Fernando Alonso found little consolation in his fight through the field to fourth place and said only a crystal ball would have allowed the Italian glamor team to make the right call on tires with the rain falling on and off.
"I think we stopped five times to change the tires, so this is completely unusual. Hopefully, next race we have a normal weekend. We've had only one in Bahrain, and we won the race. So we need more normal weekends," the Spaniard said.
"In a race like this you can only understand at the end what would have been the best thing to do, as neither on the pit wall nor in the car do we have a crystal ball." The twice Formula One world champion claimed the season-opening contest in Bahrain but slumped to fourth in rainy Australia and also had his qualifying session in Malaysia marred by a downpour.
Alonso took full responsibility for a jump start on Sunday, when he shot past the two Red Bulls on the front row. He dropped near the back of the field after receiving a drive-through penalty for the mistake.
"My reflexes let me down and I left early. It's never happened to me before and I am very disappointed with myself," he said.
His team mate, Felipe Massa, also complained of struggling in the wet after finishing ninth.
"We need to work it out, to improve for the next race, to be a little bit more consistent. It was a difficult race and difficult to make the right strategy of changing tires," Massa said.
A clash after a pit stop between Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel and McLaren's Lewis Hamilton made headlines, with both drivers reprimanded by stewards, but it was not the only instance of pit lane racing.
The two Ferraris also had their own duel. Alonso passed Massa on the corner into the pit lane, forcing the Brazilian on to the grass.
Massa said it was clean racing - a judgment echoed by team boss Stefano Domenicali.
"It was just a racing incident and there is absolutely no problem between the two drivers," Domenicali said. "When you are always racing to win, you can have moments like this."
