2022 Australian Grand Prix - Melbourne, April 08 - 10

[Jolle]

I still think it was a mistake to introduce the new wheels and tyres at the same time as a complete change in the 'body'.
It would be more dificult to change to larger wheels later, but they would then know where the problems lay with one change before inflicting another.

They reintroduced slicks and new aero simultaneously in 09 as well, which upset the order. BrawnGP and the drinks company for five years. Sadly we have no equivalent to BrawnGP this time. What could have been... TotoGP? HornerGP? AbiteboulGP? Or, maybe a retired established driver... KimiGP. Strictly for the radio chatter. Or lack thereof.

"Should I pit?"
"Leave me alone I'm on the computer."

Also it seems a particular form of cruelty that the guy who most benefitted from a loophole drafted up the regs which have no loopholes. I was half hoping Brawn had left an easter egg in there somewhere.

In a weird sense Ferrari is Brawn this year.

Just like Brawn a major player in the past (Tyrrell) and found their mojo again when their big backer pulled out, but payed for the development of the winning car (Honda for Brawn and PMI for Ferrari).

[Mogster]

I still think it was a mistake to introduce the new wheels and tyres at the same time as a complete change in the 'body'.
It would be more dificult to change to larger wheels later, but they would then know where the problems lay with one change before inflicting another.

They reintroduced slicks and new aero simultaneously in 09 as well, which upset the order. BrawnGP and the drinks company for five years. Sadly we have no equivalent to BrawnGP this time. What could have been... TotoGP? HornerGP? AbiteboulGP? Or, maybe a retired established driver... KimiGP. Strictly for the radio chatter. Or lack thereof.

"Should I pit?"
"Leave me alone I'm on the computer."

Also it seems a particular form of cruelty that the guy who most benefitted from a loophole drafted up the regs which have no loopholes. I was half hoping Brawn had left an easter egg in there somewhere.

In a weird sense Ferrari is Brawn this year.

Just like Brawn a major player in the past (Tyrrell) and found their mojo again when their big backer pulled out, but payed for the development of the winning car (Honda for Brawn and PMI for Ferrari).

Brawn was previously Honda GP, previously BAR, Brackley. When Craig Pollock set up at Brackley it was pretty much from the ground up, all that was retained from Tyrrell was the entry, almost nothing else was retained as I understand it.

[evered7]

I think Aussie GP gaps shouldn't be taken too seriously. It has always been skewed because of the nature of track.

Guess RB will be back where they belong and maybe even faster with their upgrades.

But it was heartening to see the gap pulled by Ferrari. It was almost like RB of Vettel years and Mercedes 2015 onwards Glad to see that tire management and pace were both in top shape for Ferrari.

[JordanMugen]

Overall the Australian Grand Prix was a solid 6/10 for entertainment IMO.

[vorticism]

In a weird sense Ferrari is Brawn this year.

Just like Brawn a major player in the past (Tyrrell) and found their mojo again when their big backer pulled out, but payed for the development of the winning car (Honda for Brawn and PMI for Ferrari).

Haha, makes sense. So... BinottoGP? Reminds me of this Honda engine deal. They're leaving just as the power unit is getting better and handing off the IP to RBPT.

[dialtone]

So let's do the math ... after the restart RUS finished the race in 25.5 sec. behind LEC, thus in just 31 laps, he was some 0.8 sec. slower per lap and maybe 0,65 to VER ... therefore we could see some progress or it's just track related?

This sort of math is senseless. The leader as in most of the times, would be cruising without showing full potential of the car. When Verstappen retired, it became so easy for Leclerc to simply manage the race. So the difference between Leclerc and others cars in terms of where they finished, is not a clear indication of the gap.

I don't know if I agree. Verstappen was clear that he knew from the start he couldn't race Leclerc, right before retiring he was managing the gap to those behind rather than attempting to race Leclerc.

Leclerc was never in any danger aside from the second SC restart where he had understeer through T15, but RBR had no top speed advantage here and once side by side VER couldn't capitalize.

For long chunks of the race, everyone of the top 4 was in free air driving with at least 2-3 seconds in front and behind. If there's a race where race pace is indicative it's this one. The reason of the big gaps is just that RBR couldn't manage the tyres, the rest of the field managed them well enough, see Albon.

[jurinius]

I don't know if someone else noticed that, the red bull car's gone away after Max pulled one fast lap. Not criticizing, but I think he is going too hard on this engine ignoring alarm from his management. ofc Horner will support his driver, but he will have to ask him to count points one day.
Good points for Merc team again, but this was probably due to the specs of this track. Was cool to see Lewis defending against Mc laren, the car is not so bad at all.

[PlatinumZealot]

The cars do look lazy/slow, especially through the onboards, but I like their appearance and it´s way easier to follow on high speed corners now, this was very clear on this race. The new aero formula is working.

The problem is that the cars are too heavy now because of the idiotic hybrid engines and it´s heavy batteries. Funnily enough, I have been watching Formula E this weekend and they don´t look slow on the corners like they used to(they used to weight 900kg and now are at 780kg). And they still run on slim, grooved tyres.

I particularly loved the trains that we had during the race, firstly led by Magnussen and, then, by Stroll. As everybody behind them had DRS, they experienced what F1 has always been before 2011. F1 drivers got so used to DRS that they lost their ability to pass without external assistance

Eventhough F1 improved drastically this season, Formula E and Indy still produce better racing

These hybrid engines are garbage. They should move to Ethanol 40% or 50% (even if the power goes down to 700 bhp) and go back to normally aspirated engines with cars weighting at least 25% less. This whole electrification is a farce in F1. At least we can see back to back fast laps like we used to in V8 era.

Pirelli has no right to continue in F1. Nobody knows which compounds work and which doesn't and which tyre is faster. Bridgestone and Michelin should come back as two suppliers. 12 years is too long to be talking about one single aspect of racing, tyres. Its because of this farce, we see cars slowing down on their warm up laps, causing chaos, either at last corner before starting fast lap or through the warm up lap. The car should come out of the pits with new tyres and should simply go at race speed to start the fast lap without having to worry about baby sitting the tyres.

Aero simplification has worked as cars finally follow closely. They should further simplify the floor and front wing for better effect.

I don't agree with you on the Pirelli being crap. The raw number says these tyres are the highest performing in the world right now. They design the tyres for the show first of all. If it were Michellin they would be instructed the same. And the races might even be more boring becauase Michellin would design even more conservative (stronger construction) than Pirelli.

[ringo]

Championship looking good for Leclerc.
Verstappen behind Hamilton. And George and Perez and Sainz ahead. Sainz importantly behind George. George is a nice place holder to give leclerc that nice buffer.
And we know ferrari reliability is bullet proof. That F1-75 is built like a road car, it wont break down.

Max need to apply pressure to Charles. So far Charles has been cruising. The only pressure he has got so far is DRS games born from safety cars. Max has not run down Leclerc and pressure him on pure pace yet.
Hopefully redbull sorts out the car and we get some entertainment.

I am still waiting on the Perez vs Max showdown. If Perez magically nurses his car to not retire, he can still be ahead after 6 or so races.

George is now 9 points ahead of Lewis. Not much, but its harder to close such a gap in a midfield car. Lewis has been the most unlucky so far. Safety cars are not his friend. But I think he has found really good race pace in the car based on today. He was able to extend gap to Russel easily, and also able to fight through the field and close down the gap to less than a second before he had to back off. The team just need to bring him within a half second on redbull to race them.

[Juzh]

So let's do the math ... after the restart RUS finished the race in 25.5 sec. behind LEC, thus in just 31 laps, he was some 0.8 sec. slower per lap and maybe 0,65 to VER ... therefore we could see some progress or it's just track related?

This sort of math is senseless. The leader as in most of the times, would be cruising without showing full potential of the car. When Verstappen retired, it became so easy for Leclerc to simply manage the race. So the difference between Leclerc and others cars in terms of where they finished, is not a clear indication of the gap.

I don't know if I agree. Verstappen was clear that he knew from the start he couldn't race Leclerc, right before retiring he was managing the gap to those behind rather than attempting to race Leclerc.

Leclerc was never in any danger aside from the second SC restart where he had understeer through T15, but RBR had no top speed advantage here and once side by side VER couldn't capitalize.

For long chunks of the race, everyone of the top 4 was in free air driving with at least 2-3 seconds in front and behind. If there's a race where race pace is indicative it's this one. The reason of the big gaps is just that RBR couldn't manage the tyres, the rest of the field managed them well enough, see Albon.

You mention albon, but it was easy to manage hard compound tyre and red bull did so too. Perez' PB lap was on the last lap and it was a pretty fast lap. Yes, 8 tenths slower than leclec but leclerc had 3 DRS uses on his fastest lap, so he gained loads just with that. And this is Perez we're talking about, lets not pretend for a second he's faster than verstappen.

Many people struggled on mediums, I'd say nearly entire field apart from leclerc who had zero problems and mercedes who had less but still present. Singling out red bull as being the only ones unable to do good pace on mediums just doesn't hold water. Alonso dropped like a stone at the end when he switched from hard to med and even had to make another pitstop. Magnussen was similar.

[chrstphrln]

Pretty good race for Australia.
Complaining about the rules is senseless in my eyes.
The cars look great, the sound is weak but a screaming engine doesn't create better racing. Watching F1 since 1987 and do not miss the "old times" with its often boring races and rare excitement from engine or driver failure.

Back to 2022, I really hope that Ferrari will continue on this level.
As a "deep red" I would love to see the Team back in victory lane.

[Juzh]

leclerc fp2 1.18.978 - porposing like mad on back straight from 270+ kmh. Probably the worst I've seen from ferrari so far. Curiously it doesn't seem to be affecting them much on main straight.

Downforce pushing the car down and the lateral load(it's easy flat but it's still a turn) pushing it further down perhaps? And once the bouncing starts it's hard to stop.
On the rest of the track the car seems right on the edge, a couple of hard grounding moments but no bouncing motion.

The car has a terrific balance and grip for cornering right now, in a league of it's own today, let's see tommorow if they change the setup minimize the bouncing.

Downforce pushing the car down and the lateral load(it's easy flat but it's still a turn) pushing it further down perhaps? And once the bouncing starts it's hard to stop.

That sounds very plausible.

Check this out, porposing starts almost immediately after he turns the wheel:

[chrisc90]

Or it was clean air?

[dialtone]

You mention albon, but it was easy to manage hard compound tyre and red bull did so too. Perez' PB lap was on the last lap and it was a pretty fast lap. Yes, 8 tenths slower than leclec but leclerc had 3 DRS uses on his fastest lap, so he gained loads just with that. And this is Perez we're talking about, lets not pretend for a second he's faster than verstappen.

Many people struggled on mediums, I'd say nearly entire field apart from leclerc who had zero problems and mercedes who had less but still present. Singling out red bull as being the only ones unable to do good pace on mediums just doesn't hold water. Alonso dropped like a stone at the end when he switched from hard to med and even had to make another pitstop. Magnussen was similar.

Perez was losing 3 tenths a lap from Russell at some point, upon last VSC restart he ended up taking a run in the grass of T13 on lap 51.

Similarly VER and PER were the first ones to pit for the Hards and their degradation just dropped off to nothing, on lap 10 VER was 1.4 behind LEC, and on lap 15 it was 6.5. Tyre deg for RedBull was so bad that while they took off in front of the Merc at the start, on lap 21 Perez was fighting for his position with Hamilton who was all caught up. Hamilton and Leclerc pitted on lap 23, 4 laps later and without the massive drop off in times that VER or PER went through.

Red Bull went from racing against Ferrari in their own league, to racing against Merc, which was barely faster than McLaren in race pace, and you say that everyone was suffering? Maybe so, but RedBull was very clearly having more difficulty given their race pace against the rest of the grid in previous races.

[tpe]

I see a trend.
And the trend is that the Hard tyre is the new Medium.
Remember a few years back when the Mediums where the best race tyre?

I think the shards are now the best race tyre.