Qualifying in Sepang confirmed what we were beginning to suspect - the quickest cars are the Brawns, the Toyotas and the Red Bulls, probably in that order. The Ferraris threatened briefly in testing but then faded when it mattered, compounding their problems with a strategic error that left Massa behind in Q1. Rosberg's Williams looked quick and is well positioned for the race, BMW squeezed a little more performance from the car to give them respectability and Alonso managed a top ten time in spite of feeling pretty awful with an infected ear. The rest, including McLaren, trundled into their accustomed places for this season.
Jenson Button at the office
The qualifying times can be found on the usual websites but try Ollie's BlogF1 - he lays everything out in prettier and clearer format than anyone else. Remember that Barrichello gets a 5-spot penalty for changing a gearbox and Vettel goes back ten places for shouldering the blame in Melbourne.
For this post, I want to step back from today's sessions and look at something that is beginning to puzzle me. Can anyone explain to me why all the teams with KERS are so enthusiastic about it and the ones without it cannot wait to have their own versions? I must be missing something because it looks to me as though KERS is proving a costly and unreliable mistake.
Today eight of the fastest ten cars had no KERS and the favored two were ninth and tenth in the order. In Australia the same was true, except that the KERS cars managed seventh and ninth spots. Even taking the double diffusers into account, this must surely mean something; Red Bull has neither fancy diffuser nor KERS yet seems to do just fine, thank you. It really does seem that KERS is the kiss of death for qualifying at least.
BMW confirms this with their policy of running one car with KERS, the other without. Twice now Kubica has made it into Q3 without KERS while Nick, saddled with the silly contraption, has gone no further than Q2. The team dithered over whether to run Heidfeld with KERS this time but opted for it in the end. That must indicate that they are beginning to understand its disadvantages in qualifying - this is likely to be its last chance and it has failed, yet again, to produce the goods.
I understand that the idea is that KERS is useful in the race. Many of the drivers have spoken about the ease of passing when using the "go faster" button and have complained about the impossibility of overtaking a KERS car when one has none. So it comes into its own when passing slower cars and when defending a position; but is this sufficient to compensate for a poor grid position?
The hope is that, in Sepang, the long run to the first corner will allow the KERS cars to gain places. That remains to be seen but also raises the possibility of more collisions as fast cars arrive amongst slower ones at the entrance to the corner. Even supposing that the theory works, the result will be several mobile chicanes circulating at the front of long lines of quicker cars; everything then depends upon pit stop strategy. Unless the KERS cars can keep their positions during the stops, they will fall down the order helplessly.
As Hamilton demonstrated in Melbourne, KERS is great if grid position does not reflect the true speed of the car. No doubt Massa will have a fine time in the early laps as he passes one slower car after another. Once he reaches the level of the Ferrari's capability, however, he will stick. If everyone survives, we can expect him to finish round about where Raikkonen now sits on the grid - just out of the points, therefore.
It seems madness to me. How long will it be before the teams realize that KERS just isn't worth it? BMW may well be in the process of learning the lesson and I suspect that Ross Brawn, having done the calculations and watched the others, has no intention of introducing KERS this year, in spite of his statements to the contrary. If your car is handling well and winning races without KERS, why handicap it, after all?
But I must be missing something, somewhere. When just about everyone is enthusing about KERS, my doubts must be the result of not understanding something that others can see. What do I know, after all?
I just wish someone would show me where I'm going wrong...