31.3.11

Four and a half months after the last GP, the 2011 season finally got off to a delayed start in Melbourne. It has seemed a very long Winter, not the least of which was to do with the sheer volume of words, you can't really call it information, that is published about F1. A few times I sat down to try to produce a summary of F1 activity, only to have been overwhelmed by the sheer volume of trivia, analysis and pontification. When the flag dropped in Oz much of the last two were wrong and despite substantial changes to the regs, including the banning of double diffusers, the introduction of DRS (Drag Reduction System = moveable rear wing flaps), the return of KERS and the switch to Pirelli tyres, it was pretty much "business as usual".

We've had tragedy, in the form of Robert Kubica's accident - we wish him a speedy recovery, and farce in the form of the "Lotus Renault" row. "Lotus F1 Racing" switched from Cosworth to Renault engines and became "Team Lotus" and "Renault F1 Team" became "Lotus Renault GP" by the simple expedient of Group Lotus wedging them up with a load of cash. There is now a legal row going on about all this which I can't follow. What is clear is there is not a genome of "proper" Lotus F1 DNA in either of the teams. I cannot imagine that Colin Chapman, possibly the greatest ever innovator in F1, would have been happy about his name being applied to a re-badging exercise, though I bet he'd have loved the Renault exhaust front-blown sidepods and possibly the wheeler-dealering. Does all this heritage-plundering fool anyone, or sell anything? I guess VAG must be pretty happy with the Bentley brand.The other naming farce was of course over what we must now call the Ferrari 150° Italia, but that's been well covered elsewhere on this site.

It was also amusing that Renault originally paraded five drivers, two racers and three reserves/testers, despite there being no testing and when Kubica was injured the team scuttled to sign an experienced driver in the form of Nick Heidfeld. Could it be that reserves are the latest manifestation of the renta-driver who doesn't even get to drive-a?

For the amateur observer, Winter testing was even more confusing than normal with teams running different amounts of fuel, tyres and specs including KERS or not and the HRT team not running at all! The last despite the massive boost of the appointment of a Hollywood image consultant. Didn't seem to help their shockers being "stuck in Customs" though.

Abandoning massive scientific data analysis in favour of giving the test results a quick hairy eyeball, it looked like Red Bull were quickest from Ferrari with Renault pretty good, but with McLaren and Mercedes struggling. All these seemed to be ahead of the mid-field teams like Force India and Williams. The latter still seem stuck despite an ultra-radical rear end. Toro Rosso were considered to have made a step forward, but it seemed that the "new teams" had not. As it turned out in Oz, these conclusions were not far away - with one or two notable exceptions, sadly, one of them being Ferrari.

The other big concern of Winter testing was tyre degradation (or wear to you and I). Pirelli had been asked to deliver a range of tyres with bigger hardness/life gaps between them to necessitate more tyre stops. This they had done and whilst you could see that most were trying desperately not to moan, some just could not help themselves.

With the cancellation of Bahrain the season opened at a proper circuit. The first thing that Oz turned on its head was the pace of the McLarens. By huge effort they had gone for a simpler exhaust (copied from Red Bull says Adrian Newey) in between the last test and here and were quickest in P2. However Red Bull were quickest in P1 and did not run DRS in P2. In P3 Vettel was quickest on the harder "prime" tyre and went even quicker on the softer "option".

Then we got to Quali and all the months of speculation and mountains of posts, blogs, Tweets, Facebooks etc. could be shown for the rear end fluff they mostly are. Sebastian Vettel simply annihilated the opposition, being the best by nearly eight-tenths of a second. Lewis Hamilton was second for McLaren and a bemused Mark Webber third. Distressingly for we Tifosi, the Ferraris were fifth (Alonso) and ninth (Massa).

Notable top ten youngsters were Petrov (Renault) sixth, whilst his experienced team-mate Heidfeld was 18th, Kamui Kobayashi (Sauber) ninth and Sebastien Buemi (Toro Rosso) tenth. The most interesting thing in Quali (where DRS can be deployed at will) was watching the "letter-boxes" pop open. Sutil did it when he had taken too much kerb and promptly spun! All of the new teams were firmly at the bottom of the pile with Kovalainen the best, some 5.7 seconds off pole. This was a second worse than last year! Both HRTs were disqualified under the 107% rule. Maybe they need to get Bruce Willis onboard.

Despite the regs changes Vettel was four-tenths quicker than last year. When asked if he'd used KERS, he said no and when asked why said he couldn't find the button. It later emerged that Red Bull had not used KERS due to technical difficulties. This meant not only were they fastest, they were fastest with the occasional 80bhp less!

Despite his lack of KERS at the start of the race Vettel pulled away into a lead he was never to lose. Hamilton was a dogged second throughout, despite breaking his floor. Petrov was a superb third for Renault. A great result but of course it made everyone wonder what Kubica would have done. Alonso was fourth for Ferrari, despite making a mess of the start and being pushed down to ninth at the end of lap 1. He looked to be ringing the 150 degree's neck all weekend to get any speed out of it. However he professes not to be concerned about it. Webber was a disconsolate fifth, he burned his tyres out and an extra pit stop caused him to lose out to Petrov and Alonso.

Button was sixth. He lost out at the start and got stuck behind Massa for many laps. Despite his letter box flapping wildly he could do nothing about the wide and slow (but fairly driven) Ferrari. Eventually he made a desperate lunge and had to take to the escape road, passing Massa in the process. He did not cede the place, insisting he was in front and Massa had pushed him wide. The Stewards did not agree. Meanwhile Ferrari had smartly pitted Massa, meaning a drive-through penalty for Button. Button re-joined in front of Vettel, so delaying him to aid Hamilton might have seemed like a good idea, but the German swept passed him imperiously at an improbable overtaking spot.

Next up on the road were the two Sauber-Ferraris, with rookie Sergio Perez seventh on his F1 debut ahead of Kobayashi, but both were disqualified for a rear wing infringement. This promoted Massa from ninth to seventh. He seemed generally to be stuck in hopeless mode apart from setting the fastest lap at the end of the race after third-stopping for new soft tyres. Buemi was eighth for Toro Rosso-Ferrari and the two Force Indias ninth and tenth. DTM champ and F1 rookie Scot Paul Di Resta grabbing the last point on a strong F1 debut. It also looked like he was ordered to let Sutil through. [Team orders are now legal - Ed.]

Of the predicted excessive tyre wear there was no sign, Perez even one-stopped, but Melbourne is a street circuit with less grip than dedicated race circuit. Trulli could not resist having a moan about the Pirellis - time he packed it in. As for DRS, I think it enabled a couple of passes, but thus far it certainly hasn't ruined F1 by making overtaking ludicrously easy. They're off to Tilkedrome Malaysia next, we'll see what happens then.

Click here for FIA lap chart, which shows the positions "on the road".

Stefano Domenicali: “There is no point in denying that we leave Australia with a sense of disappointment. Again today, our performance level was not a match for that of the best, especially one of the Red Bulls. Nevertheless, we managed to pick up some valuable points, especially with Fernando, who drove a great race, recovering from what happened to him on the first lap. Now we will have to study everything carefully to work out what prevented us from being as competitive as we had expected this weekend. One of the main themes is the level of downforce at the front. One of the few bright points was reliability, especially on the engine side and with the KERS.”

Fernando Alonso: “If you just look at the classification, this is not such a bad result; yes we have lost ground to Vettel and Hamilton, although we have done better than Webber and Button. KERS worked well as did the moveable rear wing, although it did not make the overtaking moves that easy. At the start there was a bit of confusion: I got away well, but then Button headed for me and I had to go wide to avoid a collision. The strategy was just right and it helped me to make up some places. Maybe if I hadn’t ended up immediately in traffic, I could have tried to go for two stops but given how things went, we made the best decision. We are in the right zone for us to be able to win a title, but definitely not if we keep finishing third or fourth. We have to improve, we know that, but it’s still too early to make any predictions.”

Felipe Massa: “At the start things got off on the right foot with a nice start and good defending from Button’s attacking moves. The duel with Button? It was very tight: when he passed me, cutting the chicane, I expected him to be penalised. I am a bit disappointed with the result and the overall performance this weekend. We have to get down to work to understand fully what happened, because I think we have not shown our true potential.”