It was the end of the Malaysian Grand Prix, the fifteenth round of the world championship. There are only five races left to finish the Championship and once again Toro Rosso is the news. The reason is Pierre Gasly, who this weekend has taken the place of Daniil Kvyat and probably do it again in the next races. He is the champion of the Formula Renault 2.0 Eurocup, runner-up of the Formula Renault 3.5 Series and champion of the GP2 Series. This year he has being fighting for the title of the Japanese Super Formula.
He is half a point behind the championship leader and the last race will be held on the same weekend as the US Grand Prix of Formula 1, so it seems that Kvyat will once again get into the Formula 1 car. No doubt Gasly will have many chances to be an official driver next year with Toro Rosso. While Kvyat remains in doubt.
Due to failures of the driver and the team, he has not been able to demonstrate his potential. If you add the disappointments of being replaced suddenly when he was in Red Bull and now in Toro Rosso, this leaves this him an unfortunate situation. Gasly took advantage of the opportunity and finished in the 14th position, while his teammate Sainz did not finish the race for a problem in his engine.
However, the Malaysian Grand Prix soon caught our attention. The Sepang circuit was ready to give us a great show. He started in free Practice 1 with rain, continued in Free Practice 2 with the Grosjean accident. The driver of team Haas found an open lid of drainage in the circuit, that caused him to lose control of this car. The session had to be cancelled and allowed the team to repair the car without counting the curfew. But Free Practice 3 wanted to increase the excitement for the world championship, once again Vettel was victim. The engine of the Ferrari broke. Although the mechanics worked to repair the car for qualifying, the car did not work after a lap and could only be last in the starting grid. We can say that the luck is not with Vettel, while Hamilton returned to take pole.
But bad luck didn’t only focus on Vettel. His teammate Räikkönen, who was in second position, retired before the start of the Grand Prix. Another hard blow for the Italian team.
With this situation, Hamilton had many options to win the race. That was before Verstappen appeared in his side mirror, the Red Bull driver did not hesitate to overtake the Englishman and win the race. His teammate Ricciardo also fought with the other Mercedes car and gave us a great overtaking. No doubt the Red Bull have been the dominant team this weekend. Hamilton was able to get the second place. A little help for Vettel who managed to climb up to fourth position, but he failed to overtake Ricciardo. Some good points for the German for his fight for the driver’s world championship, which is becoming more complicated after another bad weekend for Ferrari.