Alonso wins rain-hit Malaysian Grand Prix

SEPANG, Malaysia - The Associated Press

REUTERS photo

Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso won a dramatic Formula One Malaysian Grand Prix yesterday, giving the Italian team one of its more unlikely victories in its long history.

In a race that was stopped for 51 minutes due to rain, Alonso looked like being overtaken by Sauber’s Sergio Perez until the Mexican driver ran off the track with six laps to go, giving the Ferrari enough of a gap to win.

The Ferrari team had been considered to be in crisis after a poor start to the season, but a superb display of wet-weather driving gave two-time world champion Alonso a memorable victory. Perez’s second place was Sauber’s best-ever race finish.

Pole-sitter Lewis Hamilton of McLaren finished third ahead of Red Bull’s Mark Webber and Lotus’ Kimi Raikkonen.

“Its an unbelievable result, a great job from the team,” Alonso said. “Its a big surprise to win. We were not competitive in Australia and we were not competitive (in qualifying) here.”

Perez’s delight with his first podium finish was tempered by the knowledge it could have been a win.
“Today a win was possible,” Perez said. “I was catching Fernando and I knew I had to get him soon because (on) the sectors with high speed I was losing the front tires.

“I touched the curb and I went onto the dirty side of the track. It was completely wet and I lost the win.”

Sergio Perez became the first Mexican driver on a podium in 41 years since Pedro Rodriguez came second in 1971.

Hamilton finished third from pole for a second straight week, but was glad to have avoided the trouble that struck some championship rivals.

“We would have liked to have more points this weekend but I can’t really complain - I’m on the podium for the second race in a row.” Williams’ Bruno Senna finished sixth in his best F1 finish, Force India’s Paul di Resta and Nico Hulkenberg were seventh and ninth, respectively, separated by Toro Rosso’s Jules Vergne. Mercedes’ Michael Schumacher took the last point for tenth place.

The race finished in gathering gloom at 6:48 p.m. local time (1048 GMT) due to the long delay caused by a tropical downpour that started after just six laps.

Immediately after the restart, there was a flurry of pitstops as drivers changed from full wet to intermediate tires, and Alonso emerged in the lead.

He built his advantage up to 7.7 seconds by lap 30 of 56 but as his tires began to wear, Perez closed in, cutting the gap to 1.3 seconds before both pitted again to switch to dry weather tires.

Perez sliced Alonso’s lead to just half a second with seven laps to run, but critically ran wide at the final turn onto the back straight, giving the Spaniard enough breathing space to hang on for victory, 2.2 seconds ahead of the Sauber driver.

Sauber had notched six third place finishes in its history, but this was its best result.

World champion Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull was running in fourth place for most of the latter half of the race, but picked up a puncture when he collided with HRT’s Narain Karthikeyan with nine laps to go, and finished 11th.

McLaren’s Jenson Button also clipped Karthikeyan earlier in the race, dropping him to last before he recovered to 14th.

Drivers’ standings

1. Fernando Alonso (Spain) Ferrari 35 points
2. Lewis Hamilton (Britain) McLaren 30
3. Jenson Button (Britain) McLaren 25
4. Mark Webber (Australia) Red Bull 24
5. Sergio Perez (Mexico) Sauber 22
6. Sebastian Vettel (Germany) Red Bull 18
7. Kimi Raikkonen (Finland) Renault 16
8. Bruno Senna (Brazil) Williams 8
9. Kamui Kobayashi (Japan) Sauber 8
10. Paul Di Resta (Britain) Force India 7
11. Jean-Eric Vergne (France) Toro Rosso 4
12. Daniel Ricciardo (Australia) Toro Rosso 2
13. Nico Huelkenberg (Germany) Force India 2
14. Michael Schumacher (Germany) Mercedes GP 1