McLaren went into the Malaysian Grand Prix in confident frame of mind, but even Fernando Alonso said it was a surprise as he and Lewis Hamilton turned on a crushing demonstration in which they left Ferrari for dead in the opening stages and swept to the team’s first one-two result since Brazil 2005. At the start Alonso sprinted alongside polesitter Felipe Massa and was able to take the lead, but in another brilliant display Hamilton dived inside Kimi Raikkonen to #### third place before going round the outside of Felipe Massa in Turn Two to move up to second. The Englishman then contained the Ferrari challenge, earning his spurs with a faultless drive, as his team leader went for the win.
Fernando Alonso: "I think one of our chances to win the race was to be first after the first corner and thanks to a good start, thanks to the car, I was able to arrive side-by-side into the first corner. I was on the inside part so I managed to be first and to be sure, to have my team-mate second makes things easier, for sure, to open a gap."
Lewis Hamilton: "That was the most difficult race I’ve ever had. To see two Ferraris behind you, two red blobs in the mirrors, knowing that they’re slightly lighter than you and slightly quicker than you, it’s very, very difficult to keep them behind. Felipe had a couple of moves, I think he tried into turn four a couple of times, but fortunately I was able to trick him into out-braking himself and get my car stopped and it was very fortunate that I was able to cut across and get back in front of him, to the point where he eventually went off, so I apologise for that but at the end of the day, we got the points, so it doesn’t really matter. And then I had Kimi hunting me down for most of the race and phew, I just can’t explain to you how tough it was.
It’s extremely hot in the cockpit, sweating a lot, I ran out of water halfway through the race, I didn’t have enough water and so it was tricky, it was tricky, and I was getting hotter and hotter throughout the race. It would have been nice to have been a bit further ahead in the last stint but I had to keep pushing to the last lap and that’s what I did. I didn’t make any mistakes. I think the team did a fantastic job preparing the car this weekend. They work extremely long hours, I think longer than most other teams and also back to the factory: you’ve done a fantastic job so well done."
Kimi Raikkonen: "Of course I’m happy to get some points but a bit disappointed how the race ended up. The whole weekend was quite difficult but I think we needed to compromise too many things and we lost too much speed because of those things, but it was one of those weekends where we needed to do what was most important and try to get as many points as we could. We just didn’t have enough speed today and couldn’t do much more.
Ferrari faced an afternoon of trying to salvage something from what was beginning to look like a disaster, for Massa failed on both occasions when he tried to oust Hamilton. Each time he was repassed easily by the British driver, and on the second occasion the Brazilian slid into the gravel on the exit to Turn Four and lost a crucial place to Nick Heidfeld’s BMW Sauber.
It's Ferrari vs McLaren up front. The animals came in two by two at the front of the grid for the Malaysian Grand Prix on Saturday, as the final session of qualifying developed into a last-lap shoot-out between McLaren and Ferrari. Kimi Raikkonen was the first to cross the start/finish line, temporarily snatching the coveted pole position with 1m 35.479s for Ferrari. But McLaren’s Fernando Alonso grabbed that away immediately, following him across the line mere feet behind and stopping the clocks in 1m 35.310s. Lewis Hamilton was next across in 1m 36.045s to secure fourth, but then Felipe Massa put things beyond reach with 1m 35.043s to restore Ferrari’s supremacy. The closeness of the times, however, and the fact that they were all set on Bridgestone’s softer compound, bodes well for a great race on Sunday.
Clearly there were some unhappy people out there - notably the Renault and Honda drivers but the potential battle between Ferrari and McLaren in what is always a very tough encounter should make for a memorable 2007 Malaysian Grand Prix.
A total of 24 drivers were in action at Sepang on Friday. Here are reports from three veteran drivers on their early progress in preparation for the Malaysian Grand Prix.
"It's simply the case that we have had a very bad day. To end the day where I am is obviously extremely frustrating. We were not able to improve the braking stability issues that we have, so all I can say is that we need to look at what we have learned today and try to find a solution that can get us back to where we were during the test last week."
David Coulthard, Red Bull (15th, 1m 37.203s):
"There was an issue with brake pedal clearance in the steering column of my car this afternoon, which meant we had to make some modifications during the session. For some reason it was catching, so we lost a little bit of time and confidence adjusting that. Also, there were some sensor issues which affected performance a little. The track conditions seemed to be pretty much the same as when we were testing here last week."
“That was a reasonable day and good preparation for the rest of the weekend. It’s obviously hot here and the conditions push the drivers to the limit. But I like the heat and last week’s testing was a good preparation for the weekend. Despite so many cars running here, the circuit was still very low on grip today. Still, we made it through our programme of work with no problems. We are comfortable with the track and the tyres were also working well. It’s difficult to judge true performance after the first race but our goal is to get two cars into the top ten again and hopefully to take more points.”
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