Australia: post-race analysis
Thankfully the race was
a lot more entertaining than qualifying. It was also red, by the
narrowest of margins, alas.
Kvyat didn’t even
have a dreadful start because a technical failure on his car required
a second formation lap whilst his broken Red Bull was pushed into the
pits. An uncommon DNS for the Russian.
Off the start Vettel
and Raikkonen pounced like man-eating cougars on Hamilton and
Rosberg. In fact, the Englishman had a dreadful start, slipping back
to 6th, or thereabouts. At the back, Wehrlein had a tasty
start, making up a quintet of places.
The two Prancing Horses
galloped away, opening a gap between themselves and Rosberg, whilst
Hamilton floundered behind Massa (the Brazilian being 5th,
with Verstappen ahead).
Things looked bad for
Hamilton. He did pass Massa after a few laps, but Verstappen was
another kettle of monkeys. The Toro Rosso’s looking tasty, and the
Mercedes just couldn’t get in a passing position.
Alonso and Gutierrez
collided, with the Spaniard’s car barrel-rolling in a gravel trap
and ending up on its roof. Thankfully, Alonso is completely fine. The
crash brought out a brief safety car, and then a red flag.
And then Ferrari threw
the race away. Raikkonen’s car was halted by a technical problem,
and at the red flag which followed the substantial Gutierrez/Alonso
crash the team inexplicably decided against changing Vettel’s tyres
(which is permitted when a red flag necessitates a re-start). He was
on his second set of the supersoft compound, and, in dry conditions,
two different compounds must be run. A pit stop takes around 21
seconds.
Perhaps the team
thought he could make that easily over Rosberg, who had a harder
compound on. But, if so, they were utterly mistaken. When Vettel
pitted, he came out behind Hamilton (who had bolted on some medium
tyres at his one and only, and perfectly timed, pre-safety car pit
stop). The German closed on him rapidly, but made a mistake pushing
too hard and had to settle for 3rd. Hamilton, after an
atrocious start, nabbed an unlikely 2nd, and Rosberg
cruised serenely to take 1st.
Ricciardo made it a day
of mixed fortunes for Red Bull, with an impressive 4th for
the Aussie and Kvyat’s DNS. Massa didn’t get much radio coverage
but must have driven well to retain 5th.
Driver of the day may well go to Grosjean, who got a great 6th for Haas (must admit, I feel a bit daft for not looking at his points/top 6 odds more closely). Very good start for him and the Haas team, and I did say they’d hit the ground running.
Annoyingly, this means
Hulkenberg was 7th, so that bet was red by the smallest of
margins. Still, losing’s losing, whether it’s by an inch or a
mile. Bottas got 8th, with Sainz and Verstappen following
close behind (indeed, Verstappen’s petulant bleating was all over
the radio. To be fair, he was right to be pissed off about Sainz
[then behind him] getting the advantage of the earlier final pit
stop, but whined to excess to be let past).
Palmer’s debut was a
good race. Unfortunately, he didn’t get points, finishing 11th,
but he drove well (including in tight wheel-to-wheel encounters) and
outraced Magnussen, who took 12th.
Perez was an oddly slow
13th, 18s down on Hulkenberg. Not sure why. Might just be
he was unlucky with pit stop traffic.
Button, Nasr and
Wehrlein were lapped.
I did smile wryly (or
possibly swear) when Vettel leapt into the lead of lap 1 after I’d
decided against backing that at 13. Still, if betting were easy
everyone would do it.
Another gut instinct I
mentioned in pre-qualifying was a feeling Raikkonen wouldn’t
finish. My psychic Ferrari powers wax, it seems.
However, Ferrari should
be gutted. Technical faults happen, but they made two errors with
Vettel. The first, changing to the same compound at the first pit
stop, was entirely understandable and may not have been an error had
there been no red flag. But there was. The decision to leave the
tyres on and force another pit stop was just plain stupid. I don’t
know what they were thinking. Vettel had very little chance of
winning after that.
Anyway, the title order
for drivers is just the result of the race, of course, but here’s
the Constructors’:
Mercedes 43
Ferrari 15
Williams 14
Red Bull 12
Haas 8
Force India 6
Toro Rosso 3
Worth noting Ferrari,
Red Bull and Haas each had one car fail to finish (or start, in Red
Bull’s case).
The next race is
Bahrain, in a fortnight. My expectation is that Williams may do
better, and Red Bull a little worse. Haas could be the most
interesting team to watch.
In good news, the
stupid new qualifying format has been dropped. Huzzah! The old
approach will be used in Bahrain.
Morris Dancer
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