Ferrari an Also-ran?
Malaysian Grand Prix

By Erik Nielsen
Photos courtesy and copyright Ferrari Media

After the second race of the season, it seems as though the Renaults are the car to beat. Fernando Alonso dominated the race weekend by putting his blue-and-yellow at the front of the grid in qualifying and never looking back. While the rules changes did change the faces at the front, the race was still a snoozer. But Briatori managed to get his sweaty mug on the tele enough this weekend to cause a jump in Amazon.com's sales of Atkin's diet books. The supermodel stalker was not totally happy when Giancarlo Fisichella collided with Mark Webber with twenty laps to go when both were pushing it just a wee bit too hard. The race stewards were looking into the incident and there was yelling in Italian down the pit lane.

I'm not sure if anyone else noticed it, but there were snowballs in Hades this weekend and a Toyota was on the podium. Jarno Trulli finished second and caused much screaming for joy in Japan (but it was very quiet screaming and it lasted for exactly five minutes). Maybe throwing wads of cash at a problem is a solution. Only time will tell if this was just a flash in the pan. Ralf Schumacher showed that it wasn't a total fluke for the weekend by finishing fifth. Isn't Jarno getting paid less than Ralf? Anyone else see something wrong with this?

Nick Heidfeld caused Sir Frank to smile by capturing the last spot on the podium. More importantly, there were many smiling faces in Munich as the German was the fastest one with German power. Not that anyone outside of a German boardroom thinks that is important. But it was good to see the team finally back in somewhat top form.

Juan Pablo Montoya did finish just outside of the points and ahead of the Iceman, but the horns on his car that make him look like the devil didn't make him drive like one. We'll know later in the season if switching to Darth Vader's team was the right career move or not, but the results this weekend indicated that it wasn't the best decision. The Iceman suffered a tire puncture and saw his major points chances end in shredded Michelin rubber. But even with that setback, he still managed to finish on the lead lap, albeit out of the points in ninth.

The other surprise of the weekend was the strength of Red Bull Racing, with Coulthard finishing in sixth and Klein in eighth. Proof that corporate politics is a bad thing in F1 and a motivated team really can crunch the numbers and get points. While they might not be at the top of the points categories, if you want an underdog that has a shot, this is your team.

Now we can get to Ferrari. Yes, this far into the race report. If you're a recent tifosi, it seems that the world has gone upside down. What do you mean Schumacher only has two points this far in the season? Still running the old car? Oh my god, what will we do? Now, if you were there during the dry times from the early 80's to the mid 90's, this is starting to look dangerously familiar. There was much panic over the weekend and Bridgestone has come out and said it was their fault. The Italian team is scrambling trying to launch the new car at the track before Bahrain's race rather than wait until the circus returns to Europe. Burino retired with no grip from his tires, but you can make the argument that no one wanted to see a Toyota lap a Ferrari. The earth may stop spinning on its axis correctly if they did.

Massa showed that the Sauber was quick finishing in tenth, but Villeneuve showed..., oh never mind, I don't have anything nice to say on that one.

There was plenty of yelling in Japanese this weekend with both BAR-Hondas out of the race with engine failures, which was even more painful with Toyota on the podium. But neither of the drivers is fluent in Japanese, and Sato-san was out sick. Maybe he knew that the lumps couldn't last and didn't want to hear it in his own language.

As for the rest, well, they were there, but nobody cared.

The Ferrari faithful started praying that the new car will be ready, and soon. Even Ferrari started flooding the media with nice press releases telling the world how good the new car is. We'll find out soon, because as they say, when the green flag drops, the BS stops.