Formula One Vault

This Grand Prix – Australian

Hello, there was one big question after Saudi Arabia and the answer is no, no Red Bull will not win every race this season after Carlos Sainz took victory in Melbourne ending once again like he did in Singapore last year, Verstappen’s ten wins in a row, in the last eleven months its only Verstappen and Sainz who have won races.

General News

Nikita Mazepin has overturned European Union sanctions imposed as part of the response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Mazepin, who drove for Haas in 2021, and his father had assets frozen and were given a travel ban. His father billionaire businessman Dmitry Mazepin, was deemed a close associate of President Vladimir Putin.

But the EU’s general court said the link to his father is not enough for the driver to remain on sanction lists. It said the “association” criteria used in the sanctions requires the existence of a link beyond a simple family relationship.

He was also sanctioned by the UK and Canada in March 2022 – sanctions which remain in place. He is also challenging those rulings in the hope of returning to F1. As well as being banned by the FIA from competing under the Russian flag.

A service of thanksgiving for the life of late Sir Stirling Moss will be held at Westminster Abbey on 8 May. A public funeral wasn’t held for the driver regarded as the greatest driver never to win the F1 championship when he died in April 2020 because of the pandemic.

The opportunity to celebrate Moss’s life has now opened up with a congregation of more than 2,000 people expected to gather at Westminster Abbey for the occasion.

His son Stirling Elliot Moss said: “To be able to do this for my father – a man I admired in just about every way and one whom I still miss very much – is an unimaginable honour.

“I know that I am not alone in either of those sentiments, so it is fitting that this service will celebrate his life and allow so many of those who feel as I do, to be able to pay their respects and come together to remember the astonishing and inspirational man that he was.”

Moss won sixteen grands prix during his F1 career but somehow never managed to win the title. He finished runner-up four times between 1955 and 1961 and was third overall on a further three occasions.

His F1 career was cut short by an accident at Goodwood in 1962 that left him in a coma for a month. Although he managed to make a full recovery, he felt his driving skills never returned to the level that they were before the crash so decided against a comeback.

The FIA’s ethics committee has cleared President Mohammed bin Sulayem of any wrongdoing after allegations were made against him of interference in F1 events last year. Bin Sulayem had been accused of interfering with the stewards’ decision to reverse a penalty handed down on Fernando Alonso at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

The second incident was at the Las Vegas Grand Prix and surrounded allegations that Ben Sulayem pushed for the FIA not to approve the track certification for F1’s newest venue.

Following a probe by the FIA Compliance Officer, and its six-person Ethics Committee, it was announced on Wednesday that there was no evidence Ben Sulayem had acted improperly. The FIA’s investigations took a month to complete and included interviews with eleven witnesses.

In a statement issued by the FIA, it said: “After reviewing the results of the inquiries, the Ethics Committee were unanimous in their determination that there was no evidence to substantiate allegations of interference of any kind involving the FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem.”

It added: “Allegations against the FIA President were unsubstantiated and strong evidence beyond any reasonable doubt was presented to support the determination of the FIA Ethics Committee.”

Ben Sulayem had also been open about the approval for the Las Vegas track being his responsibility and said if he had wanted to stop it getting the green light then he had the power to do that himself.

Speaking to GP Racing magazine recently, he said: “The president of the FIA is the one who signs the homologation for the new track, or for all the tracks. I supported it. I could have said no, [because it wasn’t ready in time for inspection]. But as soon as my team said it was safe… because I’m a driver, I care about the wellbeing of the drivers and the people around them, our staff and the marshals. I did it.”

Weekend Recap

FP1 was topped by Lando Norris with an 18.564 putting himself almost two hundredths faster than Max Verstappen. Norris set his fastest time mid-way through the session on the soft tyre, C5, to go fastest before the session was stopped. Alex Albon crashed and wrote off his car when he slammed the car into the wall, the rear tyre broke loose slamming into his gearbox.

FP2 was topped by Charles Leclerc with a 17.277 which put him almost four-tenths faster than Verstappen. The Dutchman beat the second Ferrari of Carlos Sainz by half a tenth and Lance Stroll a tenth behind Sainz. Oscar Piastri was seventh overall, a smidgen clear of Sergio Perez

FP3 saw Leclerc top the times with a 16.714 going two hundredths faster than Verstappen who pipped Sainz by half a tenth. Lewis Hamilton and Oscar Piastri vaulted into the top four on later soft-tyre runs. George Russell later joined the pair on his own soft run

Qualifying saw Verstappen fend off Carlos Sainz to start the season with three poles in a row by two-tenths, both his laps in Q3 were good enough for pole. Perez was just over three and a half tenths behind Verstappen but dropped to sixth following a three-place grid drop for impeding the Haas of Nico Hulkenberg in Q1. Norris was fourth, the McLaren driver going four hundredths behind Perez and ahead of Leclerc by over a tenth.

Sainz took a dominant win ahead of Ferrari teammate Leclerc winning the Australian Grand Prix by two-tenths in the closest finishes this season. Sainz swept past Verstappen on lap two at the Clark Chicane, as the three-time champion struggled with brake failure before retiring on lap four.

The Spaniard then controlled the race and set himself up for victory as he passed Leclerc and Lando Norris at the pit stop seizing control. Sainz had in Singapore last year dined Verstappen a record bringing a run of wins and is the only driver other than the world champion to win since May last year.

Christian Horner Controversy

Last weekend serval media outlets reported that the woman involved in the Christian Horner controversy has lodged an official complaint about his behaviour with the FIA. BBC News has learned the complainant, who accused Red Bull’s team principal of inappropriate behaviour, has registered a grievance with the FIA’s ethics committee.

Horner has always denied the accusations made against him. The woman’s actions follow two previous whistleblower complaints registered with the FIA in the past few weeks. Red Bull’s own internal independent investigation, carried out by an external barrister had dismissed the complaint.

BBC News has learned that one was made to the FIA ethics and compliance hotline on 2 February, and made direct reference to Horner’s behaviour towards a female employee, asked the FIA to look into it, and expressed a fear that Red Bull could try to cover it up.

The second complaint on 6 March, around the time the woman was suspended by Red Bull, referenced the first and warned that the whistleblower would next inform the media. In a statement, the FIA said: “Enquiries and complaints are received and managed by the compliance officer, and the ethics committee where appropriate. Both bodies operate autonomously, guaranteeing strict confidentiality throughout the process.

“As a consequence, and in general, we are unable to confirm the receipt of any specific complaint and it is unlikely that we will be able to provide further comment on the complaints that we may receive from any parties.:

A Red Bull Racing spokesperson said it was not aware of the complaint and did not want to comment further. The official complaint made by the woman to the FIA follows her decision to appeal against Red Bull’s dismissal of her complaint. Last week, Red Bull suspended her from her role with the team for being ‘dishonest’.

Despite wanting to draw a line under this, in Bahrain a dossier of evidence was leaked online to senior officials, the public and all other nine team principals.

The story however has become about a wider battle for control of Red Bull involving Horner, the motorsport adviser Helmut Marko, the team’s three-time world champion Max Verstappen and his father Jos, Verstappen’s manager Raymond Vermeulen and the two owners of the company.

But while the RB20 looks visually very different to its predecessor, especially with its side pods and engine cover gulleys, Monaghan says it is not as radical a step as some have suggested.

Asked again if he backed Horner, admits an internal power struggle at Red Bull, involving the team principal, the motorsport adviser Helmut Marko, the two main shareholders and Verstappen’s, Max Verstappen refused to give equivocal answers when asked whether Horner had his full support and faith as team principal.

he said: “It is very important that we try to keep the key players in the team for a longer period of time because that’s where the performance is.” But he refused to name who he deemed the key people to be. Max Verstappen has not ruled out the possibility of joining Mercedes in the future after Toto Wolff stated he would “love” to have the reigning world champion in the team.

Red Bull

Red Bull says the bold design revamp with its RB20 was the “last big roll of the dice” for the current ground effect rules in F1. Its dominance of the first two races saw them continue to lead the pack, despite the aggressive overhaul That work appears to have paid off, with Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez finishing 1-2 in the first two races of the season.

Speaking about the motivation for the change, Red Bull’s chief engineer Paul Monaghan said that the change was about ensuring there was scope to keep unlocking performance over the remainder of the rules cycles before the reset that is coming in 2026.

he said, “If we choose to make some bigger changes on the car it opens up more options for us. That’s part of our reason to say ‘Let’s go ahead and change it more fully’. It’s probably the last big roll of the dice because into 2025 you have to be looking at the 2026 car.”

With less than two years to go until 2026, one of the key decisions all teams face in the latter part of this season is how much they develop next year’s car while trying to develop a new concept for the following year. That has to done within the cost and wind tunnel caps which affect all the teams.

Monaghan said that early analysis of the RB20 had indicated that there remained plenty of scope to make it better, which will make the challenge for its rivals to catch up so much harder.

He said “At the moment gains are still there. Magnitude at the moment we can find similar gains to last year. I suspect towards the end of the year it may well diminish a bit, but we’ve got some brilliantly creative people and if they find it, then we’ll take it. It’s as simple as that.”

After taking the pole for the race, Max Verstappen said there was a major “question mark” over whether he could convert the pole into the win. This is because in practice Ferrari had looked faster on race pace in FP2, Leclerc topped FP3 and Sainz topped both Q1 and Q2 before Verstappen took pole.

when it came down to the pole position shootout, Verstappen was able to maximise the RB20’s performance, beating to pole by almost three-tenths of a second, while Leclerc finished fifth after making an error on his final flying lap.

Verstappen told Sky Sports, “For me, it was very tricky the whole weekend to just get the car in a good window. We kept on making changes, some worked a bit, and some didn’t. Even into qualifying, in Q1 and Q2, I couldn’t get it how I like it. We just kept on tickling little things and then in Q3 it finally clicked a bit more.”

Despite having turned the situation around in qualifying, Verstappen remains uncertain as to whether his advantage will carry over into the race, with Ferrari having also shown impressive long-run pace during practice. Verstappen has won every Grand Prix since Suzuka in September and we know how strong the Dutchman is at the moment.

Perez, however, was given a three-place grid penalty for impeding Nico Hulkenberg, dropping him to sixth. they subsequently ruled that Red Bull’s pit wall had only warned their driver about the fast-oncoming Haas, which was on a hot lap whereas the Red Bull was on a slow one, “significantly too late”.

In their statement confirming the decision, stewards said: “Hulkenberg was on a fast lap when he approached Turn Thirteen (Ascari). Perez, who was on an out lap was at the apex of the turn and Hulkenberg had to leave the racing line to drive around him.”

“Hulkenberg was forced to lift the throttle early and brake early for that corner. In reviewing the audio from Perez’s car, the Stewards observed that the team was focused on the car in front of Perez that had just slowed, and did not give Perez a warning that Hulkenberg was behind him until one second before Hulkenberg arrived, and significantly too late to avoid impeding Hulkenberg.”

Following the race Verstappen said their “were a lot of lessons” to learn following his retirement early on. The issue being a brake drum fire you could see the smoke pouring from the drum, forcing him to retire for the first time in two years, Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner afterwards. “It looks like the brake has bound on pretty much from the start of the race, and that’s why, as Max described, it was like having a handbrake which caused him to have a couple of moments.”

“And then of course the heat’s building and building and building and then of course the resultant fire. The car, obviously we’ve got all the bits back now and going through the damage, and we’ll go through and understand exactly what caused it.”

But BBC News is reporting the gossip in the pit lane was that this had been caused by the mechanics not properly doing up the bolts after a post-qualifying check. Red Bull said they would not know before fully analysing the car and data.

Mercedes

Mercedes went into the weekend admitting that they are working on solving “fundamental issues” with their W15 car after a disappointing start to the season. The team went into the season hoping to be the closest challenger to Red Bull, however, they failed to place a car in the top four in either Bahrain or Saudi Arabia as Max Verstappen led team-mate Sergio Perez to dominant one-twos.

Lewis Hamilton, who has been outperformed by team-mate George Russell in both races, said after finishing ninth in Jeddah that “big changes” are still required beyond the overhaul that was meant to have advanced their underperforming cars of the last two years.

In his regular vlog, trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin explained how experimenting with the setup of the W15 during practice failed to result in significant progress.

Shovlin said, “We started to converge back in the general direction of where we came from arriving there. But the learning of it is just that when you change things you can see the differences. So one car making changes, you can see how it performs run to run.”

“We can also look at the global performance of the two cars but fundamentally the limitations that we had in qualifying and the race, they were broadly the same for both. it’s not a small difference, it’s not a tiny bit of camber or a spring or bar here and there. It’s something more fundamental that we need to dig into and understand.”

Following the triple header of testing and opening races the fortnight between Jeddah and Melbourne Mercedes hoped they had found some fixes. But Albert Park does have similarities to Jeddah, where their weaknesses were most apparent.

Shovlin added, “The balance wasn’t great. So those very fast corners, the walls aren’t particularly far away. So the ones where the driver wants a lot of confidence, and quite often we were snapping to oversteer if they really leant on the tyres.

Following practice team admitted that they need “dramatic” set up changes after it “massively backfired.” Going into the weekend Hamilton defended the W15 as an “amazing car” and not being an “evil sister”.

CEO and team principal Toto Wolff said the extreme set-up changes between the two sessions that “massively backfired”, the Austrian told Sky Sports: “We’ve achieved the experiments, but we haven’t unlocked performance. In the second session, we have gone through a really quite dramatic set-up change on Lewis.”

“That has massively backfired. But this is why we are having those sessions. On the other side [with Russell], it was a bit better. But we are lacking performance. I think on a single lap, if you finish a set lap, we are a bit better. But overall, it wasn’t a good thing.”

Hamilton’s struggles for performance continued into qualifying missing out on Q3 by seven hundredths after he was knocked out by Lance Stroll with Russell only a hundredth. The seven-time champion complained about in consistency with his car after going fourth in FP3 which had given him optimism going into qualifying.

After qualifying he said: “I don’t know if it’s the wind picking up – it picked up quite a bit, same as yesterday – and then the car is just so much more on a knife edge. That’s it. less consistent than George. He is doing a better job with the car. Three qualifyings in a row he has out-qualified me. He’s just seems to get on a lot better than I do.”

Between Jeddah and Melbourne, the team has discovered that the car lacks pace in high-speed corners, and that it does not generate the downforce on track that its simulations suggest it should.

But, Russell was optimistic Mercedes would be more competitive in the race. he said, “It’s so tight out there between the top five teams bar Red Bull. I definitely think we are going to have a better race car than the qualifying car, but we know where we need to improve and that’s the high-speed corners and this circuit there are quite a few around here.”

Hamilton and Russell have this good cop bad cop thing where the seven-time champion sets out frankly realistic expectations and Russell the optimism, we know with Hamilton speaks more honestly to downplay expectations.

Well, the race didn’t get much better for Mercedes with a double retirement, Wolff wants to ‘punch himself on the nose’ after enduring a “very brutal” weekend. Hamilton retired with a PU failure on lap fifteen and Russell crashed out in the closing stages after being caught out by dirty air as he closed in on Fernando Alonso.

Given the Melbourne display during which Mercedes “massively lacked pace”, Wolff reckoned he wanted to ‘punch himself on the nose’. He said: “There were times in the race where we massively lacked pace. And then there were times at the end when you compare like for like, we were doing OK. Still not where we want to be.”

“But you could see in the second stint, Fernando on the medium [tyre], we couldn’t come anywhere close. The lap times looked like a second off the McLaren’s. Then suddenly the last [stint], when we went for it, not worrying too much, the lap times were competitive. Not [a match for] Sainz. But it was much better.”

It’s been a tough weekend for Mercedes and we know the team in the past has struggled at street circuits, on the back of not meeting expectations in testing. A year ago Hamilton was P2 behind Verstappen, they might now be realising they have not reached the targets for this year.

Ferrari

Sainz exceeded his own expectations in qualifying going two-tenths behind Verstappen, just two weeks after having surgery for appendicitis that ruled him out of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. He began practice unsure of whether his recovering body would be able to cope with the rigours of driving an F1 car, but gradually improved throughout the weekend before outperforming team-mate Leclerc when it mattered most.

While Sainz is wary that his remaining physical limitations could hamper his chances of challenging Verstappen going into the race, he shared the view that Ferrari wasn’t far behind on race pace but believed you need to be at a hundred per cent to beat Verstappen. I think you need to agree, at the moment you need to be at a hundred per cent.

Sainz said “Probably due to that, I missed out on pole. I think today if I would have done a 100 per cent good job, pole position could have been possible. Tomorrow will be the same. I need to be 100 per cent to beat Max. I will give it my absolute everything to do it because it’s been a while since Singapore, and he’s been on that top step since.”

“But yeah, if there’s one weekend where we have a good pace, it’s this one. Tricky track to overtake, and tricky on tyres. So who knows? I think we might have a chance.” This hasn’t been in recent tears where tyre deg has been a big issues, but looks set to be a significant consideration on Sunday.

Sainz went on to translate the second place on the grid to victory in dominant style as he finished just two-tenths ahead of Leclerc and after a tough two months with appendicitis and being sacked, want of a better word, for Hamilton he needs these good results to find a seat for 2025.

He said after the race, “It was a really good race; I felt really good out their. Of course, [I’m] a bit stiff, especially physically, it wasn’t the easiest, but I was lucky that I was more or less on my own.”

“I could manage my pace, manage the tyres, manage everything. It wasn’t the toughest race of all, but yeah, very happy, very proud of the team. I’m happy to be in a one-two with Charles here. It shows that hard work pays off.”

I think it would have still been possible if Ferrari got ahead of Verstappen for Sainz to win but like in Singapore they would have needed to get everything right. This backed up the evidence that Ferrari has got on top of the tyre wear issues.  But Perez believes that Sainz would have still won the race without Verstappen’s retirement.

when Sky Sports asked him if Ferrari still would have triumphed without Verstappen’s issues. Perez said, “I think just as a team, we just didn’t have the pace today. We didn’t have the pace throughout the weekend. We were struggling already from Friday and we never got on top of the management of tyres.”

Perez himself finished fifth after struggling to move up the field from sixth on the grid and believes circuits where the front tyres are put under more stress than the rears, like Albert Park, are a weak spot for Red Bull.

McLaren

Going into the weekend, the team said it would “protect” Oscar Piastri from an overly busy schedule in Melbourne as it pays more attention to driver commitments in 2024. Piastri was one of the stand-out performers last season.

Amid the popularity boom F1 is enjoying and the corresponding demand for access, which is largely owed to the success of the Netflix series ‘Drive to Survive’, McLaren says it is focusing on driver schedules during race events. This, Stella explains, is to “protect delivering the performance”.

The Italian engineer said: “In general, this year, we are paying more attention on the driver schedule over a race weekend. We want to make sure that drivers have the time to focus on performance, focus on having downtime, relax, and so on. So, we are using effectively the same approach.

“But if anything, even more carefully for Melbourne – there’s many requests. But some we will accept; some we’ll have to protect delivering the performance and we will not accept.”

Speaking at last year’s Las Vegas GP, which started with an ‘opening ceremony’ and concert on the main straight, during which drivers were revealed to the crowd, Lando Norris was notably lukewarm when addressing the distractions that come with F1 trying to boost the ‘show’.

There needs to be a balance found between racing and the wider show, the show mustn’t be a distraction to drivers from the day job.

Ahead of the Australian GP, Stella has played down the likelihood of McLaren delivering major upgrades to its MCL38 challenger given it is too early into the season to “create a convincing package that is a significant step”. Instead, “minor things” will deliver “a few milliseconds”.

Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund has taken full ownership of the McLaren Group. Mumtalakat, was already McLaren’s biggest shareholder. The deal follows a period of deep financial uncertainty for the British company, which has been making heavy losses.

Those losses have been partly caused by the drop in car sales during the pandemic when it was forced to sell and lease back its Woking base and the impacts of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the war in Gaza, adding to the pressure on global supply chains.

The business has been under financial strain since the Covid pandemic, which initially forced it to suspend production of cars, and also led to the cancellation of racing activities around the world. The latest accounts for the first nine months 2023, the most recent figures, show a pre-tax loss of £276m.

Its decision to take full control, which was initially agreed last year, bolsters McLaren’s finances in the short term. Also, sources within the group say that getting rid of what was seen as an overly complex shareholder structure will make future partnerships easier.

The BBC reports that Swedish firm Polestar, owned by the Chinese group Geely, is among those to have held talks with McLaren. While the Financial Times adds, discussions have also been held with Hyundai, BMW and Californian electric brand Lucid Motors.

Lando Norris was surprised to qualify fourth before being prompted to third after Perez’s penalty thanks to his last attempt which moved him ahead of both Leclerc and teammate Oscar Piastri. though he admitted afterwards that this had come after what had been a not entirely smooth weekend so far.

Asked if he had expected to end up in P4 on the grid, Norris said, “I would say so. It’s probably better than I was expecting, honestly. [I thought] two Ferraris, two Red Bulls, I didn’t expect to be ahead of one of them. It was Charles, so probably even more of a surprise.”

“But yeah, happy with today, honestly. I’ve not [felt] like I’ve done that well this weekend. I struggled to put things together and just to get comfortable with the car, knowing how to push on it. Normally when I feel like I push, it goes the opposite way of what I want.”

Norris is one of these drivers like Leclerc and Hamilton who can come alive and pull it out the bag in both qualifying and races, if he feels comfortable he can exceed the expectations of the car. He has become more comfortable with the car which made hims optimistic about what he and the team can go on to achieve when they put things together.

He added, “I’m happy with where we are and the things we’re doing and what we’re trying to improve, but I know there are just those things missing which I just struggle to replicate and unlock myself.”

Piastri, meanwhile, will line up in P6 for Sunday’s Grand Prix and was left slightly frustrated by what he felt was his own drop-off in performance compared to earlier in the session.

Asked for his thoughts on his qualifying, the Australian said: “Mixed emotions, to be honest. I think Q1 and Q2 looked really strong, and then in Q3 I just didn’t make it happen. A couple of messy laps which is a bit frustrating, but yeah, I don’t think we’re massively out of position.”

He went into the race hoping to maintain that lead position sixth/seventh in the best of the rest as it looked hard for the team to challenge Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes, and we know how competitive the chasing pack is this season. McLaren I think this weekend they aren’t in that mix.

Following the race Norris believes that he could have spilt the Ferrari’s if he undercut Leclerc at the second stop. In the race, he undercut his teammate but then McLaren ordered a swap between Norris and Piastri as the Australian’s pace was slower, and Norris started to eat into the Ferrari driver’s advantage.

With that gap whittled down to less than two seconds, Leclerc responded by pitting and made good use of his tyres afterwards to ensure that he could rebuild his buffer. Norris attempted to close Leclerc down again but lacked the time to do so.

Norris felt that it had not been entirely unexpected to come away from Melbourne with a podium, and felt that the pace he had over Leclerc meant that second was achievable.

Norris reflected “I think when you take the Red Bull out of it, I would say [it was not a surprise]. I think our pace has been good all weekend. We put things together very nicely yesterday and showed a good long-run pace on Friday.”

“So I wouldn’t have said we had no chance. I didn’t expect for us to be competing against the Ferraris today and I think our pace was not as good as Carlos’s, but probably better than Charles’.” I think this was a good result and it looked at the issues for Verstappen and both Mercedes, with the offset strategy working to get Norris on the podium.

Norris explained that the plan was for him to pit to undercut Leclerc around the lap that the Ferrari driver pitted, forcing a quick recalculation from the McLaren pit wall. He instead stayed out another six laps in a bid to build up a tyre offset, but Leclerc crucially had track position and was over four seconds up the road.

Aston Martin

Fernando Alonso insists that he won’t let others “dictate my destiny” and will remain fully in charge of his future. The oldest driver in the sport has suggest he will make a decision about his future early on with his priority to remain with Aston Martin.

Lewis Hamilton’s departure from Ferrari has left a vacant seat at Mercedes for next season, while ongoing talk about Max Verstappen’s possible departure from Red Bull could open up another tantalising opportunity. The Spaniard remains adamant that he won’t rely on other people making a decision for him and will do whatever suits him.

he said “I’ve been always that way. Sometimes it did help me, sometimes it did hurt me, to be the owner of my destiny. I chose when to go from a team, when to join a team, I chose when to stop F1. And I chose when to come back. Now I will choose what I do next year. I will not follow what others do, and they dictate my destiny. I will do it on my own. For good or for bad, this is the way I am.”

Alonso was disappointed with his twenty-second penalty for his role in George Russell’s crash in the Grand Prix, saying his driving wasn’t dangerous. Alonso claimed he tried to brake earlier for Turn 6 on the penultimate lap so he could carry more speed onto the following straight.

But Russell was caught out by Alonso which the stewards deemed erratic driving giving him a drive-through, but converted to a twenty-second penalty as it was late in the race. That penalty dropped him from sixth to eighth in the final results and promoted team-mate Lance Stroll to sixth and RB’s Yuki Tsunoda to seventh.

Telemetry showed that Alonso had lifted 100 metres earlier than usual and tapped the brakes. The stewards deemed that he slowed down to an “extraordinary” extent, more than reasonable to optimise his corner exit.

Alonso said he was disappointed by the verdict because he didn’t feel he did anything dangerous at all. Alonso gave his view after being demoted to eighth, he said, “George caught me quickly, I knew that he was coming. Then he was in DRS range for five or six laps, so I was just doing qualifying laps to stay ahead.”

“I wanted to maximise my exit speed from Turn 6 to defend against him. That’s what any racing driver would do, and I didn’t feel it was dangerous. It’s disappointing to get a penalty from the stewards for what was hard but fair racing. Still, I’m glad that George is okay. It was not nice to see his car in the middle of the track.”

But writing on X, Alonso toned down his response, “A bit surprised by a penalty at the end of the race regarding how we should approach the corners or how we should drive the race cars. At no point do we want to do anything wrong at these speeds. I believe that without gravel on that corner, on any other corner in the world, we will never be even investigated.”

Williams

Alex Albon says that the team can’t yet access the full potential of this year’s car, but he believes there is more to come from the car. In Sakhir his race was compromised by overheating meaning he was and unrepresentative fifteenth before just missing out on points in Jeddah with eleventh.

Despite being beaten in Jeddah only by the nine surviving cars from the top five teams – plus the Haas of Nico Hulkenberg, the Thai/British driver still feels that Williams has not yet shown what it can do.

he said, “Very simply, we’ve got a better car than last year. But so does everyone else. And I’d say Haas in general has been a bit more of a surprise package, they are more competitive. We know where our weaknesses are.”

“We know there’s lap time to find. We know where the lap time is. Hopefully, within the next six or seven races we can start finding that performance, and out-develop our rivals.” This could suggest that the team know where their weaknesses are, but now the question becomes how do they chip away at those weaknesses and move the team forwards.

One of their targets for this year was retaining the straight line speed they had at some circuits but spreading that to work across all circuits. But they appear to have lost some of that straight-line speed which made them competitive last season.

Team boss James Vowels has defended the team’s decision to withdraw Logan Sargeant and give his car to Alex Albon, saying the team had no choice given the “milliseconds” battle.

Albon’s original car being damaged beyond repair following a crash in opening practice at Albert Park, and Williams having no spare chassis on hand, the team had to withdraw one of its entries. But its decision to withdraw the American hasn’t been without controversy.

While Vowles said that the call was one of the “hardest decisions” he has had to make at the team, he has explained that the move was justified because of the super tight battle in the lower half of the constructors’ championship.

In a video posted to X, Vowels said, “The midfield is so incredibly tight that a point or two or more may make the difference at the end of the season between being tenth or being sixth. The spread of our cars at the moment is milliseconds. And as much as it pains me to see a driver that through no fault of their own won’t be racing on Sunday, I have to prioritise the team above all else.”

“Logan has been tremendous. He’s here to support the team in this regard. He’s clearly very much hurting as a result of this decision but equally strong in as much as he knows the team above all else is the priority.”

We are still very early on in this season that means the teams haven’t built up a collection of spares to build a new car, while I can see both sides of the arrangement when you are in a tight lower-end battle you need to prioritise the driver who can score the most points.

As well as Albon’s car being damaged beyond immediate repair, his gearbox was split in two and the power unit also took a knock. Vowles said Williams would now fly the chassis back to its Grove headquarters for repairs so it could then be shipped to Japan.

Facts and stats (F1.com)

• The only previous Ferrari one-two in this decade was the 2022 Bahrain Grand Prix where Leclerc won from Sainz. Ferrari have only scored four previous one-two finishes in the last 14 years.
• Sainz and Max Verstappen continue to be the only race winners in the last 11 months. Today was Sainz’s third career win and his first when not starting from pole position.
• the question is will this stat remain, every year that a team has finished one-two in the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne, that team has gone on to win both championships (the last time was Mercedes in 2019).
• Lando Norris’s P3 was McLaren’s first podium in Melbourne for 10 years (Kevin Magnussen finished P2, with Jenson Button P3 in 2014). Norris now has 14 career podiums, surpassing Nick Heidfeld’s record for the most podium finishes without ever winning.
• Its eighteen years since Ferrari/McLaren one-two-three-four result was Belgium 2007, with Kimi Raikkonen, Felipe Massa one-two, Fernando Alonso, and Lewis Hamilton three-four.
• Max Verstappen’s retirement ended a nine-race winning streak and a 43-race finishing streak for the world champion, whose last retirement was in Australia 2022.

Race review

That was an incredible drive by Sainz fifteen days after major surgery and I think one of the biggest takeaways from this weekend is that Ferrari, while I think Red Bull had a bad weekend, will be their to pick up the pieces. I was scared after Jeddah that Verstappen was going to waltz his way to the title, reliability will now be a concern but this weekend it appeared to be very scrappy for the Dutchman.

Ferrari has defiantly managed to resolve one of the biggest weaknesses in recent years with tyre wear, this will mean they will be able to fight Red Bull when they run into issues. I feel that its to early to draw conclusions until Imola as we are in a series of very different circuits, and we have two sprint weekends before Imola. Red Bull, however over the course of the season are I think difficult to beat still.

Verstappen will be back, as we said with everything going on off-track, on-track setbacks also don’t seem to phase him and he will just grow in strength as the season progresses. I think one race doesn’t mean we now have a title fight, but where was Sergio Perez? Red Bull needs him to pick up the wins when Verstappen can’t!

Mercedes are a team which also through bad luck, Russell crashing out and a technical issue leading to Hamilton retiring, who couldn’t capitalise on Verstappen’s retirement. Although I still think given the difficult weekend it would have still been hard for Mercedes to fight for victory, we normally get a full debrief from them in the week so we will better understand what went wrong when they publish that!

Mercedes need to be careful they aren’t in a ‘no man’s land’ between Red Bull/Ferrari and the rest of the midfield like the last two years. As we been saying since testing that line between the top three and the midfield has really blurred in this early part of the season. They need to be careful.

Results Summary

Championship Standings