What have we learned from the Australian GP?
Last Sunday the 2018 Formula 1 season kicked off with the Australian Grand Prix. The big secrets of the 2018 F1 season would finally be revealed and a lot of info we were waiting for since the last winter testing speculations would become clear.
A lot of questions were swirling around. Everybody was talking about:
- Who will be fastest in Australia?
- Will the 2018 championship be a three team fight?
- Who will be the best behind the top 3 teams?
We will explain all 3 questions below and give you all info we know about the subject.
Who will be fastest in Australia?
Being the fastest can be seen in a couple of ways. The fastest overall in the race was obviously Sebastian Vettel with the Ferrari SF71H, because he was the first who crossed the finish line after 58 laps of Albert Park circuit.
He did won because people say he was very ucky with his pit stop during the virtual safety car period. The virtual safety car was caused by Haas driver Romain Grosjean who parked his Haas on the track after he noticed that one of his wheel nuts wasn't fitted properly. On the other hand Vettel showed his excellent driving skills by being able to use the super soft tires for 26 laps.
Qualifying showed the unbelievable speed of the Mercedes W09 on one lap with party engine mode on and Lewis Hamilton behind the wheel. In his last lap in Q3, Hamilton drove a flawless lap and showed that the Mercedes W09 F1 car is a full second faster than the W08, just as the rumour said a week after winter testing. He also broke the qualifying record lap time last year.
When you look at the fastest lap time during the race you will be surprised to see that Daniel Ricciardo was the quickest in the Red Bull RB14. Reason for this could be that Hamilton got stuck behind Vettel's Ferrari. Riccardo didn't broke the lap record of Albert Park. This lap record still belongs to Michael Schumacher and was set back in 2004, 14 years ago with the almighty Ferrari V10 engine.
The highest speed of 319,7 km/h was recorded by Nico Hulkenberg in the Renault RS18. Which is quite surprising as the Renault engine isn't the most powerful engine of the grid. Probably Hulkenberg is a good slip streamer because his team mate Carlos Sainz was one of the slowest on the straight by almost 30 km/h difference at 290,9 km/h.
Will the championship be a three team fight?
The drivers' start of season group photograph.
Australian Grand Prix, Sunday 25th March 2018. Albert Park, Melbourne, Australia.
The Australian Grand Prix showed that Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes will fight for the title this year. Mercedes is still the fastest on one lap and will probably score 21 pole positions this season. Red Bull and Ferrari were very close during qualifying. If Max Verstappen also drove a flawless lap like Hamilton did, he would have been second on the grid and the race classification also would have been very different.
Mercedes and Ferrari did show a better performance during the race than Red Bull and were able to build up a gap. The different tire strategy of Red Bull is responsible for that. Only Verstappen and Ricciardo started the race on the soft tire, while all the other teams were starting on the super soft tires.
After Verstappen and Ricciardo switched to the softer tire compound, Verstappen got stuck behind Alonso in the McLaren. Ricciardo was able to push and drove a great race. It was a pity he was penalised by 3 grid places. With less fuel and more rubber on the track he even set the quickest lap at the end of the race in lap 54.
Who will be the best behind the top 3 teams?
The talk of this week is the speed of US team Haas. A lot of drivers and teams are even questioning their performance and say they just bought the performance from Ferrari. Everybody knows it''s impossible to buy speed. We all know what happened with Toyota last decade.Toyota had an unlimited budget last decade and was spending around 1 Billion Dollar each season and never won a single race.
The speed sure looks good for Haas. They only have to practice how to use their guns during pit stops...
McLaren also showed a good performance again. During winter testing they had a hard time again and things were not looking good for the race. Even the always positive Eric Boullier was preparing the McLaren fans for another deception. Nevertheless after 3 season where they scored no points in Australia, the F1 team from Woking scored 12 points and even holds the 4th place in the constructor championship. Looks like this 4th place in the constructors championship will be a very heavy battled position this year between Haas, McLaren and Renault.
Conclusion after the 2017 Australian GP
Sebastian Vettel Ferrari winner Australian GP F1/2018
All cars are a lot faster than last year again. Because of this it's even harder to pass a rival this season. Therefor the starting position has become even more important. Drivers can only pass on circuits with long straights and with the help of DRS.
To get the most out sign-up offers when betting, you might want to know that cars which are quick during qualifying and have high top speeds on the straights during the race, seem to have an even bigger advantage this season than ever before.
But as old team principle of McLaren, Ron Dennis said in 1997: To finish first, you first have to finish.
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