Schumacher Again

By Erik Nielsen
Photos courtesy and copyright Ferrari Media

After two races in 2003, Michael Schumacher still hadn't received a single world championship point, yet managed to capture the title by the end of the season. At this point, he has received maximum points and the other teams are worrying that this could turn into a replay of 2002. Once again, great if you are a tifosi, but if another manufacturer is your favorite, other sports are starting to look interesting.

For the technical followers of the sport, Bridgestone was always slighted as not being up to the task on hot tracks and Sepang is the hottest of the lot. The relative ease that the German displayed shows that either the Japanese have crunched the numbers correctly, or he really is worthy of yet another title. As for the performance of the newest Ferrari monoposto, there is just too much momentum within the team to fail. BMW-Williams still hasn't completely managed to figure out what their problems are with the new car. Juan Pablo did fend off the field and capture the second spot on the podium, but you could tell that he still wasn't content with the result. His team mate didn't finish, due to an engine failure.

BAR Honda was the star of the weekend, with Jenson Button placing third and gaining enough points to put them ahead of McLaren in the standings. The young Brit was complaining of balance issues during qualifying, but unlike a certain Canadian, was able to explain what he thought was going on to the engineers in an intelligible manner and they were able to do something about it.

As the season progresses, trends are determined to be genuine or merely a flash in the pan. Renault didn't display any of the top team dominance that was evident in Australia. McLaren suffered another mechanical failure. Kimi made an ass of himself in front of the cameras as he took his frustrations out on a course marshal who was more interested in the Finn's safety than his standings in the world championship.

And speaking of flashes in the pan, I though I was going to need to eat my words when I saw a Jaguar on the front row of the starting grid. My fears were erased when the red lights went out and the car dropped back to no higher than 12th. Boy, that was close.

Toyota can't be happy with a Jordan on a fraction of their budget being ahead of them during the race. When are they going to figure out it is the car?

As for the season, it's still way too early to call. Ferrari seems to be the only team to have their act together at this stage, but for all of the tifosi out there, let's hope that they haven't pushed the car to the design limit already while all of the other teams play catch up when the series returns to Europe.