What to expect at the Malaysian Grand Prix

Round 2 of the Formula One world championship is almost upon us. There has been a lot to absorb following the opening grand prix in Melbourne, which was an event that seems to have posed more questions than it answered.

Here are some of the stories I’ll be keeping an eye on:

DRS should have a bigger impact

The Sepang circuit – in my opinion one of Herman Tilke’s best – contains an interesting mix of long straights, sweeping fast medium turns and several tight first or second gear corners. This makes it a tricky track to set up for as teams want to maximise their downforce for the second and third sectors while not taking on too much drag in the long straights and fast first sector.

The FIA have announced that drivers will be able to engage the DRS before the final turn, a slow hairpin which leads on to a very long main straight and ends in a tight but wide hairpin.

The combination of a simpler turn leading on to a much longer straight with more room in turn one, should ensure drivers gain a bigger advantage by activating DRS than they did in Melbourne. Whether or not this makes overtaking too easy remains to be seen.

Ferrari will be back

Relative to their expectations, they had a shocking weekend in Melbourne. Felipe Massa in particular is under enormous pressure to turn his form around and find the pace that made him a front runner from 2007 till his accident in 2009. I can’t help but wonder if he’ll ever recapture that form; he seems a shadow of the man who came within a whisker of winning the 2008 world championship.

In Melbourne Fernando Alonso, as always, made the best of a difficult situation and took fourth place, Ferrari have been working hard to uncover what caused their problems and have developed a rigorous test plan for the two free practice sessions on Friday to find solutions. Expect Alonso to be fighting for, if not the win, a podium position.

Lotus

I didn’t mention Lotus in my Australian post-race wrap but they were very disappointing, well off the pace of the midfield pack they had aimed to catch up with this year. In fact the back six in qualifying looked very much as it did last year.

The key to Lotus’ problems appeared to be that they could not get their tyres up to temperature and as a result suffered from a lack of grip throughout the weekend. Aside from any technical developments which have been made, and they claim to have made some progress, the warmer temperatures of Malaysia should help them to demonstrate their true speed. It’ll be interesting to see if they can live up to their ambitions.

Red Bull should still be quick but they will need KERS

The RB7 produces copious amounts of downforce, which should be a major asset in the tight twisty sections at Sepang, however on the long straights Red Bull may struggle to hold off McLaren and Ferrari if they still can’t get their KERS working reliably.

Tyres… this time we mean it

Everyone except Pirelli was panicking about tyre degradation prior to the Australian GP, they expected two to three stops and were bang on the money. This time they are expecting things to be a little more difficult and have suggested that three to four stops will be more likely.

With this in mind, it will be interesting to see how Red Bull and Ferrari, who appeared to struggle with tyre degradation a little more than the McLarens and Renaults, manage their tyres. This may also play into the hands of Sauber, who clearly demonstrated how kind it’s car was to its tyres with Sergio Perez’ one stop strategy.

As always the weather at Sepang, known for producing enormous thunderstorms right on race time, can throw the best laid plans out the window as Ferrari and McLaren found out to their detriment last year.

In some respects this race is still very much a lottery, but you can’t help but think that Red Bull have a few more tickets than the rest of the field.