Formula 1 Heineken Australian Grand Prix 2022Formula 1

[Peter.]

I still don't know how people were calling that a bad Grand Prix. Apart from a battle for the lead, there was loads going on. Safety Cars, crashes, overtakes in many places on the track, a really close midfield battle and a monster drive from Albon. It was a good race and just because a leader checks out it doesn't automatically make it boring.

Paul Ricard in 2018 and 2019 had some of the most overtakes of their respective seasons, but because Hamilton won by a country mile in both races, they were declared boring when they were anything but. 2021 French GP was exactly the same as 18 and 19, just with a battle for the lead this time, and then people are like "OMG worst track on the calendar did a good race". I wasn't surprised that Paul Ricard could produce and epic race because it already did. It also had some of the most non-DRS passes of all tracks, so everyone who moans that DRS is bad suddenly only likes tracks with it?

Removing the DRS zone at Melbourne actually meant there were DRS-free passes at Melbourne, and it was also into a corner that caused many mistakes. Melbourne was a great race (better than Jeddah), so I truly fail to understand all the hate it's getting.

I actually agree. It was hardly a boring race, it just was the first GP without a race long battle for the lead. Granted, I still think Pirelli could have done a bit better with the tyres selection, the less one stop races, the better.

I’m a bit disappointed that people jumped over the overall spectacle of this year to express disappointment at the lack of a proper title race like last year. It’s not only too soon to call, but also does the sport a disservice as the midfield is ever changing and never too far from the front to potentially cause them trouble on a good day (after all Alonso almost took pole).

 

[sillybilly]

With the step of 2 grades between medium and soft there wasn't another way.

Yeh, they chose to use C2, C3 and C5?

why? because there wasn't enough performance difference between C3 and C4? - will they redevelop these tyres, or is the C4 almost never going to be used and we will be treated to the durability of the C2 for many races this season?

I still don't know how people were calling that a bad Grand Prix. Apart from a battle for the lead, there was loads going on. Safety Cars, crashes, overtakes in many places on the track, a really close midfield battle and a monster drive from Albon. It was a good race and just because a leader checks out it doesn't automatically make it boring.

i didn't think it was a 'bad' grand prix, but just pretty boring - but not as bad as I expected.

The overtakes just seemed to me to be faster cars sorting back positions - at the front pretty clear steps between Red bull > Merc > Mclaren on race day. Otherwise overtakes were contributed to by tyre performance differences - none of them seemed very exciting at the track, the trackside commentary was maybe a little harder to follow than the usual at home coverage.

Albon's drive was pretty great - and that's the one thing that was holding my interest to see if he could hold the position from Ocon. I didn't follow any midfield battle behind there except I was waiting for Alonso to charge forward.

It seemed to me the dirty air is maybe still a bit of an issue in the midfield perhaps contributes to which cars wore out tyres more and became vulnerable. It didn't feel like there was much of a battle rather than a combination of random factors and of who was able to be losing less.

I think it would have been really interesting to see if Sainz could have made a charge through the field with his fast car.

 

[toastet]

Yeh, they chose to use C2, C3 and C5?

why? because there wasn't enough performance difference between C3 and C4? - will they redevelop these tyres, or is the C4 almost never going to be used and we will be treated to the durability of the C2 for many races this season?

Yes they wanted a bigger gap. I don't think there was anything yet on changing the compound. It was a first test, we will see if they will do it again. I guess now C2 and especially C1 will be the bigger problem when C2 already lasts a race distance even Melbourne doesn't have that many fast corners.

"We decided to opt for the step in the compound nominations because we noticed that there was a relatively small performance gap between the C3 and C4 compounds during development testing, and we believe that Albert Park is a good place to try out this option," said Isola.

next races:
Imola C2,3,4
Miami C2,3,4
Spain C1,2,3
Monaco C3,4,5

 

[McLaren]

Looks like Red Bull has identified the cause of retirement in Max's car. However, Helmut does not want to say what it is other than it is different than what happened in Bahrain.

After two failures in the first three races, world champion Max Verstappen is 46 points behind Charles Leclerc in the intermediate standings. What Red Bull Motorsport Advisor Dr. Helmut Marko says about it.

Again zero points for Formula 1 world champion Max Verstappen. After a problem with the fuel pump in Bahrain, there was now a fuel leak - failure at the Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park in Melborune.

The Red Bull Racing camp does not appear to be very optimistic about the problem in Verstappen's RB18 in Melbourne and how it will be resolved. Red Bull Motorsport Advisor Dr. Helmut Marko when asked: "We were able to clarify the cause of the fuel leak in Max's car."

The man from Graz did not want to answer whether a short-term solution before the next Grand Prix in Emilia Romagna (April 24, Imola) is possible or whether more time is needed. The Le Mans winner of 1971 only explained: “The matter is very complex. The problem is absolutely different from that of Bahrain."

Marko's very cautious reaction to the questions about the world champion's second retirement in the third race leads to the conclusion: Red Bull Racing is in trouble. And that is a problem in the world championship fight against the almost flawless Charles Leclerc and Ferrari.

Max Verstappen out: Problem erkannt, Lösung komplex

Nach zwei Ausfällen in den ersten drei Rennen liegt Weltmeister Max Verstappen in der WM-Zwischenwertung 46 Punkte hinter Charles Leclerc. Was Red Bull-Motorsportberater Dr. Helmut Marko dazu sagt.

www.speedweek.com

 

[shoemaker]

The tv show ‘ The weekend debrief’ tonight said that it was a fuel leak on Max’s car that caused him to retire. They are an official F1 program so thats basically confirmed as the reason

 

[Jimlaad43]

As someone who benefits from Safety Cars making incident clear up safer, thank you FIA for finally telling the drivers to shut up. It goes slow for a reason, you're professional drivers, you should know how to get heat in your tyres.

 

[MagpieRacer]

View attachment 1137613
As someone who benefits from Safety Cars making incident clear up safer, thank you FIA for finally telling the drivers to shut up. It goes slow for a reason, you're professional drivers, you should know how to get heat in your tyres.

Yeah Verstappen whining about that is odd, Hamilton has done it forever as well. They do all seem to miss the safety part of safety car.

 

[Famine]

As someone who benefits from Safety Cars making incident clear up safer, thank you FIA for finally telling the drivers to shut up. It goes slow for a reason, you're professional drivers, you should know how to get heat in your tyres.

Yeah Verstappen whining about that is odd, Hamilton has done it forever as well. They do all seem to miss the safety part of safety car.

I suspect that the reason they're whining about it particularly now is that - although the effect is limited due to the dramatically shorter sidewalls - loss of tyre temperatures means loss of pressure means loss of ride height, and these ground effect cars are intensely sensitive to that.

It will likely exaggerate the porpoising that Mercedes and Ferrari are experiencing, and maybe cause it in other cars that don't otherwise experience it.

You don't get a sense of pace from the safety car, but is it not normally the case that once the incident is cleared they do an in-lap while absolutely caning it?

 

[Jimlaad43]

I suspect that the reason they're whining about it particularly now is that - although the effect is limited due to the dramatically shorter sidewalls - loss of tyre temperatures means loss of pressure means loss of ride height, and these ground effect cars are intensely sensitive to that.

It will likely exaggerate the porpoising that Mercedes and Ferrari are experiencing, and maybe cause it in other cars that don't otherwise experience it.

You don't get a sense of pace from the safety car, but is it not normally the case that once the incident is cleared they do an in-lap while absolutely caning it?

Once the Safety Car is called in, it drives flat-out from the end of Sector 2 to the pitlane. After that, the leader can dictate the pace and they ALWAYS drop to an absolute crawl. So as soon as a race driver is given control, they CHOOSE to drive even slower. So I don't even get the criticism if the drivers, at the point of being allowed to do what they want, decide to drive slower than the perceived "turtle", them they can shove their opinion up their proverbial

 

[desmodan]

Once the Safety Car is called in, it drives flat-out from the end of Sector 2 to the pitlane. After that, the leader can dictate the pace and they ALWAYS drop to an absolute crawl. So as soon as a race driver is given control, they CHOOSE to drive even slower. So I don't even get the criticism if the drivers, at the point of being allowed to do what they want, decide to drive slower than the perceived "turtle", them they can shove their opinion up their proverbial

It's all about getting their excuses in early.
# I spun under the safety car due to low tyre pressures.
# I lost places on the restart due to low tyre temperature.
# I went off at the first corner after the restart due to low brake temperature.
# ... repeat until you run out of excuses that you can blame on someone else.

But you right the safety car drives at that speed for the safety of the marshals and drivers. So stop moaning about it.

 

[Roo]

Once the Safety Car is called in, it drives flat-out from the end of Sector 2 to the pitlane. After that, the leader can dictate the pace and they ALWAYS drop to an absolute crawl. So as soon as a race driver is given control, they CHOOSE to drive even slower. So I don't even get the criticism if the drivers, at the point of being allowed to do what they want, decide to drive slower than the perceived "turtle", them they can shove their opinion up their proverbial

You know full well there's a penalty for overtaking the safety car before it's entered pit lane, and that the safest way to avoid that penalty is to slow down more than required.

And I say that as someone who thinks the drivers should stop moaning about the speed the safety car drives because it's a safety car, not a tyre temperature car.

 

[Magog]

First boring F1 race in a long while. McClaren and Mercedes better performance gives me hope that the futures races will be better though. Also didn't help that 2 of the fastest cars on the grid went out early. Sad what happened to Verstappen. Embarrassing what happened to Sainz.

 

[sillybilly]

I think it seems odd that it felt so underwhelming to some people despite quite a lot happening.

I found an interesting analysis that lists all overtakes from the race.
It looks like 14 of 34 overtakes were for positions in top 10.

I marked up some notes on some groups of passes that seemed to be a bit anti-climactic to me.

Lap 10 * Perez on Hamilton for P 3
Lap 19 Alonso on Gasly for P 8
Lap 22 Stroll on Albon for P 10
Lap 23 * Perez on Hamilton for P 5
Lap 30 * - Perez on Alonso for P 4
Lap 31 - Hamilton on Alonso for P 5
Lap 34 - Norris on Magnussen for P 7
Lap 35 - Ricciardo on Magnussen for P 8
Lap 36 * Perez on Russell for P 3
Lap 39 ^ Bottas on Stroll for P 9
Lap 40 ^ Stroll on Bottas for P 9
Lap 40 ^ Gasly on Bottas for P 10
Lap 50 # Gasly on Stroll for P 9
Lap 51 # Bottas on Stroll for P 10

* = Perez shows red bull is way ahead of mercedes on pace.
I'm a Checo fan, but the Mercs almost let him through to not compromise their tyre wear
as they were not racing him, or the Red Bull has a pretty epic overtake mode.

- = Alonso and Magnussen were slow cars or on different strategies and sitting ducks to cars on new tyres.

^ = Stroll could be a called a slow car and expect to be passed easily, but it's surprising he
held Bottas behind for ages before getting passed on Lap 39 before VSC dues to Max retiring.
The lap 40 overtake might have only happened due to Botta getting a bad restart from the VSC,
then the Gasly pass on Bottas due to Bottas being pushed wide by Stroll.

# = Stroll was just slower than Gasly and Bottas and it might have been inevitable that they would get him.
Maybe surprising that he stayed ahead of them another 10 laps, and it did not seem exciting or interesting from my
point of view. It just seems they had to wait until his tyres got worse or made mistake.
Perhaps this is better than if he had just tooled around and held onto a points finish that he probably
would have got in that situation in previous seasons.

other footnotes or questions,
The Aston seemed so slow, should Bottas and Gasly have more easily passed Bottas and there been a better genuine battle for the lower points positions?
Alonso just showed how bad an alternate strategy can go if they tyres are stacked for a single optimal strategy?

info source:

 

[NICKname]

I think it seems odd that it felt so underwhelming to some people despite quite a lot happening.

That's not very odd. A lot of things happened in the midfield, which is only interesting if you care about the midfield. If you take away all the overtakes for P10 or lower, and the overtakes between cars with alternate strategies, all that's really left is Perez overtaking Hamilton and Russell a few times. For P3.

I think the guy on Reddit who made that post said it best when he said:

Overtaking data is just interesting data it does not show how entertaining the race is

This race could've had a hundred overtakes and it still would've been perfectly mediocre.

But it's only the first race on the new layout, so it's probably just best to wait and see if it's capable of better races. Paul Ricard seemed abysmal until it delivered a great race last year.

 

[Pupik]

Not a bad race, but an F1 race almost devoid of controversy is now a "dull" race. There was a point where Leclerc appeared to sandbag a re-start but held Verstappen at bay, and that's still more up-front action than half the Grand Prix I've seen.

(Yes, caught up with it 7 days later than hoped for, but such is life.)

 

[Magog]

Not a bad race, but an F1 race almost devoid of controversy is now a "dull" race. There was a point where Leclerc appeared to sandbag a re-start but held Verstappen at bay, and that's still more up-front action than half the Grand Prix I've seen.

(Yes, caught up with it 7 days later than hoped for, but such is life.)

It doesn't need controversy to be interesting just some good fights which we didn't see. I think the move to bigger tires was a mistake. They can't attack corners like karts anymore. They drive like typical heavy race cars now. As long as F1 has the best drivers I'll keep watching though.

 

[Pupik]

It doesn't need controversy to be interesting just some good fights which we didn't see. I think the move to bigger tires was a mistake. They can't attack corners like karts anymore. They drive like typical heavy race cars now. As long as F1 has the best drivers I'll keep watching though.

I mean, we're getting DRS-induced passing but the cars look like they're cornering with a wet setup on a rainy day.

It's not silly-slow, but I've forgotten why we needed new regulations so the cars can go 1.0-1.5 seconds slower. Help me out here (other than the 18" tires/wheels).

 

[Magog]

I mean, we're getting DRS-induced passing but the cars look like they're cornering with a wet setup on a rainy day.

It's not silly-slow, but I've forgotten why we needed new regulations so the cars can go 1.0-1.5 seconds slower. Help me out here (other than the 18" tires/wheels).

They think that they can follow each other closer now because of the lower aero. If that was the only change they made It would be fine I think but combining it with the huge tires takes away from what made F1 cars special.

 

[McLaren]

Marko says porpoising is the cause of Max's retirement.

And what about Verstappen's engine with which he retired in Melbourne? After all, there seemed to be flames coming from under the hood? That is the second good news for Verstappen: "Everything is fine with that. The problem was not in the engine itself, but in the fuel line, which burst under high pressure. And we think that has to do with the problem of porpoising had."

The latter raises questions about whether the interviewer is on duty, because the Red Bull bounces much less than, for example, the cars of Mercedes and even Ferrari? "We do have good control of porpoising, but there are still small movements, mainly due to the way the car 'landed' again. We believe this was the main cause of the damage to the fuel line."

Marko heeft dubbel goed nieuws voor Verstappen: "Mogen we volgens Honda van uitgaan"

In drie Formule 1 Grands Prix in 2022 moest Max Verstappen al twee keer op eigen gelegenheid terug in de pits zien te komen. De betrouwbaarheid van de Red Bull RB18 laat te wensen over, maar het goede nieuws komt uit het Honda-kamp.

racingnews365.nl

At first glance, the Red Bulls look completely stable compared to the Ferrari & the Merc., but it does make sense in afterthought, that the car is still making small movements that can be just as disruptive.

 

[Jezza819]

Marko says porpoising is the cause of Max's retirement.

Marko heeft dubbel goed nieuws voor Verstappen: "Mogen we volgens Honda van uitgaan"

In drie Formule 1 Grands Prix in 2022 moest Max Verstappen al twee keer op eigen gelegenheid terug in de pits zien te komen. De betrouwbaarheid van de Red Bull RB18 laat te wensen over, maar het goede nieuws komt uit het Honda-kamp.

racingnews365.nl

At first glance, the Red Bulls look completely stable compared to the Ferrari & the Merc., but it does make sense in afterthought, that the car is still making small movements that can be just as disruptive.

Yeah that head on shot as they turned into Turn 9 made it look like the Red Bull was about the most stable car of the bunch. Wonder how much faster the Ferrari would be if they can get the porpoising under control?

 

[toastet]

The frequency seems to be the problem for Merc too and at Ferrari they (or Leclerc) aren't that effected

 

[sillybilly]

That's not very odd. A lot of things happened in the midfield, which is only interesting if you care about the midfield. If you take away all the overtakes for P10 or lower, and the overtakes between cars with alternate strategies, all that's really left is Perez overtaking Hamilton and Russell a few times. For P3.

I think the guy on Reddit who made that post said it best when he said:

This race could've had a hundred overtakes and it still would've been perfectly mediocre.

But it's only the first race on the new layout, so it's probably just best to wait and see if it's capable of better races. Paul Ricard seemed abysmal until it delivered a great race last year.

It's not hugely odd, but I was pandering slightly to those who were saying it was a good or great race because of all the overtaking.

I am a fan of midfield competition, I am not a big fan or HamStapenClerc etc - they are great and all but I'm just a fan of the race not the win.

This is why I am still furious about final fiasco last year and will be until there is an apology to RIC and STR who got screwed. I don't care much for the difference at the front changing from a 95% to a 99% change of what the result was.

"The guy said it best" - I was adding to that sentiment. I was not intending people to think that wishy washy overtakes that sort the field into pace of the car is exciting. Just thought it was interesting data that could show a bit of interpretation.

The best thing about the Aus GP was Albon scoring a point for Williams and I was really hoping he was able to hold on the the position. Another minor oddness is that some cars could easily be passed and then others Albon and Stroll seemed very difficult to pass.