The Bahrain Grand Prix wasn’t the most exciting race ever seen, and many felt that, given the rule changes, the Australian Grand Prix needed to produce some good racing. True to form, it did. It produced the usual Melbourne crashes, some changeable conditions throwing things wide open, and people on different pit strategies, resulting in a Grand Prix that even by Melbourne’s standards will be remembered for a while.
Vettel started from pole position and led from the start, with Webber following in second. Alonso got a poor start, placing him behind team-mate Felipe Massa. The race started in wet conditions, but the track quickly dried, and Jenson Button took a dive into the pits after an early safety car, swapping his intermediate tyres for dry tyres. It instantly looked like a mistake, as he went straight on at turn four, but soon was setting fastest sectors and in an instant, the rest of the pack – apart from the Red Bulls – came in and swapped their tyres for dry ones too. The Red Bull cars stopped slightly later, with Mark Webber losing out, but Vettel retained his lead, with Button behind him in second place – a significant gain over his sixth place before the stops. Vettel slowly started to pull away, and looked to have the race in the bag, a bit like in Bahrain. But then, like in Bahrain, trouble befell him, and his car ended up in the gravel trap, due to causes seemingly unknown. Brake failure was blamed, but Brembo, Red Bull’s brake suppliers, denied they were to blame. Anyhow, Vettel was out of the race, and somehow, Jenson Button was leading a race it looked like he had thrown away.
From there, Button didn’t look back. Later in the race, Webber and Hamilton both pitted again for fresh tyres and were comfortably faster, but were both too far back to do anything about Button. Along the way, Webber and Hamilton had a nice scrap, until Hamilton tried to pull a move on Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso, who hung him out to dry on the outside and then scooted off into the distance as Mark Webber forgot to brake and went straight into the back of Hamilton.
My personal highlight of the race, however, was when Kobayashi lost his front wing on the first lap, spearing towards the inside of the track and t-boning a Toro Rosso out of the way and into the gravel trap – causing the day’s only safety car. Top quality crash, even by his standards.
So what did Australia tell us? For a start, it reminded us that some tracks always produce good races – and reminded us that some don’t. Bahrain is definitely in the latter category. It also told us that it will be much better for drivers to one-stop than two-stop this year, as track position proved very important. And what does that mean? It means that drivers who look after their tyres better will, if everyone stops once, be in a much better position at the end of the race.
The race also showed us that Red Bull are definitely the fastest car, that, depending upon reliability, Vettel will be quite something to stop this year, that Alonso looks to be smashing Massa into the ground at Ferrari, that Button’s career isn’t finished at McLaren – and that Hamilton is still lacking the maturity that he needs to be the most complete racing driver in Formula 1. Roll on Malaysia…