Malaysian F1 Grand Prix Victory to Alonso

Battling inclement weather, yesterday’s Malaysian F1 Grand Prix provided plenty of auto racing action, with Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso taking the checkered flag, followed by Sauber’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton, with Red Bull’s Mark Webber and Lotus’ Kimi Raikkonen taking fourth and fifth place.

Battling inclement weather, yesterday’s Malaysian F1 Grand Prix provided plenty of auto racing action, with Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso taking the checkered flag, followed by Sauber’s Sergio Perez and McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton, with Red Bull’s Mark Webber and Lotus’ Kimi Raikkonen taking fourth and fifth place. With his latest victory, Alonso has moved into fifth place on the career victories list – one place ahead of legendary three-time world champion Jackie Stewart. In a post-race interview, Alonso congratulated the team for doing a great job, and noted that in light of their performance in Australia, and in the qualifying rounds in Malaysia, he considered the win to be a big surprise.

While the performance by seasoned drivers Alonso, Hamilton, Raikkonen and Webber was impressive, the second-place win by 22-year-old Sergio Perez was considered to be spectacular, with his enthusiasm dampened only slightly by the thought that he could have grabbed first place. Perez has been reported as saying that a win had been possible as he caught up to Alonso, but he touched the curb and went onto the wet side of the track causing him to lose time. Perez went on to say that although they would have liked to have gathered more points this weekend, he was nevertheless on the podium for the second race in a row and so had no reason to complain.

The Malaysian F1 Grand Prix was interrupted by a tropical downpour just six laps into the race. Light rain fell in the closing laps, with the race coming to an end at 06h48 local time. Following the restart, drivers changed from full wet to intermediate tires with pit teams working frantically to get the drivers back on the track. Alonzo took the lead, building his advantage to 7.7 seconds. Perez was just 1.3 seconds behind Alonso when both went into the pits to change to dry-weather tires. Excitement mounted as Perez was just a half a second behind Alonzo with only seven laps to go. Just as it appeared the young Mexican driver may take the lead, Perez made contact with a slippery curb allowing Alonso the opportunity to take the checkered flag, with Perez following 2.2 seconds behind him to clinch second place.