Straight From Malaysia

Hello Everyone!

The race in Malaysia was really tough! First because the weather was very hot (32 degrees Celsius with an 80% humidity rate). Second, because the car was not as good as it was in Australia.

In Melbourne, the cars were closer to each other because of the nature of the track, giving everyone better chances. However, the race in Malaysia could have been much better.

Friday started out pretty well. The car was well-balanced, but it was understeering in the low speed corners.

We tested the tires, comparing the hard and soft ones and we saw that there wasn’t much difference between them, so on Saturday I went out to the track full throttle to try for a good classifying.

The hard thing was that in the morning practice, right on my first lap, I had a problem with the gearbox and I had to stop.

In the past, we would have continued the practice, but now with the new rule of losing 5 places in the starting grid, we couldn’t take the risk.

And to tell you the truth, we were pretty lucky to have stopped. If we hadn’t, the gearbox would certainly have broken down.

In spite of all this, I went to the classifying, not knowing if my problems had been solved with the changes that had been made on the previous day.

The car was still understeering and the situation got harder during the race because it had rained a lot on Saturday night, cleaning up all the rubber on the track, leaving me high and dry.

At least the car has shown reliability and we are sure we are going to score soon enough.

Take care,

Rubens Barrichello

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