Bulls, Stars and Horses: Saudi Arabian and Australian GPs — Order and Chaos…
With the races in Jeddah and Melbourne in the books, we had a lot of questions answered, and a few questions raised regarding the true performance potential of the teams on the grid. There were also a lot of red flags raised, both literally and figuratively, regarding the way the FIA handled the chaos that was the Australian Grand Prix. So without further ado, let me get straight into what my thoughts for the two race weekends are?
Red Bull Reign Supreme — A repeat of 2011 on the cards?
Red Bull in 2011 is often considered one of the most dominant performances by an F1 team in recent history. It can only be eclipsed by the domination of Mercedes in 2016, and somewhat by Red Bull’s run in the 2013 season. But this year there are signs on the wall that all of those could be eclipsed due to the sheer speed of the Red Bull RB19. In Jeddah we had Max Verstappen go from P15 to P2, and in Melbourne we had Perez go from the Pit Lane to finish P5 in the race amidst all the chaos. These results coupled with their 3/3 win record so far, underline the level of dominance we can expect from Red Bull this year!
David vs Goliath battle to look forward to
While the top position seems to be locked up by Red Bull for the season, the battle for P2 in the championship is going to be interesting. While Aston Martin has emerged as a clear number 2 in the races so far, the Australian GP has also shown the resurgence of Mercedes in this picture. With Ferrari suffering from deep reliability woes, and both Aston and Mercedes promising a host of upgrades for their cars in the coming races, this battle between a manufacturer, and its customer team seems to be a fascinating story to look out for. And come on, who wouldn’t love two of the all time greats — Alonso and Lewis — battle it out on track on equal footing after all these years!
Ferrari seeing Red?
Bahrain — P4 & DNF; Saudi — P6 & P7; Australia — P12 & DNF — no these are not the results of some mid pack team. They are those of the supposed title challengers Ferrari. With reliability issues, performance issues and driver errors plaguing the team, Ferrari seems to be all over the place in its bid to challenge for any of the top positions in the championship. Charles Leclerc has fallen behind Lance Stroll, of all drivers (No offence to Stroll but lets be honest ;p), in the Drivers’ Championship to P10, and all signs point to another dismal season for the Maranello outfit unless they get their act together soon!
Red Flags for the FIA
The Australian GP can be described in one word — Chaos. The race saw 3 red flags disrupt the race, with the last one forcing a standing start in the penultimate lap of the race. All this disruption led to both the Alpines dropping out of favourable points finishes, Sainz getting an unfair penalty for a racing incident and Alonso going from being out of the race to P3 on the podium. All these incidents underlined the over obsessive nature of the FIA to follow procedures and regulations to the T, and its inability to see pragmatism when facing tough situations. A 2.5 hours race with constant disruptions must have taken a toll on the drivers who are currently looking at the longest F1 season ever in terms of race load. The FIA needs to get its act together in terms of their actions to not only appease the viewers of the sport, but more importantly to take a view on the effects on the drivers.
That’s all from my side this time around. The Circus next goes to Azerbaijan and Miami for back-to-back race weekends after a small break for a couple of weeks. Let’s see what these seaside venues have on offer for us then!
