The second round of the World Championship saw Ferrari take a dominant victory, with Raikkonen crossing the line some 20 seconds ahead of BMW’s Kubica.

Massa, who took pole yesterday, was leap-frogged by his Finnish team-mate during the first round of pit stops and later spun off. It isn’t clear as to why he lost the back end but I suspect there was a slight driver error, something that Massa isn’t new to.

As for the McLarens, well, both of the cars were penalised 5 grid places yesterday for holding up Nick Heidfeld, and in my opinion rightly so. As I mentioned in the Qualifying report, the speeds which they were doing their fuel saving in lap at were lethal considering the BMW was closing at 170mph. So having started from 8^th and 9^th, Hamilton got a great start and come the end of lap one was up to 5^th. Kovalainen did well, but didn’t manage to get higher than 7^th in the opening stages.

It was during Hamilton’s first pit stop that his hopes of a podium were dashed as there was so much brake dust on his front right that the pit crew couldn’t get the wheel off. The stop took some 20 seconds meaning that a final position of 5^th was about all he could hope for.

The real surprise for the day was that Trulli managed to keep his qualifying pace and ended the race in 4^th position. After two dreadful seasons it seems that Toyota have finally made a more competitive car. Indeed they were one of the only teams to start with a blank piece of paper for their 2008 car, most teams being content to revise their 2007 cars considering the rule changes coming in to place next year.

Coulthard, having been openly critical of Massa’s move in the Australian Grand Prix which took him out of the race, has since changed the mirrors on his Red Bull – perhaps not the best advert for being innocent?

Although Ferrari can leave the weekend with a well-deserved win it will be playing on their minds that, after losing three cars to engine failures last weekend (Raikkonen, Massa and a Toro Rosso which uses a Ferrari engine), Adrian Sutil’s engine (another Ferrari customer) failed on Friday. It is rare for even one engine to fail during a weekend’s racing, let alone an average of 2 every Grand Prix.

The Australian Grand Prix it wasn’t; there were certainly less accidents for a start, but Sepang’s final results were a remarkably fair reflection on all the drivers’ and cars’ pace. The BMWs were the second quickest cars out there, behind the Ferraris. While the McLarens, even though they started down in 8^th and 9^th, really didn’t have the pace to have fought for a win.

Well done Kimi for another typically relaxed win.

Constructors Championship