The booster shot F1 sorely needed

After all the doom mongering about the competitive state of Formula 1 in Australia, following another dominant one-two finish for the Mercedes drivers, last Sunday's Malaysian Grand Prix provided the perfect tonic.

Complaints about a lack of opposition and the need for the FIA to look at equalising engine performance were swiftly silenced, as Sebastian Vettel shocked the established order (and himself!) by beating Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg in a straight fight at Sepang. As Mercedes boss Toto Wolff admitted afterwards: "We were beaten fair and square".

The rise of Vettel and Ferrari from zeros to heroes in the space of one winter and two races is a wonderful illustration of how quickly things can change in Formula 1. Last year marked Ferrari's first winless season in the world championship since 1993, when Vettel was just six years old. That disastrous campaign prompted widespread change within Maranello.

Ferrari has often been criticised for lacking patience when things are going badly, and resorting too readily to drastic action. On this occasion it would seem the Scuderia has played its hand well.

Post-race talk was more positive than after the season opener a fortnight earlier © LAT

Under the technical leadership of James Allison (arguably the best in the business now Adrian Newey has stepped back from fulltime duties) - who wasn't ousted in the substantial reshuffle - Ferrari looks an entirely different proposition to the team Fernando Alonso left for McLaren. What must have gone through Fernando's mind when he saw Vettel winning in a car he so easily could have been driving?

Vettel also appears reborn in the new environment created at Maranello under Maurizio Arrivabene. Last season Vettel looked lost at Red Bull - unable to drive the RB10 in the way that he prefers.

The four-time world champion struggled to adjust to the rear instability created by the banning of exhaust-blown downforce, which was further exacerbated by the impact of new electronic braking systems. Suddenly, the "tricks" he used to such magical effect during the latter stages of his 2013 title run-in were no longer working.

His head dropped. He looked visibly unhappy with the direction Formula 1 had taken (remember those comments about the new V6 turbo engines sounding "shit"?) and frustrated by Red Bull's (and his own) lack of competitiveness.

Moving on to a fresh challenge at Ferrari - the boyhood dream of a committed Michael Schumacher fan - has given Vettel a new lease of life.

After winning four consecutive world championships, Vettel found 2014 and its new regulations a grind © LAT

"[With] last year's car [I] was struggling a little bit here and there, but with this year's car, since the first day, I was reasonably happy with the balance," he says.

"In terms of how I feel and what I can do, I'm quite happy. I also think the rear tyres (Pirelli has beefed up the construction of its rears over the winter) have helped a little bit. In general, I like the flow the car has."

It was also interesting to see a driver who often struggled to effectively manage his delicate Pirelli rubber (especially early in the season) last year compared with Red Bull team-mate Daniel Ricciardo, absolutely nail it this time. Here was a perfect illustration (if any were needed) that success in F1 depends on the combination of driver and car, not simply one or the other.

Vettel's rapid success in defeating Mercedes means Ferrari is already halfway towards achieving its "ambitious" target of winning at least two races this season, but although Arrivabene is sensibly downplaying expectations after a race held in particularly extreme conditions, the hope for every F1 fan around the world will be for more of the same.

By staying out during the early safety-car period when Mercedes pitted, Vettel led Nico Hulkenberg and Romain Grosjean © LAT

"The start of the race was amazing - a lot of cars attacking and [different] strategy calls," McLaren racing director Eric Boullier told AUTOSPORT. "I think it was a very entertaining race, so I think the negative people have maybe jumped on the Australian show to criticise F1, but I think Malaysia was a particularly interesting race, and that's obviously good for Formula 1."

It certainly was, but the key question is whether it will be one of those peculiar one-offs we see in Formula 1 from time to time, or whether it can be repeated more often and prevent the destiny of this year's world championship becoming a foregone conclusion.

"Pirelli has said they were too conservative in Melbourne and they won't be so conservative in future," reckoned Lotus head of trackside operations Alan Permane. "When it's between a two- and a three-stop race I don't know how many of these races we'll have; we won't have many with these extreme temperatures."

Maybe not, but Pirelli admits it was conservative with its tyre choices last season, heading as it was into the great unknown of the first year of V6 hybrid turbo F1. This time around it has data to work with and largely stable regulations, so can confidently pick tyre compounds that might create more of a headache for the strategists than they encountered last year.

Pirelli has revised its rear-tyre construction for 2015, based on the lessons of 2014 © XPB

"Somebody said to me: "that's what we were having two years ago - races like this," said Pirelli motorsport director Paul Hembery, who reckoned Malaysia was "absolutely" the race Formula 1 needed after the Australian snoozeathon.

"It was clearly an event where degradation was going to be at the forefront, especially with the medium tyre. The teams probably found in race conditions that they were seeing less degradation than they saw in practice, which enabled some people to shift from a predominantly hard-tyre-based strategy to doing more stints with the medium. That's F1 - race conditions are often very different to what happens in practice."

Last Sunday's event was a great indicator of the kind of variables needed to make grand prix races exciting. The extreme heat (Sunday's track temperature was higher than that seen at any other point in the weekend), plus an early safety-car intervention, introduced the sort of booby traps that can make scrap paper out of a Formula 1 team's carefully planned stratagems, and scramble some of the finest racing minds in the world.

Certainly Ferrari's superior strategy, and Vettel's skill in executing it, seemed to throw Mercedes, which suddenly had to contend with something it hasn't had to for much of the past 12 months - genuinely racing a car from another team. Last year, it only tasted defeat when its own technology malfunctioned, or its drivers drove into one another!

With cars designed by Allison, Lotus won with Kimi Raikkonen in 2012 and 2013 © XPB

"I think a good point to make is that a James Allison chassis - as we used to see in the past at Lotus - has an ability to use the tyres in a slightly different way and enabled Ferrari to do a two-stop race that Mercedes weren't able to match," added Hembery.

"It was cat-and-mouse because they were forcing each other into different moves. It was changing on the pitwall all the time, and I'm sure that's another element that came into making it the race it was.

"The result was under question right until the end, the strategies came together, you didn't know exactly what was going to happen, and the whole top four were pushing to the end. Formula 1 always needs a bit of variety."

When you have lots of variables, you create unpredictability. When you have unpredictability, you have genuinely captivating sport. That's what we witnessed on Sunday afternoon. F1 needs much more of the same.