Eddie Irvine
Lewis Hamilton's done an absolutely amazing job once again. At the moment, there doesn't seem to be any weaknesses in his armoury - which is incredible for a kid of his age. As I said in my last column, Malaysia's a very physically demanding race - when you achieve something like this in your second race in F1, is like getting to the summit of Mount Everest on your second Climb - this kid is just incredible to watch and is bringing so much excitement to the Sport.
Being realistic, he's off the pace of Alonso in qualifying and the race by quite a large amount which could have been down to car balance, but his defensive driving both at the start of the race after he passed Massa and Kimi and at the end when Kimi closed up was just perfection. Some people say it's all the more impressive not knowing the circuits but I don't think it makes much of a difference. After 13 laps of practice you should be well on top of it.
One thing we do have to remember about Hamilton is that if he'd have been in a normal car and been six tenths off his team-mate, which he was, he would have been 18th or 19th on the grid. Because he's in a McLaren he can afford to be a long way off his team-mate and still look close. But it's early days, Malaysia is a very hard circuit, and the more races he gets under his belt, the closer he should get. But it's simply not going to be like when Michael Schumacher came into F1 and blew away his three-time world champion team-mate Nelson Piquet!
Either McLaren have made a huge step forward since Albert Park or the circuit just suited them better than Ferrari.
In the middle stint, Hamilton had more fuel on board than Raikkonen and on the final stint Raikkonen had fresher tyres because Hamilton had already driven three laps on the harder compound. That would explain why it was so close at the end but it doesn't explain why Alonso raced off into the distance at the start.
Massa was all over the back of Hamilton in the first stint and had a go at overtaking a couple of times. I thought Massa looked so desperate that I assumed he had less fuel on than Kimi, so needed to get ahead as early as possible. It really did look that desperate but they actually pitted very close to each other so it was just very a stupid attempt. The fact that he has much more pressure on him now may well have been a factor. He's not up against Michael Schumacher any more, who was expected to beat him, and he now has to show that he's as good as Kimi if not better and that's puts on pressure. He had better race pace than Kimi but quite simply just screwed things up! Whenever Kimi got close I thought he was going to take him but he didn't seem to get close enough to pull off the move.
Next up, it's Bahrain but I really don't know the circuit as I've never driven there and don't think I've even watched a race there! But looking at Malaysia, Massa was on pole with similar fuel to everyone else and was definitely a lot quicker than Hamilton. I think part of it was that Kimi was just not on the pace for whatever reason. If he was ahead of Hamilton we would have been able to see whether he could have held onto Alonso's tail. Kimi was four and a half tenths of Massa in qualifying and in the race he couldn't make a proper move on Hamilton and Massa could. It's not all black and white now and McLaren have a faster car.
As I said before, the away races are not really indicative of true performance and when we get to Europe we'll find out a lot more. But on the performance of Alonso in Malaysia, I certainly wouldn't bet against him for Bahrain.
Eddie Irvine
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10th April 2007
