Button Wins for 2nd Time in Malaysian Grand Prix

RAIN RAIN GO AWAY

WET WET WET

Button Wins for 2nd Time in Malaysian Grand Prix ( NEW YORK TIMES EXCERPT)

QUOTE : "I’ve experienced some incredible downpours before in Sepang. Here, the rain is far from normal. When the Heavens open, everything disappears under water in no time." Nick Heidfeld.


By BRAD SPURGEON
Published: April 5, 2009
KUALA LUMPUR — Under a dark sky with lighting flashing and thunder clapping and torrential rain flooding the track on Sunday, officials red-flagged the Malaysian Grand Prix only one hour into the race for safety reasons.
Then, for nearly an hour the cars and drivers sat parked on the starting grid and they and spectators waited expectantly for the rain to stop, while wondering if the race would restart. The rain got weaker, but the sky became darker as evening approached, and 52 minutes later, race control announced that the race would not restart.
Sitting in his car with his helmet off, Jenson Button, the winner of the race the week before, broke into a huge smile: He had just won the second race of the season. Nick Heidfeld was second in a BMW Sauber, and Timo Glock was third in a Toyota.
“Wow, what a race — we had everything in that race,” Button said, adding that it was getting so dark he could not see, and despite driving at a walking pace at the end, he could barely keep the car on the track. “I would rather have had a boring race.”
It was the second dull ending in two races this season, however. The first race, the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne a week earlier, ended at slow speed behind a safety car after an accident three laps before the end.
The race Sunday ran only 32 of the projected 56 laps. Because not even 75 percent of the race had been run, only half points are awarded to drivers and teams. It was only the fifth time in the series’ 59-year history that there has been a half-point race. The last time was the Australian Grand Prix at Adelaide in 1991.
But it was clearly impossible to continue. The race began at 5 p.m. to reach European television audiences in the morning. But with no lighting around the circuit, it became too dark. Although the television images of the cars parked on the grid under the rain looked bright as daylight, it was actually dark as night.
The drivers all agreed it was the right call to stop the race.
“It was the right decision,” Button said. “I would love to have had the 10 points, but this was the right thing. Some people will say, ‘We didn’t see the whole race and it’s disappointing.’ But we have to think of safety. There are limits to what we can do.”
Heidfeld agreed. “It felt like walking speed and still we were spinning off,” he said.
But if the weather and race timing brought bad news, it was indeed an exciting, wild race while it lasted. Button started at pole position but got off to a bad start and immediately lost the lead of the race to Nico Rosberg in a Williams, who had started in fourth position and skirted the two Toyotas of Timo Glock and Jarno Trulli before passing Button.
There was much overtaking thanks to new rules that permit drivers to pass more easily. But another, odd factor also helped create a lot of action: With the rain imminent, drivers had to decide when they should put on rain tires. Some drivers chose intermediate rain tires — with a little tread — while others chose the full wet tires, which have deeper treads.
But the full wets are slower, and everything came down to timing. Heidfeld, who had started 10th, owed his second-place finish entirely to the tire gamble.
“It started to rain and it was clear it would rain heavily and so we went on extra wets and I tried to preserve my tires,” Heidfeld said. “The team told me heavy rain was coming, and it didn’t happen, didn’t happen. They called me in and, just as they did, it started raining and I said ‘I’m staying out.’”
Button too said his victory had come down to good strategy and observing what other drivers did with their tires.
Indeed, after his bad start Button became dominant once he retook the lead after 17 laps when the two cars in front of him, Rosberg and Trulli, made pit stops.
Ferrari, on the other hand, failed miserably. After Lap 18, Kimi Raikkonen, the Ferrari driver, was in fifth position and made a pit stop and was the first to put on rain tires. It was far too early. Raikkonen immediately dropped down to 15th position and continued to lose ground on the leaders, as the rain did not begin to fall until Lap 22.
At that point, all the other cars made a pit stop for rain tires. But Raikkonen was so far back he remained there, and by the time the race was stopped, he was still in 14th position.
The last 10 laps of the race were a palpitating display of the kind of racing fans have been asking for: Heated battles for position with drivers passing each other incessantly. Lewis Hamilton in a McLaren Mercedes and Mark Webber in a Red Bull carried on a long battle on Laps 24 and 25, which Webber eventually won.
But by Lap 31 the rain had increased so much and the sky had become so dark that several of the cars began spinning off the track. Sebastian Vettel in a Red Bull spun out, and his car sat in a dangerous position at the edge of the track.