Race red flagged in Sepang

Jenson Button sealed his 2nd victory with Brawn GP in Sepang amidst utter chaos and drama, when the race had to be stopped due to torrential rain after 32 laps. The race never started again and ‘finishers’ got half points according to FIA rules. Heidfeld, Glock, Trulli, Barrichello, Webber, Hamilton and Rosberg were declared as the points scorers.  Trulli, Webber and Rosberg received their tallies in fractions. And considering the fiercely aggressive competitiveness shown by teams this season, these half points may well decide the champion this year.

This is not a new affair in Formula-1. Here is a list of races that were red flagged. Out of these races, half points were offered at 4 races.

1. Spanish GP, 1975
2. Austrian GP, 1975
3. Monaco GP, 1984
4. Australian GP, 1991

The most significant 1 was Monaco GP, 1984 which changed the whole picture of the season. Mclaren star Alain Prost was declared the winner but got 4.5 points. Interestingly, he lost the season to his teammate  Niki Lauda by only half point!

Back to Malaysia. Before the rain, we witnessed some excellent racing action. Rosberg jumped to the pole from 4th position because of slow start by Button. Alonso found a weirdly empty passage on the grid and he was 5th from his original 9th position by turn 1. Kimi also showed some nerve by making some bold overtaking moves, but subsequently managed to settle down on 6th, gaining only 1 spot. For the first time this season, Brwan cars were struggling for pace. In the middle, Alonso was defending a convoy of Kimi, Glock and Webber for almost 8 laps, before conceading. As nobody was losing time, they were moving like a train as if an imaginary string was attached to them.

Then came the deciding moment; the pit stops. The rain delayed a bit from the initial prediction. As the first batch of cars tooks their first stops, nobody bothered to switch to intermediates. A few laps later, Ferrari brought in their lead driver for the race, Kimi and in a shocking move, put him on not even intermediates but directly on wet weather tyres. All the other drivers being on slicks, Kimi was losing 20s a lap to the race leaders. Ferrari desperately needed rain (I was picturing Stefano Domenicali and Michael Schumacher doing a rain dance in the pits!) Ultimately when the rain finally hit the track and everybody had taken their 2nd stop for tyre change, the classification showed Kimi with only 1 stop but on 16th spot! As always, a bold move by Ferrari ended up in disaster. In this chaos though, Massa surprisingly entered point scoring zone but again caved and ended up 9th.

Brawn GP were criticized for their slow and lazy pit stops in Australia. But here in Sepang, they showed perfection both in strategy and implementation which put Button back on the lead. The rain persisted long enough to summon safety car and finally when the drivers started feeling like swimming with a blindfold in their cars, the race was stopped. The long wait eventually ended with a completely different classification from what we expected.

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