With three races down – is the new points system working if Felipe Massa is leading?

With three races completed, Bahrain, Australia and Malaysia there have been three winners so far, Fernando Alonso, Jenson Button and Sebastien Vettel but it’s Felipe Massa who leads the Championship. It may be by only 2 points but it seems strange that a points system that was designed to give winning races more emphasis is being led by a driver who hasn’t won yet.
The table itself is very close with 9pts covering the first 7 drivers:

1. Felipe Massa
Ferrari
39

2. Fernando Alonso
Ferrari
37

3. Sebastian Vettel
Red Bull Racing
37

4. Jenson Button
McLaren
35

5. Nico Rosberg
Mercedes GP
35

6. Lewis Hamilton
McLaren
31

7. Robert Kubica
Renault
30

Though I doubt this will hold all season it does mean that you can hold onto the people who are winning even if you don’t manage it yourself. I’m sure that Felipe Massa will be wanting to win and justify that position at the top but with all the different people who seem to be in with [...]

Two weeks, two tyre choices and two very different results for Jenson Button

In Australia Jenson Button made a very brave tyre call that effectively won him the race, he made it work but it gave him the opportunity to win. A week later and he sat on the grid with the softer option tyres whilst everyone around him was on the harder compound – and finished the race in 8th place 2 behind Lewis Hamilton who’d started behind him on the harder tyres.
Jenson’s race didn’t get off to a flying start as he found himself behind the Ferrari’s, a stop on lap 8 put him on the harder tyres and on a clear part of the track which he used to his advantage to put in some fast times which were out of sync with his rivals and in the process he jumped most of them, but, he’s now two thirds of the way into the race on the hard tyres which [...]

Webber takes pole in Malaysia to keep Red Bull on top in a wet qualifying

Mark Webber stormed to pole on a wet Malaysian circuit, he was one of the few drivers on Inters in the dying minutes of the session and pulled an amazing time out of the bag to take pole away from Nico Rosberg.
The first session saw Ferrari and McLaren both make the same dumb mistake – they stayed in the garage for too long – it rained and they couldn’t make the times (or stay on circuit in Button’s case). Though Button made it though the session technically with his car parked at the side of the circuit he was unable to take part in the next session and so lines up 17th on the grid. Hamilton, Alonso and Massa all failed to make the cut and were eliminated from the session meaning that they line up 19th, 20th and 21st on the grid.
The second session saw the elimination of the [...]

Friday practice in Malaysia – Lewis Hamilton takes the day

The practice sessions on Friday were dominanted by the McLaren of Lewis Hamilton as he seeks to put Australia behind him as fast as possible. The other McLaren of Jenson Button, the two Mercedes and the Red Bull of Sebastien Vettel have all shown pace through the sessions.
Practice 1
In first practice Hamilton lead the way with Button and the two Mercedes in close pursuit, the Renault of Kubica was also still showing the pace that he had in Australia. The new teams were much closer to the back of the pack with the Virgins and the Lotus’ mixing it up together and the HRT Cosworth cars just behind them.
It seems that the Williams cars were either practising long runs or are very slow here. With the Ferraris and the Red Bulls down the order they might not have been the only ones.
1. Hamilton [...]