No points for the Scuderia Ferrari drivers at the end of a totally chaotic Malaysian Grand Prix. Felipe Massa was classified ninth and Kimi Raikkonen fourteenth. The only slight consolation is that because the race was stopped before three quarter distance, those drivers who did finish in the points will only be awarded half points.

Brawn GP driver Jenson Button repeated his Melbourne performance of a week ago, winning from pole position and was joined on the rain soaked podium by second placed finisher, Nick Heidfeld in the BMW, with Timo Glock third for Toyota.

All weekend, the talk, apart from the politics and protests, had been about the possibility that a typical Malaysian rainstorm would disrupt the race and before the start, the black clouds were already approaching. Kimi and Felipe were seventh and sixteenth respectively on the grid. As the lights went out, Rosberg took the lead off the second row, followed by Trulli, Alonso, Button, Kimi, up to fifth, Barrichello, Webber, Glock, Heidfeld, with Hamilton tenth and Felipe up to twelfth already. Kubica bogged down on the grid. Kovalainen spun into the gravel while Kimi was passed by Button and Barrichello. By lap 3, Kubica had stopped while Barrichello passed Alonso to go fourth.

By lap 8, Kimi was now over 22 seconds behind the leader and the gap would grow as Alonso in fifth place had a queue of cars waiting to pass his Renault and on lap 11, Kimi got past the Spaniard. One of the best battles of the race then took place between Alonso and Webber, with plenty of side by side action.

The clouds were still threatening but still there was no rain, as Vettel was the first driver to pit on lap 14, followed two laps later by race leader, Rosberg and Glock. Kimi waited until lap 19 to come in for tyres and fuel and the team took the big gamble of putting him on extreme wet tyres, as it seemed inevitable the storm was not far off. Finally, two laps later the rain did come, but it was more like drizzle and by lap 23 when everyone came in for wets, Kimi’s gamble had evidently not worked out as those few laps in the dry on the rain tyres, meant they were already suffering. One driver who had not gone for the extreme rain tyres was Glock and the Toyota man, running intermediates was climbing up the order. On lap 30, Felipe was part of a group, including race leader Button, who all made the switch to intermediates. By this stage, Glock’s climb saw him pass Webber for second and then Button to go in the lead briefly.

Felipe Massa was desperately unlucky with his pit stops in that he first took on intermediate rain tyres as the rain was so light, but no sooner had he rejoined that the heavens opened so an additional stop was called for.

Finally the rain reaches its usual tropical full force and most of the field including the two Scuderia drivers pitted for full wet tyres with cars spinning off all over the track around lap 31 and one lap later, the Safety Car was deployed, when the order was Button, Glock, Heidfeld, Trulli, Barrichello, Webber, Hamilton, Rosberg, Massa, ninth, Bourdais, Alonso, Nakajima, Piquet, Raikkonen fourteenth and Sutil fifteenth.

Then the race was red flagged, with cars lining up on the grid, apart from Kimi’s F60, which was pushed into the garage, with an isolation problem on the KERS system. After much consultation, even though the rain eased slightly, Race Control decided to abort the race, with the result put back to the order before the red flag was waved, which meant Heidfeld was promoted back to second place.

After this first rush of two races in two weekends, the Scuderia can now pause to catch its breath and assess its bad start to the year. As Massa said, it’s not as though the team has become stupid, it just needs to change its approach and it will have a chance to prove it can recover from difficult situations, when the F1 championship moves on to Round 3 in Shanghai, China in a fortnight’s time.

Stefano Domenicali: “We are very disappointed because once again today, we leave a circuit empty handed. With hindsight, it’s clear that we took some wrong decisions, especially in Kimi’s case at his first pit stop: the information we had at the time was that the storm was due to hit in a very short time, when in fact it took a few more minutes for the rain to come. Felipe was very unlucky: another forty seconds or so and he could have stayed on track with the extreme wet tyres, finishing in a good position at the end of the race. Clearly we have to extricate ourselves from this situation, without panicking, but with every one of us taking on our responsibilities: we have to dig deep and react, starting immediately. We have to change our mentality and accept that we are in a different situation to the past and that therefore we have to tackle it with a different approach, both on track and in Maranello.”

Felipe Massa: “It was a chaotic race and it’s easy in these conditions to take decisions, which later in hindsight, turn out to be wrong. When we fitted the rain tyres, we expected heavy rain to come soon and unfortunately it was just a light shower. Therefore, I came back in to fit intermediates and immediately after that, the downpour arrived. It’s a shame, as I could have managed to get into the points. We definitely need to analyse our mistakes and understand how they can be avoided, but I don’t think it needs a revolution which the always emotional onlookers demand: it would be wrong because it’s not a case of us suddenly becoming stupid. It’s the playing field that has changed. We must be aware of that and tackle the situation with a different approach.”

Kimi Raikkonen: “We were in a good position at the time of the first pit stop and then we made a mistake, fitting the rain tyres when the rain had yet to fall. And that was where my race was pretty much over. When the race was halted, the conditions were very difficult. There was so much water on the track and I was struggling to drive the car even in second gear. Clearly we cannot be happy with our start to the season: in Melbourne, I was the one to make a mistake and today it was the team, the result being we find ourselves without any points.”

Luca Baldisserri: “Another disastrous race, and we can’t make any excuses for it. Once again today we tried to second guess what might happen and every time the opposite of what we expected happened and so the race was turned into a continual struggle to make up for that and in the end we finished empty handed. In the dry, our race pace was not really exceptional, but it did reflect what was our true potential today. Now we must try to turn things around and get out of this situation in a hurry.”

Race Details

F. Massa: 9th 56.47.554, Gap + 1.16.932, 31 Laps - Chassis 275
K. Raikkonen: 14th 57.53.463, Gap + 2.22.841, 31 Laps - Chassis 276
Weather: air temperature 31/28 °C, track temperature 37/33 °C, cloudy then rain.