8 Mad Moments From The Malaysian Grand Prix

1. Vettel’s banzai move backfires

Lewis Hamilton had a great start from pole position but behind him, all hell broke loose. Sebastian Vettel tried a move on Max Verstappen but he braked late, clipped the Red Bull and crashed into Nico Rosberg, spinning the Mercedes.

This triggered a chain reaction behind with various collisions. Vettel ended up retiring, Verstappen continued, and Rosberg returned to the race at the back of the field.

Brake issues at 200mph approaching a slow hairpin is never a good thing. That looks like the situation Romain Grosjean was in on lap nine, after his car squirmed as he hit the brakes and went straight on. Scary stuff but he managed to avoid the wall.

3. Rosberg’s fight back

Having dropped right to the back of the field, it was great to see Rosberg scything his way back up the order. It all looked so easy, proving the Mercedes dominance – the rest looked like they were racing in another category!

Rosberg’s journey up the order continued on lap 38 with an aggressive move on Raikkonen. He went wide at Turn 1 but that set him up for a banzai move up the inside at the next corner. They ended up clashing but both continued (although Rosberg got a penalty for it).

5. Red Bull vs Red Bull

This is what we like to see; proper, wheel-to-wheel racing between team-mates. Quite a sight as Daniel Ricciardo and Verstappen battled over second place, but that was about to change…

6. Up in flames

Hamilton’s victory hopes went quite literally up in flames with 15 laps to go when his engine blew up in spectacular style. You could hear his heart breaking as he shouted “Ahh, no, nooo” over the team radio. It completely turned the race upside down and was a hard hit to his title fight.

It was all kicking off in the closing stages of the race. Just after Hamilton’s retirement, Esteban Gutierrez pulled off with a wheel missing on his car after it literally popped off on the run to Turn 9.

8. The shoey returns

Having held off his team-mate, Ricciardo crossed the line to claim his first win of the 2016 F1 season and the fourth of his career – completely deserved after some near misses and heartache this year.

He promised the famous “shoey” would return to the podium if he won and he did just that. But he also got Christian Horner, Verstappen and Rosberg in on the act too! Rosberg looked especially disgusted afterwards but good on him for drinking the sparkling wine out of Ricciardo’s sweaty shoe.