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Calm before the storm – Webber’s final stop. Photo: AC

It’s a measure of just how much turmoil Sebastian Vettel created in the Red Bull camp that even his number one supporter and mentor Helmut Marko was frustrated at the way the Malaysian GP turned out.

Intriguingly he tried to defend the team’s awkward situation by implying that Mercedes had favoured Lewis Hamilton.

“We have to go through everything,” Dr Marko told this blog. “Obviously it’s not what we expected. After the last stop we saw that Seb was very, very quick on his out lap, so it was obvious that they would come together, or side to side. That was the problem. Before then it was not necessary, because they were so much apart.

“The team did the right thing, we told the drivers to keep positions, and all of a sudden they were side-by-side, and at this stage it went out of control. But it shows that we don’t have this number one and number two like Mercedes. But it shouldn’t be like it was, because we were all worried about the tyre wear, and we were lucky to finish one-two.”

Marko admitted that it was not easy to manage two very competitive drivers: “We have to work it out internally. It’s a positive thing, it’s not like Mercedes where it’s ‘bang, you stay behind.’ When you do have guys like Sebastian and Mark in such a situation there’s no way of controlling it.”

He conceded that in an era where saving tyres is so important such situations are bound to arise.

“It’s very hard to manage, but in the end we were lucky, because the tyres stayed together much better than we expected. They both did very fast laps in the last stint, so maybe we have to be a little less critical to Pirelli.”

Marko said he had no problem with Vettel telling the team earlier in the race that Webber was too slow and they should “get him out of the way,” a message that led to considerable criticism of the German’s attitude.

“It was correct, because Hamilton was behind him, and was getting into DRS. Mark got the message and immediately went faster, so that worked as a team should work. He just said Mark is too slow. Look what was in the rear – it was Hamilton and Rosberg, not only were they coming into DRS, there was a danger that they could do an undercut.”

Stefano Domenicali admits that Ferrari took a big risk in leaving Fernando Alonso out with a damaged front wing after his first lap touch with Sebastian Vettel in Malaysia.

The team hoped that it would stay in place for four or five laps and take the Spaniard into the window for the switch to dry tyres, but it came off and went under the car at the start of the second lap, sending Alonso off the road.

While there was some logic to the decision to stay out Ferrari sources admit that the team had been too greedy, adding that some of those involved in the decision couldn’t actually see the TV pictures that clearly indicated that the wing was not just damaged but was askew and already dragging along the track.

“I think at the end of the day I think we took a risk that was quite high, and didn’t pay off,” said Domenicali. “After the touch the race of course I would say in those conditions is not over, but almost over. And considering the situation where there was this transition from wet to dry that was coming in… In normal conditions it was very obvious that you come in and do the stop, no doubt. In this condition of transition if you believe that the wing can stay alive or survive, you try to take the time, because here as we know the track is getting dry very quickly, so you may have the chance to pit first with the dry tyres and be the hero of the weekend.

“But unfortunately the wing didn’t say there. Effectively it didn’t move out, it just went under, so we couldn’t go back to the pits. That was the thinking behind it, to be very open.

“The decision was from the pit wall. Fernando of course, he was feeling the car, but you cannot really see exactly the damage from the point of view that he has in the car. As always it’s something where we take responsibility as a team. It was unfortunate.”

As for Alonso’s reaction, Domenicali added: “I think that Fernando is very mature. He’s not happy of course about the result, because it’s zero points in the championship, it’s very heavy. He’s very mature, he’s looking forward, positive, because he feels that we have something to play with. It is a shame when you lose important points in these conditions, but he’s totally focussed now, looking forward to the next one.”

Domenicali stressed that it was important to move on.

“It was a shame because I think that today we could have taken good points out of the race. That’s why it’s important to close this Sunday, not positive, and looking ahead. I believe the championship is very long, we see that the performance of the others is very good, but we have also seen during these two races there were so many different performances between different cars in different conditions that it’s almost impossible to understand something.

“I see a lot of overreaction from other teams on the tyres, another thing in my view that it’s better to stay cool and calm about, as always in life. It’s a shame because after this Sunday I believe we could have taken much more points, but let’s move on and target China, because it will be another important Grand Prix.”

Regarding Ferrari’s place in the current pecking order, he said: “I don’t know exactly where, but for surely between the leaders. There are tracks where our car will perform better, there are certain tracks where some others will perform better than ours. For sure Red Bull is still the strongest at the moment, but we will see. Mercedes has done a step, Lotus is very competitive, it will an interesting and challenging season, but we will be there, no doubt.”

After finishing third in Malaysia Lewis Hamilton admitted that he felt a little awkward that team orders were required to keep him ahead of Nico Rosberg.

Mercedes hit fuel consumption problems, although Hamilton suffered more than his team mate.

“We just had a big team talk just now, and everyone’s been fantastic,” said Hamilton. “The guys did a great job today, and Nico in particular did an exceptional job and showed great maturity. It was a very unique and difficult position for me to be in, and I’m going to work hard to make sure I’m not in that position again.

“We look at the positives. We are the second fastest team, which is a massive bonus. To be that close at some stages – you’ve got to remember that i was competing with the Red Bulls at some stages in the race – and to be in that position was a great feeling. Unfortunately we didn’t have enough fuel in the car, more so in my side, so I was fuel saving from lap 25 or something.

“So it was very much an impossible task to challenge the guys in front. At the end I was fuel saving like you couldn’t believe, I was lifting and coasting everywhere, so there was no way I could compete with any of the people around me. But that’s motor racing. I’m sure if we were all on the same fuel it would have been a different situation. I’m confident with that.”

Asked if about the prospects of winning races this year, he said: “We’re the second quickest team at the moment, we’re not the quickest, but if we keeping working in the direction that we are going there’s all the possibilities that we could be the quickest at some stage this year.”

Sebastian Vettel admits that he didn’t realise what a stir he’d caused by passing Mark Webber for the lead in Malaysia until he got back to the pits after the race.

Vettel apologised to Webber, but curiously he also claimed that he had not ignored the team orders “deliberately.”

However, team boss Christian Horner made it clear that the German knew exactly what was being asked of him.

“Towards the end I feel I had quite a strong pace,” said Vettel. “And obviously at the very end on a new set of medium tyres I had a bit more speed, and it was a close fight. But as you can see I’m not entirely happy. I think I did a big mistake today. I think we should have stayed in the positions that we were.

“I didn’t ignore it on purpose, but I messed up in that situation and obviously took the lead which, I can see now he’s upset, but yeah, I want to be honest at least and stick to the truth and apologise. I know that it doesn’t really help his feelings right now, but I think other than that, obviously a very good race for the team. We handled the tyres I think pretty well today. To sum it up, apologies to Mark, obviously now the result is there. but all I can say is that I didn’t do it deliberately.

“I think obviously we talk about these kind of things before we go into the race, and it’s not the first time we race each other. I think the difference in pace at the end probably wasn’t fair because he was trying to save the car and the tyres and, as I said, I did not ignore that but I should have been aware, to be honest. Obviously then took quite a lot of risk to pass him and that was the end of the race then.”

Asked to elaborate on how he hadn’t made the pass deliberately, he still didn’t have an adequate answer.

“I think it’s not an easy situation for me. Obviously I’m the black sheep right now. Obviously I put myself in that position so, as I said, all I can say is apologies to Mark. I know that right now, obviously, having just come out of the car, it’s probably difficult to explain everything, but the pass was deliberate. Obviously I wanted to pass him, you could see that, otherwise you wouldn’t even try, but I didn’t mean to ignore the strategy or the call. I made a mistake, simply.”

Christian Horner says that Sebastian Vettel has apologised to Mark Webber and Red Bull for disobeying team instructions in Malaysia.

Vettel was told to hold station immediately after coming out of the final pit stop behind his team mate, but instead continued to fight for the lead. Horner admitted that the situation was not ideal for the team.

“We’ve conducted a debrief and I’ve spoken to both drivers,” said Horner. “And Sebastian has apologised to both Mark and the team. So we’ve conducted our debrief as we usually do, and now we focus on the next race.

“At the end of the day in a situation like today you have a position from a team, which is clear, which is from our position to maximise the points from a team point of view from that last pit stop to the end of the race. From our point of view as soon as that pit stop was complete, Mark was ahead, it was very close on the pit exit, but as far as we were concerned it was a matter of managing the tyres to the end of the race. The tyres we’ve obviously been marginal with all weekend and last weekend, and the instruction was given to both cars effectively to hold position.

“At that point Sebastian has obviously chose to ignore that. The interests of a driver compared to the interests of a team are different, and he’s focussed on the eight point difference between a win and second, the team is focussed on the 43 points, and for us it didn’t matter which way round it finished, we just want to close the result off.

“Obviously it wasn’t right what he did, he accepts that. I think he’s clearly said if he could wind the clocks back he wouldn’t do it again. That’s the way it is. That’s the way it is. We need to put it behind us, we need to move on, it’s not like it hasn’t happened before, it’s not like it wasn’t happening just behind us.”

Horner has some sympathy with both drivers: “We employ these guys because they are competitive, because they do push each other, because they are very driven individuals. If either one was submissive to the other it’s not part of what we want in a racing driver. So of course it’s uncomfortable for the team, a situation like that. We managed to convert the 43 points, and it shouldn’t mar what was a fantastic team performance today.”

Horner said that Vettel told the team he hadn’t understood the position, although the team boss made it clear that he felt Vettel had chosen not to hear it.

“He felt that he hadn’t heard the call and it was unclear to him what the instruction was. But then again we had just the same in Brazil the other way round so these things happen.

“He’s obviously chosen to hear what he wants to hear. He’s a race driver, he’s hungry, he hasn’t achieved the championships that he has by not pushing the limits. He’s pushed that today with his team mate and his team.

“They’ve never been the best of mates, they’re never going to spend Christmas together, but there is a respect between the two of them, and I’m sure with a little bit of time to reflect, we’ll quickly move on from this.”

Asked if the team could have told Vettel to give the lead back, he said: “Do you honestly think if we’d told him to slow down and give the place back he would have slowed down and given it back? There’s no point. He’d made it quite clear what his intention was by making the move. He knew what the communication was, he had the communication, he chose to ignore it.

“He put his own interests beyond what the team’s position was, he was focussed on those eight points difference between second and first place. It was wrong and he’s accepted it was wrong.”

Ross Brawn says he has no regrets about not pitting Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg for fresh intermediates at the end of Q3, a strategy that helped to propel Sebastian Vettel and the two Ferraris to the head of the field.

Hamilton and Rosberg had to settle for fourth and sixth, having looked stronger earlier in the session.

“We’d obviously considered it before the session started,” said Brawn of the alternative strategy. “We’d seen some indications that the intermediate both held on and maybe even improved as it wore down, but I don’t think that seemed to be the case. It was as simple as that.”

Nevertheless Brawn says he’s happy with the way the Malaysian weekend has turned out thus far.

“I don’t think we were able to see the full potential of the cars in the dry, but I think we’re certainly top six in terms of our cars. So I think it’s a measure of where we are right now that we’re disappointed with fourth and sixth. Fourth and sixth would have been very welcome in the second half of last year, this year we’re a bit disappointed.

“We’re in that group. I don’t think we’re the fastest team, but we’ve made some encouraging progress, and we’ve got to keep pushing hard to keep progressing, because the pace of progress at the front is ferocious. We’re going to keep working hard to keep bringing new improvements to the cars.

“What will really count is where everyone is tomorrow, how they’re using their tyres, how they’re getting the most from them, good strategy, so on and so forth. The next measure will be tomorrow.”

Asked if he would be disappointed to still be fourth and sixth on Sunday, Ross said: “It would be OK. There are worse positions, and there are better positions. I think the drivers have worked really well this weekend, and the engineers have worked really well to have the car that we want to have. If that all comes together in the race, then fourth and sixth probably would be a bit of a disappointment.

“It’s difficult to speculate where we will end up, but we’re not in a bad place. We spent a lot of time getting the car dialled in for the race, and if that carries through – and it doesn’t always carry through, you get different conditions on a Sunday, and you suddenly find the car you tuned to heat the sweet spot doesn’t hit the sweet spot on Sunday. If it doesn’t then with these tyres, you can start to struggle. But if we carry that through, we should have a good race.”

Kimi Raikkonen has been handed a three-place penalty in Malaysia for impeding Nico Rosberg in qualifying.

Jenson Button now moves up to seventh, ahead of Adrian Sutil and Sergio Perez. Kimi will now start 10th, right in front of team mate Romain Grosjean.

“It got a  bit close in Turn 14,” said Rosberg. “They were on out laps, him and Sutil. So it was a bit close. The stewards have to judge if that was impeding or not.”

After getting comfortably into the top 1o in Malaysia Jenson Button says that McLaren has made progress with the MP4-28.

Button, who was as high as sixth in Q1, finished the damp Q3 session in eighth.

“Forgetting the wet conditions, I think we’ve improved from Australia,” he insisted. “I said yesterday that we’re competitive in these conditions, but today that wasn’t the case! I couldn’t find the balance in the wet.

“But anyway if you look through qualifying, in Q1 and Q2 on dry tyres, we were more competitive. Still nowhere near the top, but we were more competitive, and we should be very happy with what we’ve achieved so far this weekend. It’s only five days after a pretty tough race for us, so we’re making progress. And that’s very positive.”

Button has been saying he wanted a wet race, but he admits he’s changed his mind.

“After this, no I’m not. I couldn’t find a balance out there, and I struggled with lack of grip in high speed at the rear, lots of rear movement. Most of the time our car has been very good in the wet, but today it isn’t. I’d take that any day of the week for a better car in the dry.

“We’ve improved the car in the dry, which is good. It’s getting there. We’ve got a bit of work to do, and we lucked in with the rain in Q2 at the end, but tomorrow we’re looking forward to the race. I wasn’t really looking forward to the race in Melbourne.”

Christian Horner says that none of the teams have a proper handle on how to get the best out of Pirelli’s 2013 tyres.

However he says that it’s too early to suggest that the racing is too artificial.

“At the moment we’ve got one race as a reference,” he said. “Let’s see how this weekend pans out, and then we’ll start to get a clearer picture. But for sure you can see the tyres are quite fragile.

“You’ve only got to look at the slow motion shots here to see the amount of rubber that’s coming off them, even in a straight line, which is quite surprising. But then it’s the same tyre for everybody.

“I think the tyres for sure are a key, key role at the moment, and I think they’ll be a decisive factor here this weekend. It’s going to be a matter of finding that operating window that gives them performance and longevity.

“I think what we want to avoid is drivers driving around under the performance of their car, unable to follow another car closely. I think that’s what we desperately need to avoid – otherwise it’s not racing. It’s still early days, so let’s see a sample of two or three races, and we’ll be able to gauge from there. It doesn’t look like the situation is really too much different from the winter testing.”

In Australia Sebastian Vettel suffered greater degradation than team mate Mark Webber, which is not the usual pattern.

“Mark seemed to have better longevity with his tyre,” he said when asked about the race by this writer. “I think looking at Seb’s race, following Sutil did quite a bit of damage to the tyre. We were just not in the right operating window with Sebastian, who’s usually so good at managing the tyres. He was just powerless to be able to extend that stint length, and usually he’s the best in the business at that.”

As to whether it was frustrating to have a potentially fast car but not be able to use its performance, Horner said: “Obviously a quick car puts a little bit more energy into a tyre, you can see that in Melbourne, you can see that a little bit more here. For sure we’ve got a very good car, we’ve just got to work out how best to use these tyres. We’ve just got to work hard to understand that and get on top of it.

“I don’t think anybody up and down this pit lane fully understands these tyres, to be quite honest. I think if you can explain the different performances in different parts of the race, whether it be a Force India which was incredibly soft on a hard tyre and then killed a soft tyre, or the opposite way round for Mercedes, or Toro Rosso setting purple sectors, or Kimi Raikkonen setting fastest lap two laps from the end on a tyre that had done 20 laps… There were so many anomalies. A key aspect of this season is going to be getting on top of those tyre issues, and understanding them.”

Nick Fry will step down from his role as CEO of Mercedes at the beginning of April, the team confirmed today.

Recently Fry has been more focussed on sponsorship activities, and that will continue for the time being. The team says that he will “assist the team’s commercial operations as a consultant until at least the end of 2014,” adding that executive director Toto Wolff will take a greater role in the day-to-day running of the team.

Fry has been involved in the team since the BAR days, through the Honda and Brawn eras.

“I feel very privileged to have had the opportunity to work with our team for the last 11 years and remain extremely proud of the fact that we took the team to its first race win and especially the double World Championship in 2009,” said Fry.

“Equally important is the success of our commercial activities as we have managed to gain the support of some of the most important companies in the world, thereby building a strong foundation for the future success of the team.

“I believe that Mercedes AMG Petronas offers the best sponsorship proposition in Formula One and I look forward to continuing to assist the team and its partners over the coming years.”