You remember our Australian GP recap from a few weeks ago where everything seemed to point to a boring and predictable season? Yeah, scratch that.

What a stunner yesterday as Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel had himself an amazing race where he managed to stay in front of both Mercedes cars, not just thanks to his car having great pace, but mostly due to a successful team strategy and excellent tire conservation.

As it happens, the safety car coming in on lap 4 put everything in motion for Ferrari as they went on to stop only twice after that, to Mercedes’ having to go with a three-stopper.

Vettel’s teammate, Kimi Raikkonen did pretty well himself at Sepang, fighting back not just from a poor grid spot but also from a first-lap tire puncture and eventually finishing 4th ahead of both Williams cars – which really have no excuse for going 5-6 instead of 4-5..other than, you know, Ferrari “being back”.

Places 7 through 10 were occupied by Toro Rosso’s two young guns, Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz, and Red Bull’s Kvyat and Ricciardo, in precisely this order. So yes, rather disappointing for Red Bull.

What Sepang had that Melbourne didn’t was excitement. The entire race was one big dog fight between pretty much everybody on the grid.

We thoroughly enjoyed seeing Ricciardo and Kvyat as well as Bottas and Massa go at each other in ways that must have made their respective teams cringe as they were watching.

As for McLaren, well, they were once again a non-factor, which is probably the way it’s going to be for at least a couple more races, unless there’s a massive leap in performance that nobody’s expecting to see.

With the Chinese Grand Prix coming up in two weeks time, we’re left wondering if Ferrari can keep Mercedes down yet again or if the world champs are going to bounce back as one would assume they’d do. Just to play it safe, we’ll go with Mercedes bouncing back, since you know, they were still in it even though their race strategy didn’t work out.

10 Random Things We’ve Noticed

– While the safety car was on the track, Rosberg lost quite a bit of time in the pits waiting behind his teammate and also waiting for pit traffic to subside so that he could be released. That had to hurt.

– Even though they still look highly reliable and competitive enough, we were expecting much more from Williams this weekend. But perhaps it’s not as much as them taking a step backwards as it was Ferrari taking off in chase of being a “tier 1” team.

– We were going to let Red Bull “have it” for such a disappointing result, but to be fair, Kvyat did have to recover from a spin while Ricciardo had some sort of front wing damage which he sustained on the very first lap of the race. Still, being topped by Toro Rosso isn’t a good look. Speaking of which…

– Whatever Toro Rosso is doing, they better keep it up because their cars as well as their rookie drivers look fantastic out there! Max Verstappen (P7) became the youngest ever driver to score points in Formula 1 at 17 years old. That’s an amazing accomplishment. And he was fighting it out on the track like a seasoned vet. Very impressive stuff.

– Another poor race performance from Lotus, after showing good pace during qualifying. Hmm, normally we’d say that hopefully this isn’t a trend of some sort, but we know better than that. Grosjean finished P11 while Maldonado had to pull out of the race.

– Teams named Lotus, Sauber and Force India should definitely worry about the fact that they showed less pace than Torro Freakin Rosso out there.

– Felipe Nasr still sounds just like Felipe Massa. Those guys need to figure out a way to pronounce his name differently. It’s really annoying.

– We felt really bad seeing Alonso having to retire on lap 22. He was then followed by his teammate on lap 41. So, like, together they pretty much ran a whole race.

– The broadcast never even showed a Marussia/Manor Racing car on the track. Not even once. Wow. Was it because of their total lack of sponsors/hope/pace? Or simply because the race was too exciting out in front with everybody going at everybody else. At least they finished the race.

– We couldn’t leave Ferrari out of this discussion could we? Despite the fact that they had a great strategy and great pace, we just can’t help but feel that everything sort of went their way. We could argue that it wasn’t as much as Ferrari winning the race as it was Mercedes losing it because of their mistakes both early in the race, as well as feeding Lewis the “wrong tires” at one point, as he was quick to point out.

Sepang Race Results

1. Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari
2. Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes
3. Nico Rosberg, Mercedes
4. Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari
5. Valtteri Bottas, Williams
6. Felipe Massa, Williams
7. Max Verstappen, Toro Rosso
8. Carlos Sainz, Toro Rosso
9. Daniil Kvyat, Red Bull
10. Daniel Ricciardo, Red Bull
11. Romain Grosjean, Lotus
12. Felipe Nasr, Sauber
13. Sergio Perez, Force India
14. Nico Hulkenberg, Force India
15. Roberto Merhi, Marussia