F1: Hamilton wins in Malaysia

Lewis Hamilton has won the Malaysian Grand Prix! With the win, the Briton has ended a podium-less streak that has spanned 9 races. He is also in the lead for the pole position trophy, having taken both poles in the 2 races so far. The W05 of Hamilton jumped the pack right at the start, and pulled away at a consistent pace ever since. It was also good news for Rosberg’s side of the garage; the German finished 2nd after a relatively consistent race. His start wasn’t as fast as Hamilton, nor was it as clean with Vettel forcing most of Rosberg’s Mercedes off the track, but still, he was able to get past Vettel, who qualified second. This is the first Mercedes one-two since the Italian Grand Prix in 1955. Vettel finished 3rd, roughly 9 seconds behind the Mercedes. Looking a bit further behind the pack, we saw horrid races for the likes of Raikkonen, Ricciardo and Perez. Raikkonen came together with Magnussen early on in the race and suffered a right rear puncture. He limped back to the pits and boxed for a fresh set of boots on lap 2, and came out dead last. Ricciardo’s race looked good initially- until it was time to box for his last scheduled stop. Before the pitstop, he was battling Alonso for P4. During the pitstop, the left front wheel wasn’t attached on properly, but Ricciardo was released. This meant the Aussie has to stop his RB10 in the middle of the pitlane while his mechanics ran to him and pushed the strickened RB10 back to the pits to securely attach the wheel on. While doing so, Alonso lapped Ricciardo twice. He then came out, only for a front wing failure to befall him while accelerating out of T14. He has to pit for another set of tyres, for the front wing destroyed his front right. He then stopped again to serve a 10 second stop-go penalty, before further complications forced him to retire. To make matters even worse, he has been given a 10 place grid penalty in Bahrain. Let’s move on to the backmarkers, with fantastic performances by the Caterham team to finish 13th and 14th, bringing them ahead of Marussia in the standings. Kobayashi pushed his CT05 literally to the limit, as he edged and passed faster cars such as Raikkonen’s Ferrari and Grosjean’s Lotus. However, the superiority of the front running cars eventually meant the Japanese had to concede and let them pass. Ericcson  finished the first race of his F1 career way off his teammate, but at least he finished, unlike Marussia’s Bianchi, who suffered from multiple failures from contact with Vergne and Maldonado. Pictures used for illustration purposes only.