Sebastian Vettel completed his second consecutive victory of the season at the 2011 Malaysian Grand Prix ahead of McLaren's Jenson Button and Lotus Renault's Nick Heidfeld who returns to a podium finish after a long long time.The world champion led every lap of the race with the exception of the ones around the pit stops and reacted well to pressure from the McLarens throughout the race although he had to cope with three pit stops, drops of rain and no KERS power boost for the final 28 laps.
During the press conference he commented:
"Another great day. The start was crucial. I thought I had a really good start and then I saw Lewis lining up behind me quickly. Then I was surprised going into turn one as all of a sudden I saw something black in my mirrors. I knew it was a Lotus and then I realised it was Nick. Obviously for the first stint it was a good thing to happen as I could pull away lap by lap. I think the grand prix was different to what we saw two weeks ago especially with tyres going off. ...I think it was quite difficult and it was tight with Lewis but I always had a couple of seconds in hand so we could control that – but still it was never easy until the last stint. Lewis had a problem, I don’t know what happened to him but I realised Jenson was behind and I could comfortably control the gap so with not too many laps to go it was quite good. Very pleased as I said. I love what I do and I don’t think I can be happier at this stage."
The victory was made even sweeter when both of his potential title rivals Lewis Hamilton in 8th and Fernando Alonso in 6th due to their collision that leaded to a 20s penalty for each of them. Hamilton was Vettel's closest opposition early in the race but his pace dropped off dramatically after he pitted for hard tyres at his second stop. With ten laps to go he was running in third but the car was struggling for grip and he fell into the clutches of his long opponent Fernando Alonso.
Although the Spaniard experienced a failed DRS, closed on the McLaren in every lap until the turn four on lap 46 where he positioned himself in Hamilton's slipstream but struggled with understeer as he did so and clobbered the McLaren's rear tyre with his front wing endplate. The resulting damage ruined Alonso's race and added to Hamilton's problems, forcing both cars to pit and drop back to their final finishing positions. Additionally, both drivers were penalised with 20 seconds for their contact. Hamilton's penalty was for changing his line more than once while defending position and dropped him to eighth behind Kamui Kobayashi. Alonso held onto sixth.
Hamilton commented at Autosport
"I knew I was going to get a penalty, I'm not surprised. I was in with the stewards, so I anticipated it. I always try to assume the worst-case scenario. It's only one spot, and it's not really made me feel any worse than how the weekend has gone anyway. It's racing. I'm not going to argue or disagree with the penalty. From my side I'm not allowed to move more than once. Do I class it as dangerous? No, but that's the rule.
Twenty seconds is not such a bad penalty for it. As for Fernando, he hit me, he got a 20-second penalty, but it didn't really do anything to him. It doesn't exactly work out as a penalty, but again, that's racing."
Alonso commented as well:
"It doesn't change positions, so there is no a big drama. I finished sixth in the race anyway, and it was a race incident. I tried to overtake, we touched each other and unfortunately I broke the front wing and had to pit again, and I lost the podium possibility. But in the next race I will try again."
Meanwhile, Jenson Button and Nick Heidfeld, who made a surprising start up to 2nd position took full advantage too to end up on the podium.
Button got past Hamilton at his third and final pit stop after closing on his team-mate in the previous stint, but didn't have the pace to trouble Vettel at the end of the race.
"Yeah, it was a really confusing race in a way, trying to understand the pit-stops and whether it was worth looking after tyres or not through the stints. So it was pretty tricky... A fun race. A couple of really good battles. Happy to come away with a second. I had the team telling me to back it off and look after the tyres but in a racer’s mind you want to push as hard as you can as you want to try and catch the leader. Even though it was not really on you have still got to give it a go, so I had a lot of fun out there and great to get 18 points."
Heidfeld had been running second but fell back down the order early on as he pitted later for his first set of tyres. He came back through the field but had to hold off Mark Webber in the closing stages as the Red Bull recovered from a terrible start.
"The start was fantastic. Good fun. In Australia I made up many positions on the start but I didn’t expect the same happening when starting from sixth rather than 18th or whatever it was in Australia. I found myself actually fighting with Sebastian who watched me in the mirror and just paced himself to keep me behind. After that I did the best I could but Sebastian was quite a bit quicker... Our first pit-stop was not perfect, lost one or two positions, and after that I was a bit lucky with Fernando (Alonso) who lost his front wing or damaged his front wing and had to do an extra pit-stop. I had some good pace later on, especially on the prime tyres, similar to the McLarens probably and had to defend from Mark towards the end when he came flying by. But I think once he was behind me his tyres also started to degrade. I used my KERS just in places where I needed to defend and it is great to come third. Second podium for Lotus Renault. It is a great step forward from last season."
Webber had another disappointing race as his KERS was broken from the start and it cost him dearly off the line as he fell back to 10th and overtaking manoevres to the cars infront of him caused him 4 pitstop changes compared to the top leaders' three stops. It looked like he had the pace to make a move stick on Heidfeld at the end but his DRS failed to be activated on the penultimate lap. Felipe Massa finished 10.5 seconds behind Webber in fifth after a fairly quiet defensive race.
Rounding out the final two points positions behind Hamilton was Mercedes' Michael Schumacher and Force India's Paul di Resta.
Although odds were against them, both HRT's succeded to qualify of the race - if this can be seen as a success but retired early from the race again.
