2010 Malaysian Grand Prix – the complete F1 Fanatic review

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Webber makes way for Vettel as they race to the first corner

Find all the F1 Fanatic Malaysian Grand Prix coverage in one place below – from Friday practice to the post-race review.

Race

Malaysian Grand Prix report – Vettel first in Red Bull one-two at Sepang

Malaysian Grand Prix in pictures – Photos from race day.

Drivers as stewards make presence felt as Hamilton gets black-and-white flag – The black-and-white flag appeared for the first time in 21 years. Was it the right call?

Malaysian Grand Prix analysis – How Hamilton and Massa gained 14 places to finish sixth and seventh.

Malaysian Grand Prix result – Full classification.

Massa takes title lead – full championship points after Malaysia – He hasn’t won a race yet this year but Felipe Massa leads the drivers’ championship.

Rate the race: Malaysia – Your verdict on the Malaysian Grand Prix.

Malaysian Grand Prix stats and facts – The first time three different teams have won the first three races since 1990.

Malaysian Grand Prix fastest laps – Mark Webber claimed his second fastest lap in a row but a clutch problem failed to dent Alonso’s pace.

Malaysian GP team mate comparisons – How each of the teams’ drivers got on.

Race weekend reports for each team:

Malaysian GP team-by-team: McLaren
Malaysian GP team-by-team: Mercedes
Malaysian GP team-by-team: Red Bull
Malaysian GP team-by-team: Ferrari
Malaysian GP team-by-team: Williams
Malaysian GP team-by-team: Renault
Malaysian GP team-by-team: Force India
Malaysian GP team-by-team: Toro Rosso
Malaysian GP team-by-team: Lotus
Malaysian GP team-by-team: HRT
Malaysian GP team-by-team: Sauber
Malaysian GP team-by-team: Virgin

Qualifying

Malaysian Grand Prix qualifying report – Webber mastered a wet session to take pole position as Ferrari and McLaren faltered.

Schumacher fails to shine in rain – Nico Rosberg beat the ‘Regenmeister’ by a second in qualifying.

Malaysian GP qualifying in pictures – Images from the rain-hit Saturday session.

2010 Malaysian Grand Prix grid – Red Bulls and the front, Ferraris and McLarens at the back.

Malaysian Grand Prix pre-race analysis – Red Bull eyeing an open goal in Sepang.

Practice

Webber edges Hamilton in final practice – Looking back at the final practice times we might have seen an exciting battle between Red Bull and McLaren had the latter not messed up in qualifying.

Malaysian GP Friday practice analysis – Lotus improving but Williams struggle.

Hamilton on top again in second practice – After a bad weekend in Australia Hamilton looked on course to make amends in Malaysia.

Hamilton fastest in Sepang practice one – Meanwhile Fairuz Fauzy made his first appearance in an official F1 test session at his home race.

Malaysian Grand Prix practice in pictures – Friday specialists Fauzy and Paul di Resta join the regular racers.

Schumacher and Rosberg meet Mercedes fans in Malaysia (pictures) – A home race of sorts for Mercedes as they perform for title sponsor Petronas.

Live blogs

How we saw the Malaysian Grand Prix as it unfolded.

Malaysian Grand Prix live blog
Malaysian Grand Prix Qualifying live blog
Malaysian Grand Prix Practice 3 live blog
Malaysian Grand Prix Practice 2 live blog
Malaysian Grand Prix Practice 1 live blog

How can we improve our coverage?

What would you like to see more of in our Grand Prix coverage? How can we make it better? Have your say in the comments.

Images (C) Red Bull/Getty images, Renault/LAT, Red Bull/Getty images

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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21 comments on “2010 Malaysian Grand Prix – the complete F1 Fanatic review”

  1. richard hughes
    6th April 2010, 10:17

    i love it when F1 fanatic puts all the race info together, it makes the info very easy to find especially if your like me and want to look as the race prep and the race stats as well.

    good job guys :)

  2. One of these GP weekends McLaren will get it right and Hamilton will show the other drivers who’s the dady!

  3. Those team-by-team comparisons are great. Is the number of comments a measure of each team’s popularity? If so, nobody loves Mercedes any more…

    It’s a shame they’ve taken over Articles in Brief. Any chance of a longer list, say 20 articles?

    1. Yeah I do need a better solution for that. The redesign is well along the way now, though, will hopefully have it live in a couple of weeks.

  4. yeah otherwise u cant find anything :)

  5. Hey Keith, there is no mention of the predictions championship in the list of all these articles?

  6. Is the forum going to back up when you put the redesign up.

      1. Agree that forums can be something of a free for all and that policing them (an unfortunate necessity due to trolls, spam and ‘advanced’ levels of debate) is a serious overhead, but is that your reasoning, or are there other factors.

        Intrigued, as you actually have probably the most reader interactive F1 site on the web – the Live Chat and article comments are hugely enjoyable and massively subscribed.

        If too pushy, please feel free to ignore and apologies in advance.

        1. If anything, I found the forums to be less infested by trolls. Maybe it’s elitist to say so, but most forum regulars seemed to be posters who followed the “rules” of debate better and were more concerned about presenting a good argument than one-liners about how a certain driver was rubbish.

  7. It’s interesting that we still have not had a straight head-on race between Ferrari and Red Bull, due to weather and DNFs. Hopefully this will happen in China. In race trim I am not sure the RBR is quicker than the Ferrari. It was awesome to see how Alonso could lap almost at Vettel’s pace in Malaisia w/ a gearbox problem. Simply masterful.

    Oh, and where is the Webber crowd ? I posted before the race that Webber “can’t and won’t win” the race. He is simply not even close to Vettel’s level or to any of the other elite drivers (FA, Lewis and I would include Kubica in that category).

    Which is why Kimi is coming back next year to team up w/ Vettel, as reported in Bild.

    1. Yes, Alonso did a great job but webber put the best lap of the race all most at the finish, with hard and old tyres witch leaves to this:
      Were red bull simply controling there pace throuh the race? What´s there real pace?

      1. Many drivers could have put down a fastest lap if they had clean air. Webber’s FL doesn’ mean that RBR have the faster car. They might indeed, but until we see a head-to-head fight for the whole race distance we won’t know. I do know from watching F1 live timing in Bahrein that Alonso was consistently 2-3 tenths faster on hard tyres. Vettel was faster on softs by about half a second. Since harder tyres are used for the majority of the race, it will be very interesting to see what will happen if we have no DNFs and other strange events, over a whole race distance.

    2. Has anyone else realized that if Vettel wins the championship this year, Kimi comes back, and Villeneuve gets a ride with one of the new teams, there will be 7 world champions on the grid. Fingers crossed. Has that ever happened before?

  8. On a different note, anyone notice that Button is always complaining about not being happy 100% with his car, or saying there are still some things he is uncomfortable with? Since when was any driver 100% happy with his car?

    He seems to be looking for perfection with the team and with the car. This has already led to McLaren destabilising Lewis in their quest to make everything perfect for Jense – like changing an engineer he has worked with for 3yrs, using him a a guinea pig to cover strategies.

    Also, by allowing Jense to make the first pit stop (twice now), they will always be putting Lewis on the back foot – Otherwise we might see both Macca drivers trying to outfox each other in who makes the first pit stop.

    Jensen’s inability to get to grips with a car -unless it is perfect and he’s absolutely happy with it further underlines his shortcomings. The Brawn GP car last yr was an anomaly. Most cars are not perfect, and will never be. It is down to the driver to extract the most from it.

    People like Lewis/ Alonso/ Schumi/ Senna dominate a car irrespective of its problems. They simply drive round the problems.
    Lewis did it last yr, Alonso showed how its done in Malaysia, Schumi did it with Jordan on his debut, and with Ferrari in the early years, and Senna did it with McLaren in 1992/1993.

    1. You are entirely correct. Button, though a better driver than Webber, is more or less in that same class, meaning nowhere near the elite.

  9. Hey Keith, just wanted to provide some feedback. I’m not sure why you moved to a separate post for every team’s driver comparison but I feel like it’s a bit much and not necessary. Combining them into one or two posts would be better IMHO. Loving the expanded coverage though. Thanks!

    1. Simply because it was producing a post that was too long and had a somewhat unfocussed discussion thread.

  10. Thanks for this page, this is where we get everything that is necessary to know for us in the race weekend.

  11. All great stuff guys, I especially like the position-change analysis and the team-specific lap time comparisons. I’m not sure if you’ll be interested, but I’ve been posting my own broad-based lap time analysis and thought it might augment the material posted above. The Malaysia analysis can be found here: http://bprf1.com/2010/04/07/inside-the-race-round-3-malaysian-grand-prix/

    Thanks again for all that you do!

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