also held on to that until the end.
“The start didn’t go too well. I think it was down to me and I got too much wheel spin,” Rosberg said. “Once I was third, I knew it was going to be difficult to follow the Red Bulls.”
But Rosberg’s third position highlighted all the deceptive start and bad luck for his teammate, Michael Schumacher, in his return to the series after three years in retirement. The German, winner of seven drivers’ titles and known as a master of the rain, managed to qualify only eighth in a wet session on Saturday, where his young teammate placed their Mercedes car second on the grid.
Schumacher made an excellent start to the race, moving into sixth position. But by Lap 10, his car had broken down, and he was out of the race.
“It was a shame that I could not finish the race, but unfortunately, the wheel nut on the left rear wheel was lost,” said Schumacher. “In the end, that is motor racing. I remember that very well. It makes no sense to get angry about it. You have to accept it as part of the game and look ahead.”
Felipe Massa, who finished the race in seventh position, leads the series with 39 points. His Ferrari teammate, Fernando Alonso, who dropped out of the race with less than two laps left, is second in the series, with 37 points, along with Vettel, who also has 37 points. Rosberg is in fifth, with 35 points, while Schumacher is in 10th, with nine points.
But if the top five race leaders did not change from start to finish — outside the pit stops — the race in Malaysia was nothing like the procession of the first race of the season, in Bahrain on March 13.
Whenever racing becomes processional, pundits, rules makers, fans and racers talk about reversing the grid so that the fastest cars start at the back of the pack and have to fight their way up during the race.
On Sunday, no such artificial means were needed. In the two days leading up to the race, it had rained, causing the cars during practice and qualifying sessions to battle with the slippery track.
The wild qualifying session on Saturday set up an unusual grid in which the two Ferraris qualified only 19th and 21st, and the two McLarens qualified 17th and 20th. This put four of the fastest cars and drivers at the back of the grid and turned the race into a test of the theory of reverse grids.
It did not disappoint, as most of the action during the race came from these leading teams and drivers as they battled their way up the pack and proved that, contrary to popular belief, it is possible to pass in Formula One.
The best performances came from Lewis Hamilton, who started in 20th position in his McLaren Mercedes and finished the race in sixth, and Massa, who started in 21st in his Ferrari and finished seventh. Hamilton provided a fantastic show throughout as he climbed up the pack.
His teammate, the reigning world champion and winner of the Australian Grand Prix last weekend, Jenson Button, started in 17th position and finished eighth.
The battle in the final laps of the race between Fernando Alonso in his Ferrari and Button was one of the most suspenseful of the race as the Spaniard, who won the first race of the season, pushed the British driver, who won the second race, at less than half a second for several laps.
With two laps left, Alonso dived in at a corner and passed Button momentarily, but the Spaniard then went wide, and his engine suddenly began billowing clouds of smoke. Alonso dropped out of the race, as the extreme heat had taken its toll on the car.
“It was probably the hardest race of my whole life in terms of driving, because I had to improvise for every corner,” Alonso told Spanish television, revealing that his gearbox had broken at the beginning of the race.
The race had the added suspense of dark skies threatening rain until the end, but for the first time in days, the rain failed to come. Still, it was an improvement on last year, when the race was washed out after only 33 of the projected 56 laps.
Vettel zigzagged across the finish line as the third winner in the series in its first three races, and as the series prepares to move on to the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai in two weeks.
“I was hoping for rain just to get a cool down,” said Vettel. “The key once again was to pace yourself.”
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