Well I was pleasantly surprised by Mclarens performance at the opening round of the 2011 Formula 1 world championship. Sadly KERS and the drag reduction scheme failed to show their worth at all in Australia and need some tweaking to make them worthwhile.

KERS, it seems is still not good enough and doesn't give enough of a boost to warrant it being on the car. They should have like some teams suggested upped its power to make it a no brainer to have it on board yet by not having it Red Bull have a faster car because they didn't need to compromise their design.

The Moveable wing or Drag Reduction System (DRS) didn't work. Had it worked as intended Jensen Button would have been third. He already had a faster car than Massa and even with the DRS and KERS he couldn't get past and ended up being forced off the circuit and then getting a penalty for it.

It was interesting that Alonso seems to have written off Massa already and Massa in 1 race has already had to let him through. Alonso said it was good to beat 2 of his main rivals and bearing in mind he finished in front of Webber, Button and Massa I don't think he would be writing off Button or Webber just yet do you? If I were Massa I would be looking for another drive next season.

I hate the fact team orders are no longer banned, they should have stayed banned and rigourously been enforced. F1 may be a team sport but if that is really the case why bother having a drivers championship at all. It really is a poor champion that doesn't allow his team mate to challenge him and Alonso needs to be careful of not ending up with the same question marks against him Schumacher does. Schumacher would not have as many championships if his team mate had been allowed to race him.

Anyway on to Malaysia, Which once again has been timed to start when the daily thunderstorm is. Now I might seem a bit simple at times (what do you mean yes you do) but sure a sensible thing would be to bring the GP forward by a few hours to avoid this.


If its then too hot why are we having races in a country that is either too rainy to race or too hot to race. If there isn't a decent time to race then the F1 Calendar shouldn't be there. This is once again Bernie thinking of his Wallet before the good of the sport. I actually like Malaysia I like the circuit but its a farce the amount of rain that is at that time every day yet the race is still at that time.

After the first 2 practices it looks very close between Mclaren and Red Bull but there are rumours Red Bull have been sand bagging to preserve the car. Ferrari struggled in 6th and 9th and one of the Hispanias made it within 107% of the fastest time so we may see them make the grid afterall.

The timing of the race has been set for TV as I mentioned above so at least I don't have to get up at 6am to see the cars parked on the grid in really heavy rain. I can get up normally for a 9am start.


Circuit map by User:Will Pittenger - Wikimedia Commons