A typically hot, humid and thundery weekend is forecast for the Malaysian grand prix.
New championship leader Jenson Button travels to Kuala Lumpur eyeing a weather forecast of possible rain for all three days of track action.

And as ever in tropical Malaysia, the highest chance of rain is always in the late afternoon.

“Bernie (Ecclestone) loves a late start,” smiled Red Bull’s Mark Webber, “and, once again, the race has a late kick-off.”

Indeed, qualifying and the race are not scheduled until 4pm local in Malaysia, ensuring a more civil early morning wake-up for F1′s bulk live audience in Europe.

“Late afternoon is usually when the rain comes in Malaysia, and when it comes you know about it,” said Australian Webber. “It’s something to be wary of.”

Even more nervous about the rain forecasts will be HRT.

After sitting out almost the entire winter whilst rebuilding the struggling Spanish team following Colin Kolles’ departure, Pedro de la Rosa and Narain Karthikeyan failed to qualify in Melbourne.

“In Australia we were only able to complete seven timed laps so I need to get more track time, get to know the car better and improve the setup,” said de la Rosa.

Valencia’s earlier date for its grand prix this weekend has resulted in higher ticket sales.

Last year, high ambient temperatures and clashing Spanish holidays meant spectator numbers were low for the European grand prix in late August.

Valencia’s street race was moved to late June for this season, amid suggestions the real problem is that the layout does not produce good racing.

“The city is making an enormous effort but I assume there’s a long way to go,” F1 chief executive Bernie Ecclestone said in an interview with Spain’s El Mundo newspaper.

“The change of date is helping the ticket sales, as well as the signing of Fernando Alonso with Ferrari,” he added.

In AS newspaper, race promoter Valmor’s boss Jorge Martinez Aspar confirmed that ticket sales for this weekend’s event have gone “well beyond the sales of last year”.

“There will not be as many people as in the first year (2008), but it is much better than last year,” Aspar added.

A warm and sunny weekend of weather is expected in the port city this weekend, with the only possibility of light rain forecast for Friday.
(GMM)

The possibility of moving from the Spanish Jerez circuit to another speedway for two of the four test days this week was suggested.  Rain forecast indicated that weather conditions would be worse this week, but an adequate replacement for Jerez could not be found on such a short notice.

When Sauber Beat Zendher, team principal, was asked about the possibility of moving to Valencia or else, to the Portimao circuit he answered: “The circuits are taken up and weather conditions are quite uncertain.”

The pilots are waiting for the option of dry driving to be able to understand the performance of the cars and to tune them up before the March 14^th Bahrain season’s opening.  Hence, time is ticking away and there are only eight test days left, four in Jerez this week and four in Barcelona, next week.

Weather conditions are particularly bad for the new teams. Virgin and Lotus have just unveiled their single-seaters this year with two cars that start up in zero during the winter.  With scarce experience, they need dry performance much more that others with more data and experience, to be able to overcome the initial problems with their new engines.  Last week, Virgin lost the best part of the day, due to the front wing failure and lack of spare parts.

After humid weather on Wednesday, today there were better conditions that allowed the racing cars to run through the day with dry tires.  Sebastien completed a good number of laps.  Let’s hope the rain forecast for tomorrow is wrong.  The agenda of the Toro Rosso team evaluated some aerodynamic components, tried out several of them and, as the rest of the teams, tested those set-ups with different fuel loads.

The Swiss pilot rolled out three components brought by Bridgestone –the super soft, soft and hard.

“I’m very happy with the last two days and, even though the rain is not an ideal condition, yesterday’s meant we could try out the rain tires,” said Sebastien Buemi.  “Today, we have been able to lap many times with dry weather, and the car is reliable.  We approached several topics and ran with diverse fuel loads, so we are starting to obtain a better understanding of STR5 overall.”