Behind The Headlines – Australia 2024 – Smooth Operator Operates a clinical drive
Max Verstappen’s run of record-equalling wins was ended once again by Carlos Sainz as he took victory for Ferrari, down under. Sainz less than half a month earlier was in a hospital bed after abdominal surgery following an appendicitis diagnosis that forced him to miss the last race in Saudi Arabia.
If that wasn’t enough, he was affectedly sacked by Ferrari in February and went into this season knowing that Lewis Hamilton would replace him next season. He is the only driver to have beaten Red Bull since Sao Paulo 2022 and yet doesn’t know his future.
The question we were all asking after Jeddah was, ‘Can Red Bull win every race this season?’ the answer is no.
Sainz Smooth Operation
Sainz and Ferrari strung together a weekend really well, after Jeddah that was the feel-good story of redemption and recovery. Sainz is a decent driver, and we knew after losing his seat he needs performances like Melbourne to become the main player in 2025’s driver market.
It could path the way for a return to the Red Bull family if he continues to perform like this, but its not only Red Bull Mercedes that still need to replace Hamilton. I think that the hype we had around Verstappen at the start of 2015 when they came into the sport as teammates, may have allowed him to build his own future and accept in 2017, at least for the medium term, his future was outside Red Bull.
He was loaned to Renault but wasn’t recalled by Red Bull when Daniel Ricciardo joined the team, Sainz was then free to join McLaren. That time at McLaren he proved himself as a match for then-rookie Lando Norris, as he grew into a driver who can lead a team as they won at Monza in 2021, I think he has flourished as part of that group of drivers who came in 2015.
I think joining Ferrari before the delayed 2020 season replacing Sebastian Vettel for 2021, was the golden ticket as he will always have Ferrari on his CV. He has challenged the traditional approach by Ferrari of a number one / two driver.
His drive was clinical execution as he bravely overtook Verstappen after stalking the Red Bull on the opening lap and then overtook on the second lap, which gave him control. Throughout the weekend, I think it was a good statement even if they didn’t win, as one of my conclusions from the weekend regardless of that win, is on top of those tyre issues.
Red Bull had been on the back foot since FP1 they lacked the normal advantage and the race runs in FP2 looked to favour Ferrari, on Sunday morning the paddock rumour had been ‘For Max, it will be the most uncertain race for some time.’ Sainz deserves to have a seat in F1, we were asking pre-season what he needs to stay in F1, his win clearly a statement of intent.
Leclerc said he believed that from FP1, Ferrari “knew that pole position and the race win were possible because we had very good tyre degradation, very good pace. That is a very encouraging sign.”
As we know Ferrari has earned criticism in recent seasons for poor pitstop execution and questionable strategy calls, but Leclerc added that the team had maximised all areas of race craft at the start of 2024.
Ferrari I believe at the moment the most solid team behind Red Bull, this I think has been down to Fred Vassuer imagine if they had him in 2022, 2017 or 2018 I don’t think they would have made the same mistakes, they are going in the right direction. I did have doubts following practice whether they could beat Red Bull, but they did as everything came right to beat Red Bull.
Is it game on?
Red Bull being beaten in race three, might give some hope to other teams, though I still think over the course of the season its very difficult to see anyone other than Verstappen and Red Bull be beaten, it has been done, there looked to be a deflated feeling following Verstappen’s dominance in Bahrain and Jeddah.
Red Bull has been so dominant since his last retirement, also in Melbourne in 2022, he had been on such a run since Miami last year where his won all but two races and was on a forty-three-race finishing run.
There however is one stat in Ferrari’s favour, every time a team has finished one-two in Melbourne, the team has won the driver championship and the team has won the constructors, it’s happened eight times! I feel it’s going to be tough we need to wait and see how this defeat impacts Red Bull.
However, its going to be tough for Verstappen’s rivals the three-time champion has this quality of bouncing back quickly and defiantly. But Melbourne before his retirement, and before taking pole, didn’t look guaranteed in practice Red Bull looked to struggle.
In practice, Verstappen struggled to find his normal performance and while in qualifying it appeared, as normality resumed in qualifying with the Dutchman taking pole but then lacked race pace. We have seen this with Mercedes and Red Bull in Singapore over the last decade their can be blips team’s dominance, but will we see street circuits be the team’s weakness.
Going into Melbourne, recent weeks have been dominated by off-track controversies at Red Bull around Christian Horner that will not go away, though it has died down I think there are still questions to be answered.
Back to Mercedes, they had a difficult weekend, as noted with Red Bull, they have got on top of the big issue of porpoising/bouncing however that appears to have masked the wider issues with their cars.
Mercedes’ director of trackside engineering, Andrew Shovlin said “That was a very disappointing end to a tough weekend, with a significant amount of accident damage to remedy ahead of Japan in two weeks’ time.”
“We went into the race hoping to make progress forward from our grid positions: with Lewis, that involved starting on the soft, which helped him gain positions on the opening lap, and George on the medium. Lewis’s race was cut short by a sudden and unexpected power unit failure; we had no warning of it and will need to investigate further when the PU returns to Brixworth.”
It could be that the window of maximum performance hasn’t widened out, which left it struggling pace and that needs to be understood soon. Mercedes must wish it could rewind to lap three of the Bahrain race, when Russell passed Leclerc and had a faint shot at chasing Verstappen up front there. Pretty much everything else that has followed has been massively bad for one of F1’s best teams, but Albert Park exposed a significant weakness of the W15 in its current iteration.
This has opened them up to a much improved McLaren who I think are definitely going to be in the chasing pack with Ferrari and Mercedes, replacing Aston Martin in fourth. Oscar Piastri continues to be a driver on the up playing the strong number two role, fourth-place tied the best result for an Australian in a home race, his mentor Mark Webber took fourth in 2012 with Daniel Ricciardo finishing in that spot in 2016 and 2018.
McLaren, I think are in the mix, don’t forget they beat Red Bull in the sprint in Lusail when Piastri took his maiden win in any format. Hopefully, this puts them in a position to fight potentially depending on how the next few races play out for best of the rest as the are twenty-nine points ahead of Ferrari.
Asked if the result had given him confidence that McLaren could be in a position to fight for more podiums going forward, Norris sounded positive as he responded: “Yes, it’s clear that this circuit suits us a little bit more, so we’ve been able to push and unlocked a little bit of speed.”
“But it’s still another step to Ferrari, to Red Bull. They are one or two steps ahead of us still so we need to catch up, but it’s clear that we’re getting closer, and a day like today proves exactly that.”
On to Suzuka next another very different circuit which will give more intrigue to the midfield….