 An interesting race, most notable for some very tasty overtaking passes – and re-passes.
However, even the enjoyable action wasn’t all that it should have been – the DRS zone was ludicrously effective and, for the first time, fell foul of what many suspected would be the case at the start of the season where overtaking was too easy and thus demeaned. We’ve had the two extremes then – pretty ineffective at Melbourne, and far too effective here. The other two races have trodden a middle ground, and the powers-that-be need to be more careful in the future.
Alonso and Ferrari had a positive race. Kept Webber honest and was wheel to wheel with the Red Bull at times, but was still nowhere near Vettel. This says far too much about where Webber stands in the Red Bull pecking order – with machinery which is at least comparable, if not perhaps exactly the same, he’s a good 0.4 seconds a lap slower when it matters and that might as well be night-and-day re: a championship challenge.
All the good work of 2010 has been undone in the opening races. He’s a number two, and that’s the end of it.
More negativity for McLaren, who completely stuffed Jenson Button’s race. As I recorded on Twitter, as soon as the first stops had been done and Button was still running around, it was obvious that Jenson was trying to get a pit-stop in his pocket – but to then bring him in after only another three laps was ludicrous. That was never going to work. These tyres have a milage limit, with only minimal variance re: driving style. For my money, I think Button did the very best possible with the strategy, including some very hard overtakes, but it was all ultimately for naught. He was ahead of Hamilton at the time of the first stops, and finished – if you take Hamilton’s botched pit-stop into account – a good 30 seconds down on his team-mate, and that’s a lot more than the 16 seconds a pit-stop effectively takes.
Hamilton was off the ultimate pace from the get go, and that was unexpected. McLaren have been good in the races so far, but today wasn’t one of them. Also unexpected was just how impotent Rosberg was in the opening twenty laps, which from the post-race interviews appears to be largely due to the fuel weight. The other Mercedes was wasted in the hands of Schumacher, who was more interested in playing dodgems for the opening part of the race.
All in all, it was an easy win for Vettel and Red Bull. The 2011 championships are disappearing from reach unless McLaren (or Ferrari) find a fistful of time in a hurry.
Looks like the Red Bulls will be dominant, and will take an easy win. But there is the minor hope that the McLaren’s have been more competitive in the race than in qualifying in all the races so far this year.
It appears to be down to Red Bull having a more effective DRS system, which is in play throughout the lap in qualifying, and thus is a net loss on lap time in the race, but also that their KERS has been pretty lamentable in terms of reliability – gifting McLaren around 0.3 seconds per lap. Add the two together and the qualifying advantage has been largely negated.
However, injecting himself in the mix was Nico Rosberg with a significant lap in the Mercedes. Looking quite competitive throughout free-practice, this was the first time any sort of form had been carried forward into qualifying. Schumacher also looked nicely competitive – until he stuffed his qualifying lap, and ended up on the wrong end of the Top 10. Unfortunately, this is becoming more and more a predictable occurrence – the once metronomic consistency of Schumacher has been replaced by a significantly cheaper, and less reliable source of timing consistency.
You’d have to be brave to bet against a very easy Vettel victory today. So, I won’t be – however Hamilton, Webber and Rosberg likely to be fighting for the other two podium spots, and I’d take Hamilton and Webber with Rosberg fading during the race.
 So, we’ve had the Alternative Vote referendum – and it wasn’t a close one. 70:30 against.
You’d have to say – in hindsight – it was a hideous miscalculation to hold it at the same time as the local elections – the debate was drowned out by local canvassing, and the cause was probably unfairly tarred with the infamous Nick Clegg Mark of Death (TM). Maybe a year on, with more groundwork, things might have been closer – but as we stand today, electoral reform is off the agenda for many years, probably a generation.
The Liberal Democrats appear to have shot their bolt now – no AV for the next election, and they’ve been acting as a punch bag for public anger against the coalition. The Conservatives are supposed to be a bunch of hard bastards, the Liberal Democrats are not. Of the two component parts of the Government, it’s the Liberal Democrats who are so off axis from their “advertised” position that the public are naturally going to beat them with a stick.
Where this will leave things in four years (or earlier) is unknown. They may ride the gauntlet of the public spending cuts, and achieve respectability in the eyes of the public – a “proper” political party, capable in Government. That’s the only thing left to play for. Or they may completely implode – a bunch of woolly idealists, thrown into the sharp end and ultimately incapable of justifying the their political party when it matters.
It’s frankly easy to be in opposition. Being made accountable for your actions is demonstrably harder.
An excellent race, and certainly goes into a theoretical Top 10 of the races in the last five years – this was the first time that the tyre construction/degradation brought strategy to the fore.
Benefiting from the Hand of Pirelli was McLaren, who took a gamble and switched to a three-stop with Hamilton – who took full advantage of Red Bull playing too conservatively. Perhaps because Webber had such a disastrous qualifying, they couldn’t afford to take risks. As it happened, risk was the way to go – Hamilton caught Vettel in a window where he was vulnerable due to tyre degredation, and just as it was looking like Vettel had him covered in the DRS zone, he went underneath at the unexpected Turn 7 – and the Jenson Button-esque early season run was ended.
Whilst Vettel not winning the race in 2011 was the big news, Webber coming up from 17th to 3rd – and within a few laps of a probable win was more remarkable. In a drive which will redefine F1 2011, the advantage obtained from the fresh tyres he didn’t use in qualifying enabled him to drive through the field of better placed qualifiers with some ease. For years we’ve gotten used to the mantra of “track position is God” – this is now no longer the case. Track position is nothing unless you have enough tyre performance to put the power down through a corner.
The other reason the race will be remembered is the huge error made by Button, diving into the Red Bull pit box – losing valuable time, and gaining an awful amount of blushes. Apparently this error was compounded because he should have been in the pits the previous lap – which put a spanner into when Hamilton was supposed to stop. For Jenson, this was a very uncharacteristic – not fatal, but not ideal to happen in a race won by your teammate.
So, conclusions? Strategy now potentially looks more interesting. McLaren look to be the closest contenders for the title after Red Bull, but Red Bull themselves threw the race away with a safe strategy. This isn’t an about-face of form in 2011, but it does send the paddock into the three week break with some optimism that Vettel won’t be champion by the end of the European season.
A much better race than Melbourne, which was moribund in many respects.
Tyre degradation was significantly higher than in Melbourne, but this basically only really affected Mark Webber who ate tyres and did a four top – everyone else worth the mention did three other than Hamilton but you got the feeling that was completely unplanned due to accident damage. As such, I’m not entirely sure just how much the tyres are bringing to the party, other than avoiding the prospect of a one-stop race and a Trulli-train for a significant number of laps. DRS opened up a more overtaking action, given the length of the straight, but I think this time it was overdone. Not that everyone maximised this – Hamilton again seemed not to grasp that if he was catching someone in the middle of the lap to the point where he was being impeded, then what was the point in blowing half the KERS battery before the DRS zone? I’m just perplexed about this, as it appears to be straightforward. When we saw it properly used, it was utterly devastating – but too easy.
So to the front-runners. Any possible challenge to Vettel was negated by Heidfield jumping Hamilton and Button at the start – that dictated too big an advantage to make the race complicated for Red Bull. “Quick” Nick did a good job this week, after a horror-show at Melbourne and brought home a podium. Not entirely on merit, as Alonso, Hamilton and Webber were all faster – but you take your luck when it arrives. Hamilton looked very solid – until he put on the hard tyres, which was a bit puzzling as the next set of tyres were also hard – surrendering a second per lap advantage for that entire stint. You could see the wisdom if the final set was the softer compound, so there would have been a greater differential in terms of time between himself and Vettel – perhaps making a pass easier to pull off. But the way it was played made no sense.
Not that it made a lot of difference, given he fell horribly off the pace on the last set, got hit by Alonso and destroyed his tyres, perhaps due to the accident damage – but we’ll find out more in due course. Alonso made the best of his situation, until brain-fade resulted in him losing his front wing against the rear of Hamilton and costing another stop. It was unnecessary as it was obvious Hamilton was in a bad way and wasn’t going to last much longer, so this was just foolish. However, unless Ferrari bring some significant upgrades to the next races, it won’t matter what happens with their development cycle unless Red Bull has a mini-meltdown in mid-season.
The big winner today was Jenson Button, who took a tidy second place. Until the last run in Q3, he appeared to have the legs of everyone other than Vettel, and the first stint was gubbered by far too little front wing – which was corrected after the first stop. From there, he looked a serious runner – but unfortunately the damage was already done in terms of disadvantage to Vettel. It will be interesting to see what happened to Hamilton, as even before the accident Button demonstrably had the legs of his team-mate, and was disappearing up the road – and looked to be held up in the third stint whilst Hamilton had the harder boots on. Massa was pretty anonymous as previous, there-or-thereabouts but certainly not going to trouble the sharp end of proceedings. Unless Ferrari want to run a proper lead-driver team, you have to think that his time is coming to a close at the end of this season.
So, we move to China next – and that’s only in a week. You’d expect the same status-quo to be honest, with next to no development time. By the time Europe will start, Vettel will have a couple of races of misfortune in his pocket – and I’d certainly not expect the Red Bull to be caught before mid-season at the very earliest. Without the errors of the opening of 2010, gifting points to the opposition, you get the feeling 2011 will be a more straightforward affair.
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