KUALA LUMPUR — Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso scored a dramatic victory in the Malaysian Grand Prix yesterday when the Spaniard denied Sauber’s Sergio Perez a first Formula One triumph in a race turned on its head by the weather.
The race started in torrential rain and was stopped for 51 minutes after eight laps but Alonso took charge on its resumption to register a shock 28th career victory in a car that had been outpaced in qualifying in the opening two rounds.
“A big surprise today (yesterday) the win,” championship leader Alonso told reporters. “Our goal was to score as many points as possible. An unbelievable result, a great job from the team.”
Pole sitter Lewis Hamilton repeated his third place finish from the opening race of the season in Melbourne last weekend, with Red Bull’s Mark Webber in fourth and 2007 world champion Kimi Raikkonen fifth in his Lotus.
Australia race winner Jenson Button and world champion Sebastian Vettel both suffered mid-race collisions with the HRT of Narain Karthikeyan and finished outside the points.
Alonso started the race in eighth place but worked his way up to fifth by the red flag, passed Webber soon after the resumption and capitalised on a well-timed pit stop to get past Hamilton.
