Six of the best: AUTOSPORT answers your Malaysian Grand Prix questions

Despite McLaren's dominance of the Australian Grand Prix, and the Malaysian weekend thus far, there remains a huge amount that is unknown about the 2012 Formula 1 season in terms of who sits where in the pecking order.

To try and shed some light on this and the other issues surrounding the sport at the moment, you've been sending in your questions for AUTOSPORT F1 editor Edd Straw all week. Here are the six best along with the answers you've been waiting for.

Peter Allen asks: With his erratic driving in GP2, Pastor Maldonado hardly looked like a future world-beater, and this seems to be continuing in Formula 1. Do you think Williams will rue the day they didn't employ a better driver for what appears to be a decent car?

Edd Straw: It's true that Maldonado has always had a wild streak in him. There are plenty of examples from earlier in his career of incidents and mistakes, so it wasn't a great surprise to see him throwing away what would have been a superb sixth place in Australia with a last-lap crash. But while it's true that he has never looked like a future world champion, he has always had a handy turn of speed in him and traditionally is exceptional at tracks like Monaco.

Williams is a midfield F1 team and with very few world championship-calibre drivers available, the squad wasn't in the mix to sign someone of that level for this season (although had it been able to retain Nico Hulkenberg, it would have had a potential champion on its books). But while Maldonado doesn't appear to be a future champion, he is a driver who merits his place in F1. OK, he won GP2 in his fourth campaign. But he still won it and that's a sign of a driver worthy of stepping up. In the literal sense, he is a pay driver, but you could make a case for him being one of the 24 on the grid even without that money.

The hugely valuable PDVSA sponsorship dictates that Williams must employ a Venezuelan driver and there's no question that Maldonado is the best-qualified at the moment. He's a decent pilot who you can guarantee will have some great weekends this year and a few where his wildness undoes him. In the circumstances that the team is in, you'd say that it's a reasonable trade-off. It gets the funding that it needs and a handy, if erratic, driver who will bring home a reasonable number of points.

If Sebastian Vettel or Fernando Alonso were in the car, Williams would score more points. But just because Maldonado isn't in their class doesn't mean that he's a no-hoper. He's probably about the level that a team finishing ninth in last year's constructors' championship should be running and without the PDVSA money, there would be a big hole in the cashflow.

Hamilton's McLaren appeared to have great turn-in during Sepang practice © LAT

Alexander Keep asks: The McLaren looks like the smoothest and best handling car out there (not least because of Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton's driving). One thing that I noticed in particular was how precise the turn in was on those cars compared to the rest of the field. Do you believe that this was in any way down to the lack of a stepped nose and can you see any teams other than Marussia following that design ethos before the end of the season?

ES: The stepped nose is a bit of a red herring. It's a very obvious design feature and it's easy to overstate how big a role it plays in the performance of the car. The trend is to have the stepped nose in order to maximise the height of the chassis and therefore give the maximum airflow under the nose and to the floor and sidepods. As our technical correspondent Gary Anderson says, a good, if crude, rule of thumb is that the total downforce of a car is often proportional to the amount of air that you can get to this part of the car.

But the on-track handling characteristics are dictated by the performance of the whole car - both visible and invisible. Last year, for example, McLaren was also going against the trend and had the front of its chassis a little lower. It's a design philosophy that it has followed. While the addition of the step has slightly compromised the benefit of the high nose because of the turbulence caused (hence the teams' desire to maximise the height of the nose), the equation is similar to last year. And as last year the chassis height trend didn't make the McLaren a championship-leading car, neither does it this year.

It's all about the whole car. It may be that McLaren feels the inevitable compromises of having the nose a little lower are counterbalanced elsewhere. But be wary about falling into the trap of seeing a magic bullet.

Can the HRTs make it into the race this time around? © LAT

Ivan Gonzalez asks: I have two questions - no three - for the Malaysian GP. My first one: can HRT qualify for the race? Secondly, why is the competition so close this year? And lastly, can Mercedes win? It looks like the car has a good balance on the straights and in the corners, and obviously it's one of the fastest cars on the straights...

ES: Whether HRT can qualify is a big question. Another 1.3 seconds in Australia would have got them there and the team reckoned that the fact it didn't have a working DRS cost it around 0.9s. If the team can get the DRS working and make the steering useable - both Narain Karthikeyan and Pedro de la Rosa described the car as "undriveable" in Australia - then it is perfectly feasible that the car will be able to make it. The team reckons that its DRS will work and while the steering won't be perfect, it has improved a little, so with a fair wind, making the cut is on.

There is also the problem of cooling, which was a big problem in Australia. It is significantly warmer here in Malaysia and it's hard to see the car completing any particularly long runs while troubleshooting its problems, so even if the HRTs do qualify, which is possible but not certain, don't expect them to last very long at all in the race.

As for the closeness of the field, the banning of exhaust-blown diffusers has had an effect. Some of the smaller teams couldn't afford to invest in developing the concept to the nth degree, so that brings the frontrunners closer to the mid-pack. In general, the regulations get ever tighter, the engines under the freeze regulations are similar in performance and the majority of teams are very well-run organisations, so its inevitable that there's relatively little difference between the various cars with no 'big' concept offering huge laptime gains for the bigger outfits to exploit.

As for Mercedes, the car was rapid over a lap in Australia and perhaps even a pole position contender if Nico Rosberg had hooked it up. But tyre degradation was a problem in the race. Here, it might be a similar story. Remember that while the Sepang track configuration superficially should give the W03's DRS wing stall trick a bigger advantage, here it can deploy the adjustable rear wing for only 45 per cent of the lap, as compared to 56 per cent of the lap at Melbourne.

Lotus can expect podiums, according to James Allison © LAT

George Karaolis asks: While this is probably still true of much of the field, it's still very difficult to read Lotus's form - in part because Kimi Raikkonen had a poor qualifying and Romain Grosjean was punted out after just two laps. What can we realistically expect? Are they challengers?

ES: Technical director James Allison described podium finishes as within the spectrum of what the car can achieve. Certainly, it seems that Grosjean's lap in Australia, which put him around 0.3s off pole, was representative. That would put the Lotus firmly in the pack of cars contending for the top six.

Challenging for wins is perhaps asking for a little too much right now, but certainly the Lotus looks quick enough to pick up the pieces if the McLarens hit trouble. As it's so close, you can see the E20s qualifying pretty much anywhere between the second and the fourth row here.

Majdi Silk asks: If McLaren wins in Malaysia, is that the season over? They've already proved they are the best team at developing a car over the entire season...

ES: It definitely would not be over, but it would put McLaren in an extremely strong position. Traditionally, any team that can pull out a decent lead in the first three or four races of the year is well-placed to hold on and there's no question that the team should be able to make good progress with performance over the year.

Qualifying in Melbourne possibly flattered the advantage of the McLaren over the Red Bull, but then again it seems that the silver corner's fuel problems in the race meant that we never saw the true relative performance. All the signs are that McLaren will have the best car here. If it's another McLaren win, then surely it becomes the favourite.

Then again, Red Bull clearly has a development package that hasn't yet been fine-tuned. Introduced for the final two days of testing, trackside watchers observed that what had previously looked like a planted, well-balanced piece of kit was looking far less well-poised. Red Bull would have ditched the upgrade if it didn't believe in its potential, so let's see how it pans out. Give it a few more races and we will probably get a clear idea about the relative performance of McLaren and Red Bull. It wouldn't be a complete surprise to see them emerging on a similar footing, but certainly if McLaren can pocket the points and get a cushion at the top of the table, it will put the team in a very strong position.

Vettel is not one half of F1's best pairing, in Straw's opinion © LAT

Kushal Kanani asks: Australia got me thinking, what in your opinion is the best driver pairing in F1 today? For example, is Sebastian Vettel really that good, or was he just suited to the RB7? And is Button improving, or just finding a car suited so well to his style?

ES: Coming up with the best pairing is a tricky question. Certainly, we have to rule out Ferrari immediately because of the lame duck that is Felipe Massa. No matter how great Fernando Alonso is, he can't make up for that. We also have to rule out Mercedes as while both Rosberg and Michael Schumacher are strong, they haven't proved themselves to be in that top bracket this year or last.

Lotus has a strong pairing, as Grosjean is set for a big season, although we've yet to get a clear picture of how close to his best Raikkonen is. I would also give Force India an honourable mention, as both Paul di Resta and Nico Hulkenberg have tremendous potential and you could see one or both evolving into world championship-contending drivers.

But really, it comes down to a choice between Red Bull and McLaren. Frankly, there isn't a great deal to choose between them. Vettel is an extraordinary driver and while Mark Webber isn't quite in the same class, he's still a seriously fast pilot who will deliver the goods week in, week out. At McLaren, Button keeps getting better and better and few doubt Lewis Hamilton's outright pace, even if his ability to look at the bigger picture is questionable.

It's very close between those two. But if you had to take a line-up, but you'd probably say that it's McLaren, primarily because it's the only team with two proven world championship-winning drivers.