In The Mirrors: Malaysian GP

Jenson Button and an enormous downpour may have stolen the headlines from last weekend's Malaysian Grand Prix, but as ever there was plenty of excitement further down the field.

Strange tyre strategies, bad tactical qualifying decisions, and some ice cream certainly made the race more interesting, and this was just from Ferrari!

What is going wrong with Ferrari at the moment? They seemed to have a potentially race-winning car based on the practice sessions, and were at least looking on course for a big handful of points. Then qualifying began, and the errors started.

A reasonably poor lap by Felipe Massa left him stranded in the bottom five of session one, as he sat in the garage and watched driver after driver improve their lap-time. After pole position in the two previous races here, Massa would be starting this one from 16th.

Piquet, Sutil, Fisichella, and Buemi joined him at the back, while the two McLarens couldn't do much better and qualified in 13th and 14th place.

As the race began, everyone was considering the threat of rain. In the first lap Heikki Kovalainen managed to have an accident all by himself, meaning that the Finn has still yet to complete a racing lap in 2009.

Robert Kubica's car took the opportunity to pack up after a poor start, with his BMW Sauber calling it a day on lap two.

Mixed weather reports were coming out of the garages, as the clouds grew ever darker on the horizon. Sebastien Buemi managed to knock off his nose, and had to come in for repairs, leaving him at the very back of the field.

After his 10 place grid penalty, Sebastian Vettel climbed back up the order, but struggled to get past Nick Heidfeld, who had the advantage of KERS.

Lewis Hamilton and Massa were slightly further back, but weren't troubling anyone with their heavy fuel loads.

As the first spots of rain began to fall, Kimi Raikkonen was fitted with wet tyres. A brave gamble, but ultimately far too early. It took several more laps for the rain to fall, and by then his tyres were knackered.

When the rain did eventually come, it was not as heavy as everyone thought. Only Timo Glock had chosen the intermediate tyre, and was flying up through the field after finding himself towards the back despite his good grid position.

Following his example, most of the field pitted for intermediate tyres. The next lap, most of the field went in for wet tyres. The rain suddenly intensified, and Sebastian Vettel and Giancarlo Fisichella fell off the track in this extreme weather.

The safety car came out, then the red flag. The drivers parked on the grid. Luca Collajani informed everyone that Raikkonen was completely ready for a restart, as Kimi helped himself to an ice cream in the back of the Ferrari garage, his race overalls taken off.

After many, many, many minutes, the race was declared over, with half points being handed out. A stroppy Massa finished ninth, meaning that Ferrari still have no points after two races, and despite his decent start, Fernando Alonso was classified as 11th.

As I write this, it is 10 days until the Chinese Grand Prix, where hopefully a complete race will occur. Can Ferrari recover some of the intelligence that has been missing recently? Can Brawn continue their brilliant start to the season?

Can Heikki Kovalainen complete a lap?