Watched on TV
No luck needed for the Irish in Malaysia
The third stop on the ten-round A1GP world tour was Malaysia, or more specifically, Sepang International Circuit, for the fourth season in a row. Seasons 1-3, with the old car, provided action, thrills and spills. So, would the new Powered by Ferrari cars do so as well?
That was the question on my mind as I awoke at 5:30am on Sunday morning to watch the racing, after two days of practice and qualifying building up to race day. After France and Great Britain looked very quick on Friday, topping the timesheets between them in all 3 sessions, qualifying took on a very different look. A1GP have implemented a new rule, supposedly to make the races more exciting (although I think it’s a fake way of generating excitement which is not needed), whereby each team can use powerboost for 1 full lap in qualifying, out of the 4 flying laps. Mexico proved how quick it could be in the morning, when David Garza rose from lower midfield obscurity to the top of the timesheets after testing the system out with new tyres.
When qualy came around, the grid for the sprint race saw Neel Jani, the “Sepangmeister”, take pole (with boost) ahead of Duval and Bamber (also using boost). Italy and Mexico used their boost to take top-10 grid positions. As for feature qualifying, Carroll and Watts were 1-2 on the grid, with Daniel Morad using his boost to perfection to take 3rd. Duval, Bamber and Jani were way down (9th, 15th and 16th).
The start of the sprint race was crazy, Marco Andretti unable to avoid Karthikeyan at the rolling start and smashing into the back of the Indian machine. Then Felipe Guimaraes (a personal favourite of mine) hit Andretti, with both the USA and Brazil cars airborne for a second or two. And “Big Phil” summed it up quite well when he described his weekend as “shit”.
On the restart, Watts couldn’t get away, an ECU failure robbing him of likely points for GBR (boo!). It was a simple win for the Swiss, while New Zealand forcefully passed France in the pits but was forced to give the place back (although I thought it was a little harsh). Further behind, good old Zauggi continued the tradition of Red Bull drivers causing havoc at Sepang by clobbering Fairuz Fauzy but, for reasons unknown, wasn’t penalised despite the Hammer being penalised for the same thing a year ago. Malaysia had to limp back to the pits with a puncture which was bad for fans of the yellow car.
The feature race began with a bang, Carroll getting away perfectly from pole and Morad following him, Watts having had a very poor start. Behind, the Swiss car spun and stalled mid-way around the first lap, while the Netherlands and India were involved in a seemingly innocuous collision. However, the Dutch car was forced to serve a puzzling drive through penalty.
Filipe Albuquerque passed Morad on the first lap and, a few laps in, both Morad and Watts ran wide while battling. As he rejoined, Watts became sandwiched between Guimaraes and Duval, and couldn’t avoid hitting the back of Duval’s car, breaking his front wing and puncturing Duval’s tyre. Both Watts and Duval rejoined but, unfortunately, Watts had to retire later on with more tech problems. No points for GBR, despite looking very quick – a complete contrast to the excellent Chengdu weekend.
What else happened in the race? Well, Carroll put in an absolutely dominant drive, beating Albuquerque by 15+ seconds. Young Marco managed to take the USA car onto the podium in 3rd, and looked exhausted afterwards, while Australia took an excellent 4th thanks to the “Pit-Stop Kings” putting in two excellent stops. Zaugg was 5th, followed by Bamber and Big Phil G. Bleekemolen finished 8th after the drive through, China were 9th with Tung and Fauzy finished 10th, although he could have been on the podium. While running 3rd earlier on, he entered the pits after hearing a command to pit on his radio. Turns out it was another team’s radio frequency, and when he came in to pit, he was sent on his way again. He passed Piscopo with a brainy move to get into the points, and 10th was a good return after an extra pit-stop, although the locals would have loved the yellow car in the top 3.
So, overall, another exciting race weekend from the A1 boys, with overtaking clearly possible in the new Ferrari-powered machine and position changes going on throughout the field (except at the front, where Jani and Carroll dominated). The only bad thing?
We have to wait 9 weeks until the next race…
By KMJ
Nice article KMJ