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25px Flag of Malaysia  2008 Malaysian Grand Prix
Race details
Race 2 of 18 in the 2008 Formula One season
Sepang.svg
Date March 23, 2008
Official name X Petronas Malaysian Grand Prix
Location Sepang International Circuit
Sepang, Selangor, Malaysia
Course Permanent racing facility
5.543 km (3.376 mi)
Distance 56 laps, 310.408 km (189.056 mi)
Weather Sunny, partly cloudy
Pole position
Driver 25px Brazil Felipe Massa Ferrari
Time 1:35.748
Fastest lap
Driver 25px Germany Nick Heidfeld BMW Sauber
Time 1:35.366 on lap 55
Podium
First 25px Finland Kimi Räikkönen Ferrari
Second 25px Flag of Poland Robert Kubica BMW Sauber
Third 25px Finland Heikki Kovalainen McLaren-Mercedes

The 2008 Malaysian Grand Prix (formally the X Petronas Malaysian Grand Prix) was a Formula One motor race held on March 23, 2008 at the Sepang International Circuit, Sepang, Malaysia. It was the 2nd race of the 2008 Formula One season. The race, contested over 56 laps, was won by Kimi Räikkönen for the Ferrari team after starting from second position. Robert Kubica finished second in a BMW Sauber car, with Heikki Kovalainen third in a McLaren.

It was an all-Ferrari front row, as Felipe Massa started from pole position, with Räikkönen alongside. The McLarens of Kovalainen and Lewis Hamilton had been expected to line up behind the Ferraris on the second row, but both drivers were given five-place grid penalties post-qualifying for holding up Nick Heidfeld and Fernando Alonso respectively, dropping them to eighth and ninth on the grid. Massa cut across his Ferrari team-mate at the start, to stop him overtaking on the run to turn one. The top four of Massa, Räikkönen, Kubica and Mark Webber held station until the first round of pit stops. Räikkönen took the lead after these stops and after Massa retired following a spin into the gravel, the Finn cruised to a victory of nearly twenty seconds. Championship leader Hamilton could only finish in fifth position, after a tardy first stop on lap 19, with his McLaren team encountering a problem on his front right tyre and lost ground while trying to pass Webber.

Despite his fifth position, Hamilton kept the Drivers' Championship lead with 14 points, closely followed by Räikkönen and Heidfeld on 11. In the Constructors' Championship, McLaren also kept their lead, with their five-point lead from Australia staying intact. BMW Sauber moved into second place on 19, with Ferrari in third on 11.

Report[]

Background[]

The Grand Prix was contested by 22 drivers, in 11 teams of two.[1] The teams, also known as "constructors", were Ferrari, McLaren-Mercedes, Renault, Honda, Force India, BMW Sauber, Toyota, Red Bull Racing, Williams, Toro Rosso and Super Aguri.[1]

Prior to the race, McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton led the Drivers' Championship with 10 points, and BMW Sauber driver Nick Heidfeld was second with 8 points. Behind them in the Drivers' Championship, Nico Rosberg was third with 6 points in a Williams, and Fernando Alonso was fourth with 5 points in a Renault. Hamilton's team-mate Heikki Kovalainen was fifth with 4 points.[2] In the Constructors' Championship, McLaren–Mercedes were leading with 14 points, five points ahead of Williams, and BMW Sauber were third with 8 points.[2]

Practice and qualifying[]

[ "This morning I lost time because of a communication problem within the team, but we made up for it in the second session. The car seems to be going well and I am pleased with the work we have done. I worked mainly on the harder tyres, but I think that even with the softs, from what we have seen, we can be competitive. It is always difficult to say where we are compared to our rivals, but I think we can face the rest of the weekend with confidence."
]

Three practice sessions were held before the race; the first was held on Friday morning and the second on Friday afternoon. Both sessions lasted 1 hour and 30 minutes with weather conditions dry throughout. The third session was held on Saturday morning and lasted an hour.[3]

David Coulthard 2008 Malaysia

David Coulthard's Red Bull RB4 suffered a worrying suspension breakage during practice; the team were allowed to compete after proving to the FIA that the cars were safe.

In the first session, Massa was fastest on a lap of 1:35.392, which was over a second faster than any of his rivals. Räikkönen ended up second, despite running out of fuel during the session, and Kovalainen ended up third, just under a tenth of a second slower than his fellow Finn.[4] Also during the session, the Red Bull Racing machine of David Coulthard suffered a track rod failure on the curb of turn 12, and forced the team to show the FIA clarification that their car design was safe for the Grand Prix, under Article 2.3 of the 2008 Formula One Technical Regulations.[5] Coulthard sat out the second practice session, which saw Hamilton top the timesheets with a lap of 1:35.055, beating Massa by 0.151 seconds, with Räikkönen a further two tenths back in third.[6] In preparation for the qualifying session, many teams put their cars on soft tyres for the third practice session. The soft tyre gives better performance than the harder type of tyre but is less durable than the harder compound.[7] Just like in Australia, the BMW of Heidfeld was fastest, setting a lap of 1:35.019, edging out the Ferraris of Räikkönen and Massa with Jarno Trulli's Toyota fourth, ending up just one-thousandth of a second behind Massa's time.[8]

Felipe Massa 2008 Malaysia 2

Felipe Massa, who took pole position in his Ferrari F2008.

[ "The first corners of my last lap went smoothly, but then there were several cars driving very slowly on their in-laps. Apparently they had no information that the qualifying was still going on. Before Turn Four I lost a lot of time because both McLarens were cruising on the racing line. I think this has cost me about two tenths of a second, which would have meant being third instead of seventh. I just couldn't drive on the line I wanted and, even more importantly, could not brake were I wanted."
]

In qualifying, Massa earned his tenth career pole position, after recording a lap of 1:35.748 during the third and final session. He was joined on the front row by team-mate Räikkönen, although the Finn's fastest time was more than half a second slower than that of Massa.[9] Third and fourth had originally gone to the McLarens of Kovalainen and Hamilton, however post-qualifying, both drivers were demoted five places on the grid for dangerous driving; having completed their flying laps, the McLaren pair and other drivers slowed to conserve fuel on their in-laps, and impeded Nick Heidfeld of BMW Sauber and Fernando Alonso of Renault whilst they were both on flying laps.[10] This led to a new rule being introduced for Bahrain giving drivers a set time to complete in-laps in.[11] McLaren's misfortune was to the gain of the Toyota of Trulli, both victims of the impeding (Heidfeld and Alonso), Heidfeld's team-mate Kubica and Webber's Red Bull machine. Timo Glock rounded out the top ten in his Toyota.[9]

Race[]

Kimi Raikkonen 2008 Malaysia 2

Kimi Räikkönen won the race by nearly twenty seconds, ahead of Robert Kubica.

At the start Massa came across the track to prevent Räikkönen from overtaking him. Further back, Hamilton was able to move up to fifth and Webber up to fourth. Also on the first lap, Sébastien Bourdais spun out of the race, causing a chain reaction between the Williams of Nico Rosberg and Glock's Toyota, destroying the front wing of his Williams FW30 in the process. On lap four, Alonso and Heidfeld overtook the Red Bull of David Coulthard for ninth and eighth respectively. Adrian Sutil was forced to retire two laps later when he ran off the track and onto the grass, with hydraulic problems.

Kimi Raikkonen 2008 Malaysia 3

Kimi Räikkönen took his and Ferrari's first win of the year.

By lap nine Hamilton was within two seconds of Webber and the Ferraris of Massa and Räikkönen had opened up a lead on the rest of the field. Both set new fastest lap times over the next four laps. Webber pitted on lap 16, Massa on lap 17 and Räikkönen on lap 18, coming out ahead of Massa. Hamilton pitted on lap 19 and the team had a problem getting his front right tyre off, forcing him to stop for almost twenty seconds, and in the process he lost around twelve seconds[12] to the Ferraris, meaning he came out behind Webber in 11th.

Robert Kubica 2008 Malaysia 2

Robert Kubica finished second for BMW Sauber.

Räikkönen took the lead for the first time when Kubica pitted on lap 21. He would open up a lead of almost four seconds in the next six laps. Hamilton was up to seventh by lap 26 but was still unable to overtake Webber. Hamilton was within half a second of him by lap 29 but this forced him to brake harder and lose time to the rest of the field. Massa spun out of the race on lap 31 getting trapped in the gravel. This gave Räikkönen a lead of over 20 seconds from the next driver Kubica. Hamilton finally overtook Webber on lap 40 when he pitted. Vettel's engine failed one lap later and he was forced to retire. Hamilton would stay ahead of Webber after his second pit stop on lap 44. He was now six seconds behind Trulli in fourth and began to close that margin in the closing laps.

Alonso in eighth now began closing in on Webber. Hamilton was within two seconds of Trulli with two laps to go but was unable to pass him before the end of the race. Räikkönen won the race by nearly twenty seconds from Kubica who had his best ever finish in second; Kovalainen came third.[13] Nick Heidfeld and BMW Sauber earned their first fastest lap,[14] giving Heidfeld a record in "most races before first fastest lap" with 134, surpassing the former record of 114 held by Thierry Boutsen.

Classification[]

Qualifying[]

Pos No Driver Constructor Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Grid
1 2 25px Brazil Felipe Massa Ferrari 1:35.347 1:34.412 1:35.748 1
2 1 25px Finland Kimi Räikkönen Ferrari 1:35.645 1:34.188 1:36.230 2
3 23 25px Finland Heikki Kovalainen McLaren-Mercedes 1:35.227 1:34.759 1:36.613 81
4 22 25px United Kingdom Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes 1:35.392 1:34.627 1:36.709 91
5 11 25px Italy Jarno Trulli Toyota 1:35.205 1:34.960 1:36.711 3
6 4 25px Flag of Poland Robert Kubica BMW Sauber 1:35.794 1:34.811 1:36.727 4
7 3 25px Germany Nick Heidfeld BMW Sauber 1:35.729 1:34.648 1:36.753 5
8 10 25px Australia Mark Webber Red Bull-Renault 1:35.440 1:34.967 1:37.009 6
9 5 25px Spain Fernando Alonso Renault 1:35.983 1:35.140 1:38.450 7
10 12 25px Germany Timo Glock Toyota 1:35.891 1:35.000 1:39.656 10
11 16 25px United Kingdom Jenson Button Honda 1:35.847 1:35.208 11
12 9 25px United Kingdom David Coulthard Red Bull-Renault 1:36.058 1:35.408 12
13 6 25px Brazil Nelson Piquet Jr. Renault 1:36.074 1:35.562 13
14 17 25px Brazil Rubens Barrichello Honda 1:36.198 1:35.622 14
15 15 25px Germany Sebastian Vettel Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1:36.111 1:35.648 15
16 7 25px Germany Nico Rosberg Williams-Toyota 1:35.843 1:35.670 16
17 21 25px Italy Giancarlo Fisichella Force India-Ferrari 1:36.240 17
18 8 25px Japan Kazuki Nakajima Williams-Toyota 1:36.388 222
19 14 25px France Sébastien Bourdais Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1:36.677 18
20 18 25px Japan Takuma Sato Super Aguri-Honda 1:37.087 19
21 20 25px Germany Adrian Sutil Force India-Ferrari 1:37.101 20
22 19 25px United Kingdom Anthony Davidson Super Aguri-Honda 1:37.481 21
Source:[14]
  1. - Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen were each put back five places on the grid for impeding Nick Heidfeld and Fernando Alonso, respectively, during Q3.[10]
  2. - Kazuki Nakajima incurred a ten-place grid penalty for colliding with Robert Kubica in the Australian Grand Prix.[15]

Race[]

Pos No Driver Constructor Laps Time/Retired Grid Points
1 1 25px Finland Kimi Räikkönen Ferrari 56 1:31:18.555 2 10
2 4 25px Flag of Poland Robert Kubica BMW Sauber 56 +19.570 4 8
3 23 25px Finland Heikki Kovalainen McLaren-Mercedes 56 +38.450 8 6
4 11 25px Italy Jarno Trulli Toyota 56 +45.832 3 5
5 22 25px UK Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes 56 +46.548 9 4
6 3 25px Germany Nick Heidfeld BMW Sauber 56 +49.833 5 3
7 10 25px Australia Mark Webber Red Bull-Renault 56 +1:08.130 6 2
8 5 25px Spain Fernando Alonso Renault 56 +1:10.041 7 1
9 9 25px United Kingdom David Coulthard Red Bull-Renault 56 +1:16.220 12
10 16 25px United Kingdom Jenson Button Honda 56 +1:26.214 11
11 6 25px Brazil Nelson Piquet Jr. Renault 56 +1:32.202 13
12 21 25px Italy Giancarlo Fisichella Force India-Ferrari 55 +1 Lap 17
13 17 25px Brazil Rubens Barrichello Honda 55 +1 Lap 14
14 7 25px Germany Nico Rosberg Williams-Toyota 55 +1 Lap 16
15 19 25px United Kingdom Anthony Davidson Super Aguri-Honda 55 +1 Lap 21
16 18 25px Japan Takuma Sato Super Aguri-Honda 54 +2 Laps 19
17 8 25px Japan Kazuki Nakajima Williams-Toyota 54 +2 Laps 22
Ret 15 25px Germany Sebastian Vettel Toro Rosso-Ferrari 39 Hydraulics 15
Ret 2 25px Brazil Felipe Massa Ferrari 30 Spun off 1
Ret 20 25px Germany Adrian Sutil Force India-Ferrari 5 Hydraulics 20
Ret 12 25px Germany Timo Glock Toyota 1 Collision 10
Ret 14 25px France Sébastien Bourdais Toro Rosso-Ferrari 0 Spun off 18
Source:[14]

Standings after the race[]

Drivers' Championship standings[14]
Pos Driver Points
1 25px UK Lewis Hamilton 14
2= 25px Finland Kimi Räikkönen 11
2= 25px Germany Nick Heidfeld 11
4 25px Finland Heikki Kovalainen 10
5 25px Flag of Poland Robert Kubica 8
Constructors' Championship standings[14]
Pos Constructor Points
1 25px UK McLaren-Mercedes 24
2 25px Germany BMW Sauber 19
3 25px Italy Ferrari 11
4 25px UK Williams-Toyota 9
5 25px France Renault 6
  • Note: Only the top five positions are included for both sets of standings.

References[]

  1. 1.0 1.1 "Race Classification". Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile. 2008-10-19. http://www.fia.com/en-GB/sport/championships/f1/2008/malaysia08/Pages/race_classification.aspx. Retrieved 2009-02-08. 
  2. 2.0 2.1 "Championship Classification". Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile. 2008-11-17. Archived from the original on 2008-08-22. http://web.archive.org/web/20080822014119/http://www.fia.com/en-GB/sport/championships/f1/Pages/ChampionshipClassification.aspx. Retrieved 2008-11-17. 
  3. (PDF) 2008 Formula One Sporting Regulations. FIA. 2008-05-19. http://argent.fia.com/web/fia-public.nsf/475632E46002BEDAC125744F004312F4/$FILE/F1.SPORTING.REGULATIONS.19-05-2008.pdf. Retrieved 2008-11-13. 
  4. Beer, Matt (2008-03-21). "Massa fastest in practice 1 - Malaysia". Autosport. Haymarket Publications. Archived from the original on 28 March 2009. http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/65929. Retrieved 2009-03-14. 
  5. "Stewards demand Red Bull technical report". formula1.com. 2008-03-21. Archived from the original on 9 March 2009. http://www.formula1.com/news/headlines/2008/3/7532.html. Retrieved 2009-03-14. 
  6. Beer, Matt (2008-03-21). "Hamilton quickest in practice 2 - Malaysia". Autosport. Haymarket Publications. Archived from the original on 28 March 2009. http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/65939. Retrieved 2009-03-14. 
  7. "Tyres". The Official Formula 1 Website. Archived from the original on 18 December 2008. http://www.formula1.com/inside_f1/understanding_the_sport/5283.html. Retrieved 2008-11-14. 
  8. Beer, Matt (2008-03-22). "Heidfeld quickest in practice 3 - Malaysia". Autosport. Haymarket Publications. Archived from the original on 28 March 2009. http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/65982. Retrieved 2009-03-14. 
  9. 9.0 9.1 Beer, Matt (2008-03-22). "Massa leads all-Ferrari front row at Sepang". Autosport. Haymarket Publications. Archived from the original on 2010-02-01. http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/65985. Retrieved 2009-03-16. 
  10. 10.0 10.1 "McLaren drivers docked five places". autosport.com. 2008-03-22. Archived from the original on 26 March 2008. http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/66021. Retrieved 2008-03-22. 
  11. "FIA confirms minimum lap time for qualifying". formula1.com. 2008-04-05. Archived from the original on 28 March 2009. http://www.formula1.com/news/headlines/2008/4/7597.html. Retrieved 2009-03-16. 
  12. "2008 Malaysian Grand Prix Pit Stop Summary". formula1.com. 2008-03-23. Archived from the original on 2009-05-28. http://www.formula1.com/results/season/2008/788/6490/pit_stop_summary.html. Retrieved 2009-03-14. 
  13. "Malaysian Grand Prix". BBC. 2008-03-23. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/7308399.stm. Retrieved 2008-03-23. 
  14. 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 Henry, Alan (2009-02-15). Autocourse 2008–09. CMG Publishing. pp. 110–111. 
  15. "Nakajima penalised for Kubica incident". autosport.com. 2008-03-16. Archived from the original on 2010-01-16. http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/65817. Retrieved 2008-03-16. 

External links[]


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Previous race:
2008 Australian Grand Prix
FIA Formula One World Championship
2008 season
Next race:
2008 Bahrain Grand Prix
Previous race:
2007 Malaysian Grand Prix
Malaysian Grand Prix Next race:
2009 Malaysian Grand Prix
Smallwikipedialogo.png This page uses some content from Wikipedia. The original article was at 2008 Malaysian Grand Prix. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Autopedia, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.


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