Lewis Hamilton took a commanding win in Malaysia ahead of Nico Rosberg in the team's first 1-2 since the
1950's! Hamilton had a great start from pole and never looked like losing it. Whilst Rosberg seeming struggled in comparison spending the whole race fending off third placed Sebastian Vettel. Alonso finished fourth and Force India's Nico Hulkenberg was fifth.
Lewis Hamilton dedicated the win to the families of the passengers lost in the disappearance of flight MH370 which was remembered with a minute silence prior to the race..
"Incredible, After such a difficult weekend and a long winter, I just feel so grateful. I'd really like to dedicate it to the families, after such a tragedy three weeks ago. The team were spot on with all the pit stops and calling and timing, the info was spot on. What a great car, what a great job from everyone."
Rosberg said: "I got a great start and that allowed me to get into second place. In Turn Three I got a bit sideways, plenty of action there - but it worked out well. Then it was just a question of trying to keep up with Lewis, but he was a bit too quick today."
Red Bull's Ricciardo was looking like getting a great result running in fourth place as he came in for his third pit stop on
lap 40, But Red Bull bodged the pit-stop and his left-front wheel had not been secured properly. This meant he stopped in the middle of the pit lane and had to wait for his mechanics to run down and push him back to rectify there mistake, This gave him a 10 second stop go penalty and a 10 place grid drop for this weeks
Bahrain GP as the FIA look to clamp down on 'unsafe release' from the pitlane. The bad luck continued for the Australian as shortly afterwards his front wing failed as he clipped a curb which meant him having to come into the pits for repairs, Eventually the team retired the car as they were no where near the points.
Rain looked likely towards the end of the race but a few drops did not turn into the usual tropical storm many were expecting
Force India tried a different strategy with Hulkenburg in his fight with Alonso by doing one less stop however Alonso was much faster and managed to pull back the time the German had saved. On lap 52 Alonso made the pass. The other Force India of Perez failed to take the start leaving Hulkenburg the team's only hope for points.
Jenson Button showed us that Ron Dennis's promise of finding an extra 0.5 seconds since Melbourne was a pretty bad claim to make with the team sliding backwards if anything. Jenson finished sixth in front of the Williams drivers. His team mate was Ninth as K-Mag needed a new front wing early on after punting Raikkonen's Ferrari on the second lap. This earned him a five second penalty. He was over enthusiastic but its a steep learning curve for the young Dane.
The Williams of Felipe Massa was 7th and Bottas finished 8th, in the closing stages of the race we heard 'Valterri is faster than you' over the radio as the team urged Massa to let the young Finn through to challenge Button. Massa ignored the call and one can only imagine how this call would have made Masssa feel. One thing is for sure, whilst the world was congratulating Massa for ignoring team orders, think back to last year when the world was hating Vettel for exactly the same thing!
Magnussen's incident with Kimi Raikkonen caused a puncture on the Ferrari and dropped the Finn to the back of the field. He recovered to finish 12th, behind Toro Rosso's Daniil Kvyat, who took the final point in 10th for the second race in a row, and Lotus's Romain Grosjean.
Malaysian Grand Prix, Sepang, Race, 56 Laps
1. Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1m40m25.974s
2. Nico Rosberg Mercedes +17.313s
3. Sebastian Vettel Red Bull +24.534s
4. Fernando Alonso Ferrari +35.992s
5. Nico Hulkenberg Force India +47.199s
6. Jenson Button McLaren +1m23.691s
7. Felipe Massa Williams +1m25.076s
8. Valtteri Bottas Williams +1m25.537s
9. Kevin Magnussen McLaren +1 lap
10. Daniil Kvyat Toro Rosso +1 lap
11. Romain Grosjean Lotus +1 lap
12. Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari +1 lap
13. Kamui Kobayashi Caterham +1 lap
14. Marcus Ericsson Caterham +2 laps
15. Max Chilton Marussia +2 laps
