F1: Malaysia 2011 brings surprises and SOP

The story of this year's Malaysian Grand Prix may well be that of suffering from not being the third race of the season: the cancellation (officially postponement) of the Bahrain GP led to teams still scrambling for technical improvements and reliability. Clearly, the limited pre-season testing - and no in-season testing - means that cars which are built to a substantially different specification to last year's are still in a development phase. With aero packages still not fully optimised, cars and drivers not fully familiar with the new tyres (although the same compounds were used in Malaysia as in Melbourne) and the impact of the adjustable rear wing and the re-introduction of KERS (which must be fitted so avoiding a weight advantage even if it is not used) plus many other material changes has been compounded by teams trying new and radical ideas - such as Williams' tiny new gearbox run at a highly acute angle.

Red Bull has, so far, not been able to make KERS work properly. Abandoned for Melbourne, both Vettel and Webber expected to use it in Malaysia. But Webber's packed up before the race started and Vettel's broke a few laps into the race, forcing him to turn it off.

But that did not seem to trouble either driver: Vettel won, managing the gap to the nearest challenger all the way through the race. Webber secured fastest lap towards the end of the race on his way to a fourth, hard on the heels of Heidfeld who collected Renault's second podium of the season.

Hamilton was Vettel's main threat after the first round of pit stops but could not get his car set up for the harder tyres. Unfortunately, due to an error in qualifying, he flat-spotted a soft set, leaving him with only two sets instead of the three he had hoped for. On the other side of the garage, Button found the soft tyres suited him and his car. Hamilton's race turned into a day to forget: battling with Heidfeld, Webber and Alonso, he had to make a fourth stop after going agricultural. That dropped him to seventh - but worse was to come: after the race, he was penalised 20 seconds for weaving while defending against Alonso, resulting in a final 8th place.

Alonso was also penalised 20 seconds: in his case for ploughing into Hamilton while challenging for third. It was a double whammy because the collision forced him into the pits for a front wing change. Even so, he finished sixth, one place behind his team-mate Massa.

Schumacher trundled in ninth and Rosberg 12th: the cars didn't break, the rear wings worked as expected but the simple truth is that the cars were just not quick enough.

Petrov hit a kerb, launched into the air and then landed hard breaking the steering column but his team-mate Heidfeld redeemed himself after a poor performance in Melbourne to take third place entirely on merit after some hard racing with, amongst others, Hamilton.

Sauber did not disgrace themselves with an illegal car again but Perez had an unfortunate incident: he hit debris that had fallen from Buemi's Torro Rosso. The debris hit the undertray with such force that it sent a shock wave through the car: that set off a fire extinguisher and the car's safety system turned off all electrical power causing his retirement. Kobayashi again showed the pace of the first race to finish seventh.

Buemi's day turned to dust with a ten second stop-go penalty for speeding in the pit lane - his speed limiter failed. Then bits started to fall off. Even so, he came in 13th with his team mate, Alguersuari one place behind with no clue as to why his car was so much slower than his team mate's and why his tyres wore out so much faster.

Force India brought their cars home in tandem, too: di Resta in tenth resulted in another point as he lost ninth to Schumacher - who had newer tyres - as the race came towards a close. Sutil on the other hand, smacked into the back of Barrichello three laps in and had to stop for a new front wing ruining the team's strategy. Even so, he was 11th.

Team Lotus saw Kovalainen finish 15th: that might not look like much but he was catching Alguersuari when the race ended - and battling with Torro Rosso and other midfield teams is the Lotus aim for the first half of the season. Trulli's technical woes continued: his anti-stall ruined his start, then he slid off at turn one on cold tyres after a stop and then his clutch broke.

It's the last three teams that provide fascination; Virgin's Glock was 16th. His team mate, D'Ambrosio, broke his car when he hit a kerb hard and the electrical system shut down. But he made it to lap 43 which the team will find heartening.

HRT got both cars into the race, comfortably within the 107% limit. But their almost total lack of testing and the lost chance to use Melbourne as a test session meant that faults arose: Even so, Liuzzi made it to lap 47 before his rear wing developed a fault that could not be repaired and Karthikeyan retired on lap 15 when his car began to overheat.

The big news was that, at the bottom of the table, is Williams. After Sutil rammed Barrichello causing a puncture, he had a hydraulics failure on lap 23. Maldono struggled with an engine misfire that saw him retire after only nine laps. Worse, they were a long way off the pace.

Button thinks he could have done better if he had not made an error of judgement in taking off most of the front wing downforce on the grid. That, he said, created "massive understeer" and caused excess wear to the rear tyres. At each stop, he had more and more downforce added back in and the car kept "getting better and better." Typically, he said "I just got the balance wrong."

Hamilton, for the second time in two races, found his undertray damaged - this time when Alonso hit him. But his principle complaint was that a mistake in the pits cost him time. In reality, though, his biggest problem was that he failed to capitalise on his P2 in qualifying and was shuffled down into the pack in the first couple of corners.

Tyres proved to be a significant factor: some using more in practice and qualifying than was - it later turned out - prudent. But with the expectation of heavy rain, the gamble to use up more soft-sets so as to get qualifying pace was reasonable. Even the mighty Ross Brawn moaned that Mercedes had been relying on the likelihood of rain to provide an equalising benefit.

Hamilton rounded on his team after the race: he blamed strategy but his day was not helped by a pit-lane mistake that kept him stationary for three seconds longer than he should have been. The strategy failure was to use a part-worn hard tyre for the final stint but it degraded faster than expected, causing Hamilton to make an additional stop.