Dry Beginning of Wet Chaos: The 2009 Malaysian Grand Prix
Jenson Button secured his second victory of the season, but Timo Glock stole the show.
2009 was a shock. A seismic one. Ferrari, the team of the decade, just like their main competitor McLaren, after the fierce battle for the drivers’ crown in the previous season, found themselves more or less in the midfield.
BMW Sauber, the factory team of the German car manufacturer and the third best outfit of 2008, who under a leadership of Mario Theissen had been regularly making progress, was in no better position. After winning the 2008 Canadian Grand Prix, they completely shifted their focus for 2009 and upcoming regulation changes, in the hope it would help them become contenders. Boy, they were wrong. Instead of making another step forward, they moved backward.
The order had changed massively and at the top of the hierarchy sat a small team, owned by Ross Brawn and Nick Fry. The two gentlemen had both from Honda for a symbolic dollar. The Japanese giant, who had run a factory team since 2006, left the sport during the turmoil of the financial crisis that hit the world two years later.
Brawn, a former Team Principal of the aforementioned team, had bought it and made the deal with Mercedes to supply the engine. He also “inherited” driver lineup in Jenson Button and a veteran Rubens Barrichello. And that’s how the legend of Brawn GP was born. For more detail, I recommend watching the fantastic documentary series, Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story.
Brawn had a lot of faith in the chassis, developed when the team still had operated as Honda. That’s why he was willing to give it a try. New regulations came in force and, as a history of F1 showed a few times, they come with the new order.
New Rules
The aerodynamics changed drastically. The differences between the 2008 and 2009 Ferrari car are glaring to the naked eye.
The F60 features a wider, more streamlined front wing and a narrower, taller rear wing. It also looks like it went bald aerodynamically, compared to its predecessor. It doesn’t have any of the fancy elements and shapes that made the previous generation of cars look like space ships.
Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) was introduced. As the name suggests the system recovered energy under braking and gave additional 80 horsepower when used fully. (We still have it in Formula 1, although in more advanced, robust form. Nowadays it’s just named differently: MGU-K.)
KERS was optional, not mandatory. Only four teams utilized it throughout the season: Ferrari, McLaren, Renault, and BMW.
Slicks returned after an 11-year hiatus—a change that was very warmly welcomed by yours truly. A fun fact about this is that Bridgestone, Formula 1’s sole tire supplier at the time, had one year of experience with slicks, having entered the sport in 1997, which was the last season before the introduction of grooved dry tires.
The intention behind the rule changes was to mitigate the effects of dirty air and improve overtaking. Additionally, to reduce costs, in season testing was banned.
Finally, 2009 marked the last year of refueling. In May, the governing body announced that it would be prohibited starting in 2010.
The Loophole
“Rules are for the obedience of fools and interpretations of smart men,” goes the saying attributed to Colin Chapman. In the narrative of the 2009 season, the smart man was named Saneyuki Minegawa. The engineer, to better understand the regulations, read them in his native Japanese and interpreted the section of the rules relating to the diffuser quite unconventionally. That’s how the idea of a double deck diffuser was born.
The double diffuser provided an aerodynamic therefore competitive advantage and quickly became the apple of discord between Brawn GP, Williams and Toyota who had it from day one—and the other teams, with Red Bull, Renault and Ferrari at the helm.
The three competitors filed separate protests during the opening race of the season in Australia. The stewards dismissed all of the cases. Consequently, Red Bull, Renault, and Ferrari took their protests to the International Court of Appeal, but to no avail. On April 14, their cases were rejected, and from that point on, every team except Brawn, Toyota, and Williams concentrated on implementing double diffusers on their cars.
The Aftermath of the Australian Grand Prix
Eleven days before the ICA's verdict, all teams gathered at Sepang for practice sessions.
The morale at Brawn GP must have been sky-high. The team, which not long ago faced uncertainty about its future and lacked a title sponsor, had no advertisements on its livery except for a single Virgin Group logo. Yet, they stood at the top of Formula 1 thanks to their 1-2 finish in Australia.
Button won pretty convincingly and Barrichello secured the second step of the podium after a hectic race. They were leading in both championships.
Meanwhile mighty Ferrari and McLaren had 0 points in the standings. The drivers for the Italian team, Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen suffered mechanical DNFs at Albert Park. McLaren's Heikki Kovalainen was an unfortunate casualty of the first-lap collision between Barrichello and Red Bull’s Mark Webber and had to retire on lap 1. His teammate, Lewis Hamilton, the 2008 world champion, was disqualified from the results for misleading the stewards.
BMW and Red Bull shared the misery of their more accomplished competitors. They could have left Australia with points if it hadn't been for the collision between Robert Kubica and Sebastian Vettel late in the race. Both drivers retired as a result, but the German also received a 10-place grid penalty.
Ready Steady Go
Button secured his second pole position of the year. Toyota’s Jarno Trulli took P2. Vettel was 3rd but he had to serve the aforementioned penalty and start the race from the 13th grid slot. Barrichello would’ve taken his place if he hadn’t changed his gearbox, which relegated him to 8th. In the end Trulli's teammate, Timo Glock, took the vacant slot.
Behind the two Toyotas, lined up Williams’ Nico Rosberg, Webber, Kubica, Raikkonen, the penalized Barrichello, Renault's Fernando Alonso, and Kubica's teammate, Nick Heidfeld.
The lights went out, and Rosberg had the best reaction among the top 4. The German immediately veered to his right, passing the sluggish Trulli. Rosberg then entered the first corner side by side with Button, occupying the inside line.
The championship leader had an oversteer and veered to the left, creating an open path for Rosberg to take the lead, but also for Trulli to grab P2. To make matters worse for Button, Alonso who had had his trademark rocket start, overtook the Brit on the outside of Turn 2 but was unable to maintain the position for even a full lap. Button's opportunistic maneuver on the inside of Turn 14 allowed him to get ahead of the Spaniard.
Kovalainen, like his teammate, who also started outside the top 10, did not make it past Turn 5. He lost control in the fast left-hander and went off the track like a bullet shot from a sling. However, he managed to progress further than Kubica, who did not move at all at the start due to engine problems that forced the Pole to retire.
The Alonso Train
As I mentioned earlier, 2009 was the final season of refueling and, consequently, the last one in which qualifying took place with race fuel onboard – a rule introduced in 2003. This meant that teams had to determine their race strategies prior to qualifying, leaving fans, pundits, and commentators to speculate about the amount of fuel each car carried.
In 2009, they no longer had to speculate, as the FIA published the weight of each car after qualifying. (Some criticized it for taking away the excitement of the unknown, some liked it.)
Thanks to the published weights, we knew that Alonso was clearly on a one-stop strategy, being the heaviest in the top 10. He was doing a big favor for the Rosberg-Trulli-Button trio ahead of him by slowing down the cars trailing behind. At the end of lap 1, he held P4, pulling four cars behind him: Barrichello, Raikkonen, Webber, and Glock, who had fallen to P8 at the start.
Barrichello stayed only two additional laps behind the Spaniard, but that already cost him 5.486 seconds to his teammate. The Brazilian veteran got close enough at the exit of the last corner and hid ine the slipstream on the main straight. Alonso must have used KERS as he approached the braking zone in front of his rival, even though Barrichello was noticeably faster up to the start-finish line. The Brazilian resolved that issue by simply outbraking the Renault on the inside of Turn 1.
Soon, Vettel joined the train after overtaking Hamilton and Heidfeld. The BMW driver made a mistake at the exit of Turn 4 on lap 10, allowing his compatriot and Hamilton to seize the opportunity. With a very light car, Vettel needed to make quick progress, but he found himself stuck behind Glock.
Alonso bravely frustrated the cars behind him until the 11th lap. Then his train went off the rails. He made a similar mistake as Heidfeld, which allowed Raikkonen to pass him.
Webber was also eager to overtake the Spaniard. The Australian dove to the inside of the last corner, but Alonso executed his trademark switchback maneuver and achieved a better exit. Utilizing the tow and KERS, Alonso moved ahead before the braking zone. He defended aggressively by covering the inside line going into Turn 1, but he outbraked himself and went wide. Webber, on the other hand, simply made the corner and secured P6.
The Italian Gamble
Rosberg pitted on lap 15 and dropped to 4th as a result. Trulli led, closely followed by Button.
Raikkonen boxed 3 laps after the German. Ferrari took a bold approach by fitting full wet tires to his car, anticipating that rain would arrive shortly. Obviously, it was a gamble but not random, nor completely bone headed. First of all bolts of lightning illuminated the dark, gloomy sky near the track. Second of all rain at Sepang means downpour and deluge, like the one that had flooded the circuit in 2001.
Putting wet tires during a scheduled pit stop for fuel would have saved the team an additional tire change, had the rain arrived sooner. Unfortunately, it did not. The weather didn’t cooperate and Raikkonen was lapping approximately 20 seconds off the pace. All potential advantage went down the drain. He dropped outside the top 10, where he played no further role in the race.
He had pitted three to four laps too soon.
Overcut Is the Name of the Game
Trulli boxed on lap 17. That freed Button, who had been on the Italian’s heels throughout the entire first stint.
In Formula 1, since 2010, the undercut has been the way one can leapfrog his rival in the pits, but in the refueling era it was the other way around. Staying longer on track and setting two, three fast laps while the rival had a heavier, freshly refueled, therefore slower car, was the way to go.
And that’s what Button did. Within two laps, he built a big enough gap to secure the lead over Rosberg and Trulli after pitting on lap 19. In the process, he clocked the fastest lap of the race: 1:36.641.
He completed only two rounds on the fresh set of slicks because it began to rain.
No Downpour But a Lot of Excitement
On lap 22, the sprinkled tarmac caught Alonso by surprise, causing the Spaniard to go off track at Turn 8. However, he skillfully navigated through the gravel trap, reached the grass, and found his way back onto the circuit.
The pit lane became as busy as a beehive. Almost everyone boxed for full wets expecting a downpour; however, it was primarily raining in Turns 7 and 8, where Alonso had gone off track. Although the rain did not produce the expected volume of water, it certainly delivered in terms of excitement. What had been a relatively straightforward race transformed into a chaotic thriller.
Webber and Hamilton had a great battle for P6 between laps 23 and 25. The McLaren driver had leapfrogged his Red Bull counterpart because, unlike the Aussie, he had only pitted once, when it had begun to rain.
Webber initially overtook Hamilton on the inside of the final corner, only to be out-dragged due to the extra horsepower generated by KERS, allowing Hamilton to reclaim the position in Turn 1. Webber's next attempt occurred in the wettest section of the track, between Turns 7 and 8. He surged past Hamilton as if he were a lapped backmarker on a short straight between the corners; however, he overcooked the maneuver, briefly went off track, and once again lost the position.
Webber's car handled the conditions much better than the McLaren. He was visibly much faster than Hamilton and easily overtook him on the inside of Turn 14, leading onto the long back straight. There, he had to defend against Hamilton's KERS-boosted counterattack, which he successfully managed. He nearly replicated this on the main straight. Everything was going well until Turn 1, when he outbraked himself and for the third time relinquished the position to his McLaren counterpart.
Finally, Webber got his shit together and overtook Hamilton with ease in Turn 4. Next, he passed Heidfeld on lap 30, who was running in P3 at the time. Webber was flying. But he wasn’t the fastest man on the track.
Timo the Clairvoyant
Not everyone opted for full wets. Glock took a gamble and requested a set of intermediate tires featuring a beautiful herringbone pattern, which makes me so dearly miss Bridgestone.
It was the right call. It was a bull’s eye. Right away on the out lap, Glock gained six seconds on Button.
The German driver emerged from the pits in 10th place and swiftly maneuvered his way to P2 within five laps, gaining hand over fist on the leader. He overtook those ahead of him like an agile hare a group of sluggish turtles. He surpassed Nelson Piquet Jr., Massa, Webber, Hamilton, Heidfeld, Barrichello, Trulli and Rosberg, who, unbeknownst to the TV cameras, fell from P2 to P6 on lap 27. In the unfolding, dynamic, and chaotic action, the order of the race changed lap after lap.
Glock was the fastest and smartest man on the track, but the others stubbornly refused to follow his lead. They clung to full wets, still expecting the sky to unleash torrents of rain on the circuit. However, the weather was just as stubborn and refused to align with their expectations. It was straightforwardly trolling the forecast, the strategists, and the drivers.
Biblical Flood
Finally, on lap 29, Button had enough of waiting for the downpour and pitted for inters, handing the lead to Glock. However, the German didn’t even relish it for a full lap, as the Brawn GP driver emerged just behind him and overtook the white and red Toyota on the back straight.
Glock relinquished his position without resistance and dove into the pits. This time for full wets. And again he was right. The sky finally unleashed a proper Malaysian downpour. It was bucketing.
Now the chaos turned it up to eleven. The cars were pitting and switching tires from wet to intermediate and then back again, much like Button. Heidfeld chose to stay out and held P2 on lap 31, ahead of Glock, only to be overtaken in Turn 1 one lap later.
The circuit was flooded. The conditions resembled those of Adelaide in 1991, as even the proper, Bridgestone made, wet tires were insufficient to handle the torrent flowing across the tarmac.
Giancarlo Fisichella went off in the final corner. Vettel lost the car in Turn 7, stalled, and subsequently retired, providing one of the best images of the season.
The Safety Car was deployed on lap 32 after Heidfeld spun out. Hamilton also lost control of his car and went on the radio to complain that the conditions were undrivable. Massa requested a red flag, and soon his wish was granted.
The circuit was inundated, making it impossible for Formula 1 cars to race under such conditions.
Staying Cool
The cars halted on the main straight. Everyone waited for the conditions to improve, but the opportunity to hold the race was diminishing with each passing minute as daylight continued to fade.
The wait would likely have been completely forgotten if it weren’t for two viral moments: Rob Smedley, Massa’s engineer, calming his driver with the famous “Felipe, baby, stay cool,” and retired Raikkonen enjoying an ice cream in the Ferrari motorhome while the rest waited on a rain-soaked track.
Ultimately, the race was abandoned. Since it did not reach 70% of the planned distance, half of the points were awarded to the top 8 drivers, based on their positions at lap 31: Button, Heidfeld, Glock, Trulli, Barrichello, Webber, Hamilton, and Rosberg.
Fortune Favors the Brave
Glock had a really poor start, but what he lost there he made up for it with interest when the rain hit the track. He took a risk, and as demonstrated by his decisions and those of Ferrari in this race, gambling can be a double-edged sword: when you win, you are celebrated as brave and glorious; when you lose you’re a donkey.
The weather dealt Glock the best hand and he played it well enough to win the big pot. That’s why he has been getting his flowers for the 2009 Malaysian Grand Prix.