Rain stops play at Sepang

It's a phrase more commonly heard in cricket than in Formula One. But on Sunday spectators were treated to the unusual sight of drivers climbing from their cockpits midway through a Grand Prix, as everyone waited for an announcement on when racing could be resumed.

One could be forgiven for thinking that F1 had fallen into a timewarp: these were scenes, it seemed, from an earlier, more leisurely age of motor racing history. In fact the race was only the fifth in modern F1 history, and the first in 18 years, to be curtailed by bad weather. (The last such occasion was the 1991 Australian Grand Prix, when only 14 laps were completed.

And yet this scenario could have been avoided entirely. Had Bernie Ecclestone, the sport's commercial rights holder, not pushed for the start of the race to be moved from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. local time to suit European audiences, then it is unlikely that the torrential late-afternoon rain - not unusual in Malaysia - would have been a factor.

Ecclestone has dismissed suggestions that the 'twilight' Grand Prix was a disaster, instead talking up the spectacle of the race. But many of the spectators present - not to mention the many millions of television viewers across the world - will no doubt feel short-changed.

The race was stopped after only one hour and 57 seconds, with just 32 of the scheduled 56 laps completed. For three-quarters of an hour after that, no one was sure whether the race would continue, or, if not, what the result was.

The farce will do nothing to enhance the image either of the Malaysian Grand Prix - which has been struggling to attract spectators for several years - or indeed of Formula One itself. In trying to maximise the potential broadcasting revenues, the sport's governing bodies need to remember that it is the racing itself which is paramount.

Photo reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.0 license from an image uploaded to Flickr.com by Farid Iqbal.