JENSON Button registered his second straight victory amid confusing circumstances in a heavy downpour in the Petronas Malaysian Grand Prix that only went half the distance at the Sepang Circuit yesterday,
Half points were accorded to the top eight cars for the first time since the Monaco Grand Prix in 1984 that was also abandoned due to rain.

The Brawn GP driver was in the lead when the racers ran behind the safety car after just 31 of the scheduled 56 laps when heavy rain brought the safety car out.

The skies had already threatened to give way right from the 5pm start with dark clouds already hovering above the circuit.

It then got really dark and confusion reigned on the track as first the Ferraris of Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa pitted with 28 laps to go for full wet tyres, while the rest of the pack were caught between intermediate or full wets, decisions which turned out to be decisive of the outcome.
Button didn't have the best of starts from pole, dropping to fourth at the first turn, as Williams' Nico Rosberg led the pack for much of the first third of the race before the first series of regular pit stops came about.

The German was having his best run yet, with Toyota's Jarno Trulli hot on his tail while the rest of the field battled behind them.

It wasn't until the first exchange of pit stops after the race was more than 15 laps old, that the Brawn GP cars of Button and Brazilian teammate Rubens Barrichello that were so dominant in the Australian Grand Prix last week, began to show their true colours, although the superior speed of both their cars, along with the Williams of Rosberg and the Toyotas of Trulli and Timo Glock was quite evident.

When the safety car came out, Glock was chasing h*rd on Button, while the rest of the pack were a lap down due to treacherous conditions which had most of the field pitting several times.

BMW-Sauber's Nick Heidfeld, the only one who had just one pit stop, eventually was classified second ahead of Glock as the race was judged to have stopped two laps earlier from the 33rd lap, which was when he was in second.

"What a crazy race. It really was. I still haven't seen a chequered flag without a safety car in front this season. I thought it was going to be fine until I looked up and saw the dark clouds. Not unusual for Sepang, it actually started spitting," said Button, also referring to the Australian Grand Prix which ended in the dry but brought about much controversy due to the safety car ahead of the race.

"Those final laps, my team said to me all I had to do was drive around the circuit. And that was difficult enough. You could barely see the circuit.

"I almost went off a couple of times (behind the safety car) and we were going around at running pace, and even the safety car was pulling away from us. That's when you know that the conditions are not good for a Formula One car.

"But I'm happy with the result and hopefully we go to Shanghai next and have an incident-free race."

The race stalled on the home straight, as a crowd of 52,325, the lowest since the first Malaysian Grand Prix in 1999 were left in confusion, as stewards and teams contemplated between a restart and abandoning the race. A decision was finally made at about 6.45pm, for the first ever abandonment of the Malaysian Grand Prix.

Glock was not too disappointed with being "demoted" to third from second when the safety car came out. Taking the lighter side of things, he was happy to have registered only the second podium finish of his F1 career thus far.



Button thus leads the championship with 15 points instead of 20, with teammate Barrichello still in second. The Monaco Grand Prix incident in 1984 brought about Alain Prost's loss of the world title by half a point to Austrian Niki Lauda.