As a disciplinarian, Wolfowitz has certainly left a strong impression on the Iraqis, whose lives and infrastructure have been sacrificed to his determination to oust Saddam Hussein by military force. And the former diplomat clearly knows how to enforce his will in bureaucratic disputes, as he demonstrated during the prelude to the invasion of Iraq.

In announcing the appointment, Bush himself insisted that Wolfowitz is the best choice to take over the World Bank because he’s a “man of compassion” who “believes deeply” in uplifting the world’s poor. Yet there is precious little evidence to support that assertion (and plenty to contradict it).

As for Wolfowitz’s actual qualifications, which many experts have questioned, the president cited his appointee’s recent experience at the Department of Defense, “managing the largest U.S. government agency with over 1.3 million uniformed personnel and nearly 700,000 civilian employees around the world.”

Evidently none of Bush’s White House briefers has ever mentioned just how badly Wolfowitz and his boss, Donald Rumsfeld, have managed that big old agency. The president also seems to have forgotten how Rummy and Wolfie decided to ignore the State Department’s planning for post-invasion Iraq; how they brushed aside the Army’s warnings about the need for many more troops to secure the country; how they permitted or even encouraged the ongoing scandal of detainee torture; and how they lost track of the most important weapons sites, which were the supposed reason to go to war, and allowed them to be looted.

The indisputable fact is that the Pentagon’s civilian leaders, an arrogant clique of ideologues, provided no viable plan for securing and rebuilding Iraq after the invasion. Against the advice of wiser and more knowledgeable officials, Wolfowitz insisted that his own vision would be realized. Surely our soldiers would be greeted as liberators, our favorite exiles would assume power in Baghdad, and our expenses would be paid by oil revenues. The deputy defense secretary couldn’t imagine any other scenario and dismissed anyone who did.

Since that inauspicious beginning, Wolfowitz’s management capacity has not improved much.

For a would-be banker, he has allowed rather huge sums of money to be squandered both at home and in Iraq. During Wolfowitz’s tenure, auditors from the Government Accountability Office have repeatedly found the Defense Department lagging behind other major agencies in management and fiscal responsibility. Last year, the GAO complained of its inability to issue a clean audit of the entire federal budget because of “serious financial management problems” at the Department of Defense.

Two months ago the GAO again singled out the Pentagon for harsh criticism, reporting that it operates eight of the 25 worst-run government programs. Comptroller General David Walker said that the cost is reckoned “in billions of dollars in waste each year and inadequate accountability to the Congress and the American taxpayer.” The failures, which have persisted for many years, relate to financial and contract management, the operation of military infrastructure, and the modernization of Pentagon information technology — which, in short, are a total mess.

Pentagon traditions of boodling and bungling have been replicated in Iraq, where they have intensified the misery of the country’s inhabitants and encouraged the murderous insurgency. According to an audit by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction that was released in late January, the Coalition Provisional Authority lost track of nearly $9 billion in spending over the past two years. (Of course, the official directly responsible for this fiasco, former CPA chief L. Paul Bremer, is now wearing the Medal of Freedom that the president pinned on him last fall.) And thanks to the incompetence and carelessness of Iraq’s U.S. overseers, far more is likely to be lost as a result of waste, fraud and corruption.

A newly released report from Transparency International, the Berlin-based organization that monitors corrupt practices around the world, warns that Iraqi contracting may soon become “the biggest corruption scandal in history.” The group blames the United States for providing “a poor role model” in contracting and auditing. (They’ve likely heard about Halliburton.)

Waste, fraud and corruption, those perennial government buzzwords, are indeed the most pressing problems for the World Bank as it seeks to reform development aid. So it is difficult to understand why the president — or any truly compassionate conservative — would entrust those enormous concerns to someone with Wolfowitz’s grim and blemished record.

The Plaza 1982

Back When The Plaza Was The Plaza

All that goes for civilian bloggers, regular, average types who would be invisible and unknown to us if we didn’t read their blogs. But it doesn’t begin to explain why Melanie Griffith, minor celebrity and, let’s not forget, at one time an incredibly charming actress, would feel compelled to share her tips on connecting with her inner self, complete with a form letter that goes

Dear Inner Self,

Melanie

Celebrities are different from you and me, and their blogs are different, too, if only because they open additional windows onto people we already assume we know. You many not have wanted to know that Griffith writes letters to her inner self. (I wonder if she uses the good stationery?) But of all the things Griffith might choose to reveal about herself — from plastic-surgery denials to affirmations about the strength of her marriage to Antonio Banderas — what kind of balls does it take to post something as ridiculous and as embarrassingly intimate as a form letter to one’s psyche? For those who have become tired of celebrity overload (although the ever-increasing glut of big-pictures-no-text celebrity-poop magazines suggests that there might not be many who are), celebrity blogs are a welcome antidote — they put us, the consumer, in the driver’s seat. No one is flashing melaniegriffith.com in our face; if we find ourselves going there, it’s our own damn fault.

There are as many different types of celebrity blogs as there are celebrities: We have blogs from celebrities who have fallen out of the spotlight and who want back in, at least in some marginal way (Rosie O’Donnell); blogs from celebrities who are too big to need blogs but who still maintain them, at least in some cursory faction, to maintain the illusion of intimacy with their fans (Gwen Stefani); blogs from celebrities who actually seem to enjoy recording their thoughts about mundane day-to-day activities and manage to do it in a conversational, entertaining way (Moby); blogs from celebrities who feel strangely compelled to lecture us on the meaning of the universe (Fred Durst); blogs from celebrities who feel strongly about politics (Barbra Streisand); and, most fascinating — and most readable — of all, a blog from an actor whom few of us have thought much about in recent years but who has become a kind of touchstone for many people in the readersphere who are simply attempting to do what they want to do with their lives and finding it more difficult than they ever imagined (Wil Wheaton, who appeared in “Stand by Me” as a child actor and in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” as a teenager, and then seemingly dropped off the Earth’s surface).

In an era when celebrities already carry so much currency, and get so much ink and so many TV pixels, why should they want to bother to communicate with us directly? Sometimes celebrity blogs, updated lackadaisically if ever, feel like nothing so much as a publicity stunt. (Stefani’s blog is filled with boring stuff along the lines of “Thanks for coming out to our tsunami benefit” — falsely noble and eminently unreadable. A Stefani fashion blog would be much more fun, and more honest.) Some celebrities, like KISS’s (Gene Simmons,) are at least forthright about their intentions: “Appeared on CNN ShowBiz today with FABIO to shill for my MR. ROMANCE television series,” he writes with joyous crassness in his entry for March 15.

But even though just about every celebrity blog is, to at least some extent, a publicity tool, some throw off surprising sparks of creativity and originality. Is it possible that, just as people who hold down dreary jobs by day blog passionately about movies, knitting or fish keeping by night, some celebrities feel that even their seemingly exciting, creative jobs don’t use every muscle they’ve got? Jeff Bridges’ blog is filled with wryly amusing John Lennon-style line drawings and scans of handwritten notes (as well as, of course, plugs for Bridges’ movies and appeals made on behalf of his favorite charities). And Ian McKellen, in the Grey Book, an online journal of his experience making and promoting the “Lord of the Rings” movies (it spans 1999 to 2001), proves himself an exceedingly charming and entertaining writer. The Grey Book feels like a precursor to a celebrity memoir that any of us might actually want to read. In a digression from his “LOTR” musings, circa December 2001, McKellen grouses good-naturedly about doing Strindberg’s “Dance of Death” at the Broadhurst Theater on Broadway with Helen Mirren and having to cross West 44th Street at the end of the evening: Parking isn’t allowed on the north side of the street, where the Broadhurst is located, but it is allowed on the south side, outside the St. James Theater, where Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick were, at the time, starring in “The Producers.” Thus, Lane and Broderick had it cushy, but McKellen’s driver would have to wait on the St. James side, and McKellen would have to dodge post-theater traffic to get to him. “But then,” McKellen writes, “on really crowded nights when the tourist theatre district is belying the image of a New York City still in recovery, there’s often a friendly young cop who guides me over as if I were the President.” Anyone who can write that crisply and elegantly about crossing the street ought to be writing a memoir.

While I’m only a moderately enthusiastic Moby fan, I’m delighted to report that his blog is a model of good grammar, spelling and punctuation (by blog standards, at least) and is marked by a casual, friendly tone (despite Moby’s notorious stridence about some of his favorite causes). He portrays the glamorous life of a musician in a way that’s stripped of artifice — and that may be the artifice right there, but no matter: “in other news, my days are now spent in hotel rooms and tv studios and airplanes. which is ok. the biggest negative is that i can’t remember the last time that my lungs were filled with non-recycled air. today, for example, i woke up in a hotel room, did interviews in a hotel room, got into a car, drove to the airport, got on an airplane, drove to another hotel, checked in, and now here i sit, in another hotel room.” The grandfather may have said it better in “A Hard Day’s Night” — “I was supposed to be getting a change of scenery, and so far I’ve been in a train and a room, a car and a room and a room and a room” — but the essence of the musician-on-tour experience (and, presumably, its isolation) isn’t lost on Moby.

Rosie O’Donnell’s blog, formerlyrosie, is somewhat harder to comprehend. O’Donnell — who, if her blog is any indication, is still reeling emotionally from the legal battle she fought with Gruner & Jahr, the publisher of her defunct magazine, Rosie — is, to have her tell it, strident in her views. Also, as an openly gay woman and mom, she offends many people, as we’re reminded repeatedly. O’Donnell is outspoken about her political beliefs (she has plenty to say about Bush, the Iraq war and the prevalent knuckleheadedness on gay marriage). And while she probably does infuriate many people, she walks a strangely fine line between wanting to piss people off and wanting to be loved. In an entry titled “fat celebs,” O’Donnell blasted Kirstie Alley for telling Matt Lauer that she was 201 pounds at her heaviest. Apparently, O’Donnell believed Alley was underestimating. She wrote: “I almost choked on my yodel/ I am 220/ fess up kirstie – 201 my ass.”

In her entry for March 17, O’Donnell notes that she received a phone call from Alley, who was stung by the remark. O’Donnell apologized halfheartedly and defended herself by claiming she was making a joke at her own expense. O’Donnell speaks first and thinks later, a luxury most civilian bloggers enjoy, but for a celebrity, the stakes are higher. And although O’Donnell claims to be widely reviled, her blog seems to spring straight from the heartwarming, scrapbooky Middle American values that so many on the left, rightly or wrongly, cringe from. Motherhood is extremely important to O’Donnell: She notes with beaming approval that her shrink takes calls from her two teenage kids even when she’s in the middle of a session. (Personally, having my shrink take personal calls on my dime would be enough to turn me into an angry lesbian, but maybe that’s just me.) And while O’Donnell clearly does her share of charity work, she isn’t particularly skillful when it comes to explaining what that work means. In one entry, she describes a trip to Somerville, Mass., to help raise money for beleaguered public schools. But her flowery musings — rendered in a kind of faux freeform verse — make for wincingly painful reading: “we live in dangerous times/ when our childrens childrens/ will ask us/’what was it like then – when democracy almost died?’”

If you’re the type of person who often asks yourself, “Mommy, why do people fight wars instead of just giving each other big hugs?” formerlyrosie may be just the celebrity blog for you. For the rest of us, there’s WIL WHEATON dot NET, in which Wheaton, who is in his early 30s, writes freely about many subjects, including his home life (he’s happily married, with two stepkids), his pets (two of his cats have recently suffered from serious illness) and, most movingly, I think, about his career. Wheaton got the idea for WIL WHEATON dot NET after a Hooters waitress did a double-take and asked him if he “used to be” an actor. Horrified and dispirited, Wheaton started his own Web site to let the world know he was still alive and still working. The site evolved into a blog with a large, devoted following.

Wheaton’s style is relaxed and convivial and often enjoyably silly. (On his FAQs page, a reader asks, “Is it true that you were really Ashley Judd’s first onscreen kiss, and you ruined her for the rest of her life?” to which he replies, “Yep. It is 100% true. Ashley Judd played Robin Lefler, in the ["Star Trek: The Next Generation"] episode ‘The Game’, and Uncle Willie went to bootytown.”) But Wheaton’s goofy charisma isn’t nearly as interesting as his take on what it’s like to be a professional actor who — the popularity of his blog notwithstanding — isn’t exactly a celebrity. Wheaton recently landed a small part as a drug-addled crazy person in an episode of “CSI,” which may not be that exciting to big-time celeb watchers, but which can mean the world to an actor who’s trying to make a living. In a recent blog entry, Wheaton writes of sitting down to watch that “CSI” episode with his family: “Around 8:57 last night, I had a brief flash of panic: What if they cut my part down? I’m going to feel like the biggest jackass in history!”

Wheaton’s part wasn’t cut down, and he spends the rest of the entry describing how he “felt his face flush” when he saw his name on the screen, and how certain things he’d tried to convey about the character had, to his relief and pleasure, actually come through on-screen: “I thought I looked a little chubby in my face (thank you, Stone Brewing company) but the real volatility that I was hoping for was definitely there.” After Wheaton’s character was led off to the police car, one of his stepsons said, “Man, that was scary!” The other said, “It was cool, though.”

The overarching point of that entry may be that celebrities aren’t like you and me, except when they are. WIL WHEATON dot NET is appealing because it’s written by a regular person with intelligence and a sense of humor. When he’s lucky enough to do the work he obviously loves, he also has a pretty interesting job. But while his readers leave lots of comments congratulating him on his “CSI” performance, there are plenty more who are eager to offer advice about the sick cats. In the end, that’s what writing — and reading — blogs comes down to. The Inner Self isn’t the stuff of everyday life: The cats with the kidney problems are.

A second win in two races for the Mild Seven Renault F1 Team at the Malaysian Grand Prix.

Fernando Alonso led the race from lights to flag, on a two stop strategy that saw him visit the pits on laps 21 and 40. He managed skilfully his Michelin tyres over the race distance, and made full use of the performance of the R25 and its RS25 engine, which suffered no problems during the second race of its life cycle.

Giancarlo Fisichella started third on the grid, a position he held during the first two stints of the race. However, after his first stop, damage to the front of his car saw him lose a significant amount of downforce, which caused high levels of understeer and slowed him by up to two seconds a lap. On lap 37, his race ended at turn 15 following a collision with Mark Webber’s Williams.

The Mild Seven Renault F1 Team currently leads the world championship with 26 points. Fernando Alonso becomes the first Spaniard to lead the drivers’ world championship, on 16 points, while Giancarlo Fisichella now lies second on 10 points.

Fernando Alonso, Winner:

“Physically, it was a very demanding race and I really felt how hard it had been on the podium afterwards. But it’s a great feeling to win here, and the way I was able to do it demonstrates that we are competitive with our rivals this season, on every type of circuit.”

“Everything went well from start to finish: the car, the engine and the Michelin tyres. A big thank-you to the whole team: they did a fantastic job this winter in Enstone, Viry and Clermont-Ferrand at Michelin. At this stage, I think we have a real chance to fight for the title.”

Giancarlo Fisichella, retired, lap 37:

“It was disappointing not to make it to the chequered flag, but I had a difficult afternoon. The car was not very well balanced at the start of the race, and after my first stop, I lost a lot of front downforce: I think something broke. I was up to two seconds slower than the race pace, and the car was understeering everywhere; so there was no grip at all.”

“As for the collision, Webber got past me into turn 14, then I overtook him again on the straight afterwards. I was ahead, and he was on the outside when he took his line into the corner. As I was braking, the rear of the car slid and Mark had left no margin for error, so we collided. For me, it was a racing incident.”

Flavio Briatore, Managing Director:

“This was a great success for the whole team, and for Renault. We must thank Michelin for extremely good tyres, and all the partners who contribute to our success. We have shown that the team is competitive with both cars, and all the hard work until now is beginning to come good: I particularly want to congratulate my colleagues at Viry, as our engine had no problems at all during the weekend.”

“Fernando drove a fantastic race from start to finish: he was very cool, and managed his lead comfortably, as Giancarlo did in Australia. As for Fisico, I feel bad for him: it is a shame he had to retire, but we don’t blame him. We are very happy to have two drivers like Fernando and Giancarlo; it makes Renault a very strong team.”

Pat Symonds, Executive Director of Engineering:

“Fernando drove a splendid race, just like in Australia. He made full use of the excellent equipment at his disposal: chassis, engine and Michelin tyres. We saw afterwards that it had been a long, demanding race, but he made no mistakes and this was a drive of somebody who has the makings of a champion.”

“Giancarlo’s car was damaged after his first stop, and he lost a significant amount of front downforce, which allowed his rivals to catch him. As for the accident, I don’t want to make any judgement before taking a closer look.”

-renault-

Fernando Alonso scored Renault’s second win of the season, and the second of his career, in the Malaysian Grand Prix with a superb drive, leading from pole to chequered flag. The Spaniard finished 24 seconds ahead of Jarno Trulli, who took Toyota’s first ever podium finish. Williams’ Nick Heidfeld kept his head and came home third after his teamamte Mark Webber and the second Renault of Giancarlo Fishcella crashed out.

Start: Fernando Alonso takes the lead. Photo by xpb.cc.

It was slightly overcast and hazy for the start of the race but the track temperature was around 50 degrees. Everyone got away cleanly, with Alonso, Trulli and Fisichella holding position at the front. Gainers at the start were Heidfeld, up to eighth from 10th and BAR’s Jenson Button from ninth to seventh. Christian Klien dropped down behind Red Bull teammate David Coulthard and there was a little bit of argy-bargy behind.

Ferrari’s Rubens Barrichello and McLaren’s Juan Pablo Montoya scrapped for 11th and Felipe Massa got his Sauber in front of Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari. Massa’s teammate Jacques Villeneuve overtook the second BAR of Anthony Davidson and further up the field Button took the McLaren of Kimi Raikkonen for sixth.

It was short lived for Button though, as within just a couple of laps his Honda engine started smoking. To compound BAR’s misery, Davidson’s engine also went up in flames just about at the same time and they both had to retire. Might as well not have bothered with those new engines, eh? Presumably BAR did not appreciate the irony.

Button certainly didn’t: “Compared to last year we seem to have taken a step back in every area, it seems,” he remarked. “It’s got to change but I don’t think it’s going to change any time soon. I’m very angry.”

Davidson was disappointed but philosophical. “Obviously it’s a shame for the team but the new engine regulations make it tough,” he observed somewhat strangely, seeing as his was a new engine this weekend. “It was not what I wanted for my first race with BAR, obviously.”

Minardi’s Patrick Friesacher was a victim of oil from Button’s engine and spun off into the gravel to end his race. At the front, Alonso was leading Trulli and Fisichella while Webber and the second Toyota of Ralf Schumacher held station in fourth and fifth. Raikkonen was running sixth, followed by Heidfeld and Coulthard, with Montoya and Klien completing the top ten at that stage.

Heidfeld challenged Raikkonen but the Finn held him off and meanwhile, defending champion Michael was already half a minute behind leader Alonso. Fernando was belting out fastest lap after fastest lap, evidently not concerned about his engine going the distance. Webber was hampered by one of the Jordans, allowing Ralf to close in, with Heidfeld doing likewise behind Raikkonen when they caught the Jordan.

Klien was the first to stop on lap 18, and Ralf, Heidfeld, Coulthard and Tiago Monteiro’s Jordan followed suit on lap 20. Alonso and Trulli did likewise next time around, which left Fisichella in the lead until he too took his first stop, along with Webber. Raikkonen inherited the lead and Barrichello was harassing Webber when the Australian rejoined in front of the Ferrari.

Raikkonen pitted and returned ahead of the battling pair but then he suffered a right rear puncture and went careering off over the grass. He managed to wrestle the car back onto the track and make it back to the pits for a tyre change, but all his and the team’s hard work in gaining an advantage was lost. A valve failure caused the puncture and there was a fair bit of debris on the track from his wrecked tyre.

Barrichello took his first stop and rejoined in eighth and Montoya made his first visit to the pits work when he returned ahead of the Red Bulls in seventh. Alonso was back in the lead after the shakeout of pit stops, 12 seconds ahead of Trulli, with the rest of the top five still in the same places as previously, and Heidfeld up to sixth.

Villeneuve was the next retiree when he spun off at turn one and beached the Sauber in the gravel. The Canadian had trouble with braking at that spot all weekend. “Just that corner, the front wheels locked all the time, but then the back ones did,” he said. “I’m having a hard time with this car.”

	Mark Webber, Ralf Schumacher and Nick Heidfeld. Photo by xpb.cc.

Fisichella was suffering from oversteer and losing time and Webber was homing in. Behind him, Ralf and Heidfeld waited for an opportunity. Webber attacked the Renault and got past and Ralf also went for it; Fisichella snatched third back from Webber so Heidfeld took advantage of the fight and leapt ahead of Ralf to go side by side with Webber. Ralf was caught in the middle but stayed calm.

The Toyota got back in front of Heidfeld but Nick shot back ahead at the next corner — it was a bit of a mad few minutes and there was contact between Ralf and Webber. The result was Fisichella still in third, Webber in fourth and Heidfeld gained fifth from Ralf. Meanwhile, Coulthard overtook Barrichello for eighth at turn four and Klien also had a go, attacking the Ferrari but Barrichello held him off.

Not to be discouraged, Klien had another try and passed the Brazilian at the last corner. Barrichello harassed the Red Bull down the main straight and tried his luck at turn one but Klien wasn’t having it. Feisty stuff from young Christian, who seems much improved after his rookie year. Michael was now behind Barrichello with Massa closing in as well.

Webber was still hanging on Fisichella’s rear wing and Heidfeld was right there with them. Barrichello pitted for the second time and rejoined behind Michael and Massa but he struggled with his tyres thereafter and eventually retired. A piece of rubber had lodged in the rear wing which disturbed the balance of the car and caused excessive wear on the rear tyres.

Webber launched a charge on Fisichella down the back straight and got the third place but Giancarlo fought back. Through turn 14 the Italian went up the inside and seemed to lock up and slide into Webber. The rear of the Renault went up over the nose of the Williams and they both went off track and out of the race.

Who was to blame? It was by no means clear cut and Webber and Fisichella were not impressed with each other. Fisichella did appear to be ahead at the braking zone but was already struggling with his car. The stewards investigated the incident after the race and it seems Fisichella was given a warning but no further action was taken.

“Unfortunately the car wasn’t fantastic and the grip was not good enough,” said Fisichella. “Then I lost a bargeboard over the kerbs and lost downforce. Mark was catching me then he overtook. I went back ahead then saw him coming from the other side and there wasn’t enough space. It wasn’t my fault.”

Mark Webber not happy with Giancarlo Fisichella. Photo by xpb.cc.

Webber thought Fisichella was pushing his luck on worn tyres. “I don’t know how he was going to pass me again, his tyres were finished,” the Australian remarked. “There was zero grip on the dirty side (of the track) and I went to the clean side and he came right into me. I don’t know how he thought he could get through.”

Alonso went in for his second stop and Trulli took the lead until he too dived into the pits. Ralf had a new nose and front wing put on when he went in and after the second shakeout it was Alonso back in the lead form Trulli and Heidfeld, who had moved up to third when Webber and Fisichella went out. Montoya rejoined ahead of Ralf for fourth.

Raikkonen, who had been demoted to 13th after his puncture, got past Massa for 9th when the Sauber went off line at the end of the back straight. The McLaren then closed on Klien but there was not enough time left. Alonso took the chequered flag well ahead of Trulli and Heidfeld and it was a very deserving top three at the end of the race.

Alonso hardly put a foot wrong and never let Trulli get any where near being a threat. “Physically, it was a very demanding race and I really felt how hard it had been on the podium afterwards,” said the Spaniard. “But it’s a great feeling to win here, and the way I was able to do it demonstrates that we are competitive with our rivals this season, on every type of circuit.”

Trulli made sure he didn’t repeat his backwards effort in Melbourne and had a very good drive to take Toyota’s first podium. “I had an excellent start and was easily keeping my second position behind Fernando and extending my lead over Giancarlo,” he commented. “From there, I had an absolutely trouble-free race and could control those cars behind me.”

	Podium: race winner Fernando Alonso with Jarno Trulli and Nick Heidfeld. Photo by xpb.cc.

Heidfeld benefited from Webber and Fisichella’s retirements but could well have been on the podium anyway with his aggressive drive. “I am very happy, this was the most exciting race I ever had in F1,” he enthused. “I pushed hard from the start since I had to recover from my 10th grid position and I had a good race with some exciting overtaking. It was real fun.”

Montoya had a fairly quiet time but from 11th on the grid to fourth was a good effort and salvaged five points for McLaren. After Raikkoenn’s puncture there was not a lot the Finn could do. Ralf started and finished fifth but showed good competitiveness in the race to give Toyota a points haul that puts the team second to Renault in the constructors’ standings.

Red Bull proved that Melbourne was no fluke with both cars again in the points, Coulthard sixth and Klien eighth — enough to put them third overall ahead of Ferrari. “Both drivers deserve full credit, as does the team and Cosworth for their reliability,” said sporting director Christian Horner. “We just have to keep looking forwards and today’s performance endorsed the potential of the car.”

Michael picked up two points for Ferrari in seventh and it was disappointing weekend overall for the team. “There can be no excuses after a race like this,” stated Jean Todt. “After qualifying, we knew the race would be one of fighting our way up the order and so it turned out. We were beaten by opponents who proved to be stronger than us.”

Outside the top eight, Raikkonen tried his best but couldn’t claw his way back into the points. Massa had a difficult race to come home tenth and was never really in contention to score; it’s been a tough start to the season for Sauber. Both Jordans finished again, Karthikeyan leading Monteiro, and Minardi’s Christijan Albers scored his first GP finish with 13th.

At the beginning of 2004, a close fought season was predicted after the battles of 2003. It didn’t happen — Ferrari catapulted into the distance and remained virtually untouchable. At the start of this season, Ferrari was anticipated to again be the team to beat, yet two GPs down the Scuderia has only managed to get one car to the end of each race. It’s far too soon to say crisis but it’s an intriguing situation.

Renault, Fisichella’s exit from Sepang aside, is the benchmark for 2005 so far and Toyota suddenly appears to be a different team altogether. Red Bull is much improved from the Jaguar days, while Ferrari, Williams and McLaren, despite their mixed fortunes, are very much on a par. Roll on Bahrain! Final top eight classification: Alonso, Trulli, Heidfeld, Montoya, R. Schumacher, Coulthard, M. Schumacher, Klien.