Sepang, 3rd April 2009

Kimi Raikkonen quickest, with Felipe Massa in second place, just 0.125 seconds slower than his Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro team-mate. That was how the time sheet looked at the end of the day’s second 90 minute free practice session. Therefore, after the very unusual time sheets we had seen throughout the Melbourne weekend, could it be the case that the old order has returned to Formula 1, given that the Brawn GP cars, for whom the word dominant is not strong enough to describe their Australian performance, ended today in sixth and seventh places.



No, it would be wrong to say that everything has changed, given that the top fifteen cars ended the day within the same second and therefore, even allowing for different fuel loads, everything looks very close. The Sepang circuit is definitely a more traditional venue than Albert Park and the large differences seen in Melbourne between the two types of tyre on offer from Bridgestone have not been repeated here: performance between the softer and harder compounds are more similar and more importantly, the softer option seems to have a longer life than was the case in Melbourne. In short, while the Ferrari F60 seems far more competitive here, it is still too early to say what might happen over the rest of the weekend. Reliability issues had added to the Scuderia’s difficulties last Sunday and today, Kimi’s KERS played up, losing him some running time, while Felipe had a trouble free day.

Third and fifth fastest today were Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber, with the Williams-Toyota of Nico Rosberg providing the meat in the Red Bull sandwich in fourth place. Heavy rain again hit the track this afternoon, at around the time that tomorrow’s qualifying session – which gets underway at 5 local time – is due to end. The tropical Malaysian weather might yet again be a major player this weekend.