TotallyToyotaF1.com - Malaysian GP: Luke's View

Malaysian GP: Luke's View

By Luke Marc Carlile-Stanton March 23 2008
For Toyota, today sort of felt like a victory after the disappointment of 2006 and 2007. Fourth place for Jarno Trulli was an absolutely brilliant result for him, the team and the team’s fans. Jarno spent all day battling with the Mclaren-Mercedes drivers of Heikki Kovalainen and Lewis Hamilton and like through the weekend he was able to live with their pace.

Both Kovalainen and Hamilton started 8th and 9th on the grid following penalties they received after impeding BMW-Saubers Nick Heidfeld and ex-Mclaren man and former World Champion Fernando Alonso in the Renault. This meant that Jarno started third on the grid. Going down to Turn one Jarno battled with the BMW-Sauber drives of Heidfeld and Robert Kubica. He kept Heidfeld behind but lost out to Kubica, Webber and Hamilton. However, Jarno drive superbly all day and eventually got ahead of Hamilton and Webber. He had a superb battle in the second stint with Kovalainen but tailed off later to set up a final showdown for the Fourth place which he held against Hamilton. Jarno kept the British driver at bay though. It was a mini victory for the team and Jarno hopes this is a return to the pace of the 2005 Season.

Toyota's second driver, Timo Glock had a less brilliant...well it was not really a race at all, it lasted 14 corners! Starting ninth the German fell back through the field. Going into turn 14 Timo was faced with an over optimistic move from Nico Rosberg in the Toyota powered Williams. Rosberg was trying to make up ground after qualifying a lowly 16th, but he went for a gap that simply did not exist and punted Timo out, finishing out mans race and seriously denting Rosberg’s own chances. He lost his front wing and would only finish 14th.

Up front however, The World Champion was back on form after a bad weekend in Albert Park last weekend for Ferrari. Kimi Raikkonen took the chequered flag after nicking the race from team mate Felipe Massa through the pit stops. Massa himself spun out later on denying the Scuderia of a 1-2 dream result. The main beneficiary of this however was Polish driver Robert Kubica. The BMW-Sauber had a fairly Billy no mates run to second place to get his best result since Monza 2006 where he finished Third. Heikki Kovalainen dropped Jarno in the latter stages to salvage some sort of a good result for Mclaren to come home third and make it two Finnish drivers on the podium.

Behind Jarno and Hamilton and rounding out the points positions were Nick Heidfeld in the BMW-Sauber, Mark Webber in the Renault powered Red Bull just ahead of the Renault team itself with Fernando Alonso taking the final point for the Spanish driver.

Red Bull veteran David Coulthard had a strong race battling with Heidfeld and Alonso earlier on but ended up with nothing to show for it by finishing just outside the points in 9th place after starting 12th. Jenson Button rounded out the top 10 for Honda finishing one place ahead of where he started but Honda are going in the right direction and improving on a dismal 2007. Nelson Piquet Jr (I mean Nelson Piquet) had a better weekend than he did in his debut in Melbourne but the Brazilian could still only manage 11th just ahead of former Renault man Giancarlo Fisichella who put in a strong performance for the Force India Ferrari team by coming home 12th. Fisichella started 17th and only just missed out on Q2 in qualifying yesterday and could be a surprise throughout the year.

Rubens Barrichello was 13th in the second Honda just ahead of Rosberg while British driver Anthony Davidson did a good job to beat team mate Takuma Sato in the F1 Hero story, Super Aguri. Williams' Japanese hope Kazuki Nakajima got a Grid penalty for causing an accident with Kubica in Melbourne and rounded off a miserable weekend for Williams by finish last.

The retirements included both Scuderia Toro Rosso drivers of Sebastian Vettel and Sebastian Bourdais (or now that Red Bull plan to sell them off we could call it 'Team Seb'...?), Massa's Ferrari and Force India's Adrian Sutil joined Timo in the retirement heap.

So to round up today was a brilliant result for Jarno, the team and the fans. Racing against the Mclaren’s has been brilliant. But we must build on this. Jarno drove superbly but Timo has been hit by bad luck with the accident in Melbourne and today with the incident with Rosberg. We can look forward to Bahrain and the rest of the Season. Now we have a 2 week breather. So until then, Ciao!

Malaysian Grand Prix Results:

1. Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari 1h31m18.555

2. Robert Kubica BMW Sauber + 19.570s

3. Heikki Kovalainen McLaren Mercedes + 38.450s

4. Jarno Trulli Toyota + 45.832s

5. Lewis Hamilton McLaren Mercedes + 46.548s

6. Nick Heidfeld BMW Sauber + 49.833s

7. Mark Webber Red Bull Racing + 68.130s

8. Fernando Alonso Renault + 70.041s

9. David Coulthard Red Bull Racing + 76.220s

10. Jenson Button Honda Racing + 86.214s

11. Nelson Piquet Jr Renault + 92.202s