exciting qualifying for sepang

[ ferrari, sepang, felipe massa, formula 1 ]

it must have been the best qualifying sepang has ever seen. plenty of action, and plenty of surprises. i'm sure the crowds would have been pleased. speaking of which, it also must have been the most populous qualifying for sepang. sepang is known for being empty during qualifying, but not this year though. this year, the crowds came.

that's good news. i'm happy for sic and the organizers, for after eight years, they may have finally done something right to draw in the people. they better, especially with neighbour singapore knocking on the f1-host door. i didn't bother to check out the price this year, but i do know that ticket sales were slow. to be fair, malaysians do like to do things slow. always waiting for free tickets and best bargains, perhaps.

as for the qualifying, it was surprisingly exciting. cars were eager to get out, even after they have done a week of testing here, so we did get actions for much of the hour. we didn't see much of the spyker, scuderia tr, and the super aguri, but as usual they took up most of the last few spots. among them though, is rubens (the one who said he could beat michael schumacher anytime of the day). well, maybe they need to work harder as jenson wasn't any better. so, honda is in deep shit.

horrible result for the renault as well. the renault mechanics' reactions said it all as they were utterly disappointed for becoming losers from champions, and sepang has confirmed it. best pals david coulthard and alex wurz didn't fare very well too and are stuck close to one another behind, so we might be seeing some budding actions again tomorrow.

bmw and toyota continued to finish in the top ten. good job, but just filling the gaps and nothing very exciting from them. ex-teammates nico and webber also finished in the top ten, with nico doing better in the car that webber left from. i do wish that nico continues to beat webber, nothing will please me more.

finally, the mclaren and the ferrari. it was really their show this afternoon as there's nothing between the two of them. neck and neck, from q1 to q3. when the rain threatened the show, the teams carried out their performances flawlessly, hitting the timesheet early on despite having full tanks. they continued to run completely mix of strategies, between the rival teams and even between respective teammates. bridgestone's white band on the tyres helped us to identify which compound they were using, and i got to say, it was very entertaining and informative.

but there could be only one pole sitter, and that belongs to felipe massa. he stole the pole from alonso, who had beaten kimi raikkonen at the very last second, with a 0.3s advantange. good stuff from massa. hamilton, who was shown to be disappointed with himself, took fourth. ferrari, mclaren, ferrari, mclaren. :)

so brace yourself for a potentially exciting malaysian gp tomorrow. with the element of rain, it could be chaotic and unpredictable. if there's no rain, then the heat will put the test on the engines. the beginning of the race, as usual, will decide everything. on a track like sepang, it's usually p1 to p1. if massa manages to keep his first spot, he could potentially gallops his way to victory. but so could alonso, kimi, and hamilton - if they manage to pass.



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melbourne gp... yawn