Malaysia is fast becoming a race of teammates, from last years infamous Red Bull driver fall out to this years spat between Williams drivers Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas, where Bottas found himself held up by his slower teammate who refused to give up the fight and held his position to come in 7th.
Meanwhile at the top of the grid the Nico Rosberg managed to get ahead of Sebastian Vettel in the first corner, despite a poor start off the line,while team mate Lewis Hamilton pulled away in first. Though the top three remained in that order for the majority of the race bringing Mercedes their first one, two finish in its new guise.
However most of the action seemed to hang over Daniel Ricciardo who suffered a comedy of errors that started with an early pit release before the front left wheel was fixed in place. This lead the Red Bull driver to receive a stop go penalty. From there he fell victim to a loose front wing that brought him into the pits for a new nose and font tyres only to then have his fuel flow system fail, bringing back night mares of Melbourne back to haunt the Australian driver. This time however the team followed FIA instructions to follow their back up calculations only to have the car fail and ultimately retire from the race.
On top of the races disappointments, the young driver received the news after the race that he would have a 10 place grid penalty at the start of the next race in Bahrain due to an engineer running out on pit lane to help push his car back to the pit box after his unsafe release.
However, the unluckiest driver on Sunday was Sergio Perez who wasn’t able to take the start after his Force India hit technical trouble in the pit lane on its way to the grid ending his race day before it even started.
The second 2014 race leaves Nico Rosberg at the top of the points table with 43, just ahead of teammate Lewis Hamilton on 25. However as you can see below the top 8 drivers so far remain quite tight in the points with Fernando Alonso just one point behind Hamilton in third and both McLaren drivers hot on the Ferrari driver heals.
Driver Standings
| Driver | Team | Points |
| Nico Rosberg | Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team |
43 |
| Lewis Hamilton | Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team |
25 |
| Fernando Alonso | Scuderia Ferrari |
24 |
| Jenson Button | Vodafone McLaren Mercedes |
23 |
| Kevin Magnussen | Vodafone McLaren Mercedes |
20 |
| Nico Hülkenberg | Sahara Force India F1 Team |
18 |
| Sebastian Vettel | Red Bull Racing |
15 |
| Valtteri Bottas | Williams F1 Team |
14 |
| Kimi Räikkönen | Scuderia Ferrari |
6 |
| Felipe Massa | Williams F1 Team |
6 |
| Jean-Éric Vergne | Scuderia Toro Rosso |
4 |
| Daniil Kvyat | Scuderia Toro Rosso |
3 |
| Sergio Pérez | Sahara Force India F1 Team |
1 |
| Adrian Sutil | Sauber F1 Team | |
| Esteban Gutiérrez | Sauber F1 Team | |
| Max Chilton | Marussia F1 Team | |
| Jules Bianchi | Marussia F1 Team | |
| Romain Grosjean | Lotus F1 Team | |
| Pastor Maldonado | Lotus F1 Team | |
| Marcus Ericsson | Caterham F1 Team | |
| Kamui Kobayashi | Caterham F1 Team | |
| Daniel Ricciardo | Red Bull Racing |
We move now to Bahrain this coming weekend.
Roger Baillie (@Rojn8r)
