f1 red flag at sepang

What an exciting Formula 1 race in Sepang today. Too bad the rain forced the race to stop before all 56 laps were completed. The race started at 5pm Malaysian time, which is 3 hours later than usual. I assume some ‘clever’ guy at the top wants the Malaysian Grand Prix to start later so that the people in Europe don’t need to wake up that much earlier than usual. Heh.

The inconsistent weather forecasts made the race much more exciting. The teams were contemplating when they would need to change tyres to suit the weather and what type of tyres they need to change to. And when the weather did change, they were a lot of teams going into the pit-stop to change tyres, so the standings keep changing and changing. Hmm I noticed that I've written 'changing' and 'tyres' quite a lot in this paragraph. Won't get much marks then if this were to be an essay to be submitted. Who cares anyway. They were a lot of overtakings as well of course, besides the tyre changing.

But at the end of the day, the rain poured too heavily so they had to show the red flag, which means that the race had to be suspended and the cars had to line up behind the red flag line and wait until it’s safe to race again. It was actually dangerous for the cars to race in that condition. They were a lot of cars spinning at the corners already (which I secretly think is indeed a little bit fun to watch but is actually dangerous for the safety of the drivers, so let's just pretend I didn't think that ok).

Since it was getting too dark, and the 2-hour racing period was nearly over, the race wasn’t resumed and they used the standings at Lap 31 to determine the official race standings. However, the drivers (and constructors) only get half points because they didn’t complete more than 3 quarters of the race. Well, half points are better than no points at all.

And the winner of the Malaysian GP was Jenson Button from the Brawn team, his second win of the season. Looks like the Brawn team are doing very well. The Ferrari and McLaren teams seem to be struggling to adapt to the new rules. McLaren only has 1 point and Ferrari don’t have any points yet! Looking forward to the rest of the season. It’s gonna be very exciting, close, and fun to watch!