The lowdown on the season opener in Oz
Lewis Hamilton delivered on his pre-season form with pack-leading pace in Melbourne – so how did he lose a race that was in his pocket?
The man who was partying
on Sunday night in Melbourne was Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel. He had benefited from a moment of good fortune to take the first victory of the season, ahead of title rival Lewis Hamilton and team-mate Kimi Räikkönen.
After qualifying, this race should have been comfortably won by Hamilton, but as the race was neutralised by a Virtual Safety Car, Ferrari seized on the opportunity to pit Vettel and reduce the time lost changing his tyres. He emerged ahead of a “gutted” Hamilton and held on for the win.
In the Melbourne sunset, the Ferrari man conceded he had been “lucky”, while at Mercedes there was a detailed debrief as they tried to understand how the win had got away…
QUALIFYING The 12 intense minutes of Q3, late on Saturday afternoon, were the moments we’d been waiting for since the 2018 cars were unveiled in mid-
February. Finally, the stopwatch would prove who had done the best job over the winter.
Unfortunately, there was only one silver car in contention, for the W09 of Valtteri Bottas was on a flat-bed trailer in pieces after he carried too much speed into Turn 1 and smashed rearwards into the barriers at Turn 2. The Finn had dipped his left-rear wheel onto wet grass (a legacy of morning rain), picked up a heap of wheelspin and rotated hard into the barriers, bringing out the red flag.
That meant it was down to Ferrari and Red Bull to take the challenge to Hamilton on the second and final run of Q3. But second time around, there was no stopping Lewis. He had pole by 0.664s from Räikkönen, followed by Vettel and Max Verstappen.
Quizzed as to whether a so-called ‘party mode’ of the F1 M09 EQ Power+ had been available for qualifying and if that was why his second run was
“MERCEDES THOUGHT THEY HAD CORRECTLY CALCULATED THAT LEWIS WAS SAFE FROM VETTEL EVEN IF HE DID PIT DURING THE VSC – BUT THEIR CALCULATIONS WERE TWO SECONDS OUT
so much quicker than his first, Lewis replied: “I can assure you, we don’t have a party mode. I use the same mode from Q2 to the end of Q3. There was no extra button.”
But Vettel couldn’t resist enquiring about the slow pace of his rival’s first run: “Then what were you doing before?” he jibed.
“I was waiting to put a good lap in,” responded the world champ, “to wipe the smile off your face…”
Daniel Ricciardo had been demoted on the starting grid following an indiscretion in Friday practice. A piece of timing cable had worked loose on the start/finish line, bringing out the red flag and the stewards deemed that Ricciardo had failed to slow significantly. He was awarded two penalty points and a three-place grid drop. It was a decision he described on Friday as “shithouse” and when he reiterated this on Saturday, a member of his team suggested he “took a moment to calm down.”
Make no mistake, the stakes are high this season and the drivers are feeling it.
RACE
From lights out Hamilton retained his position at the head of the field in front of fellow front-row starter Räikkönen. Behind them, Vettel had fended off Verstappen at Turn 1 and that enabled Kevin
Magnussen to overtake the Red Bull around the outside for fourth place.
Soon, though, the Haas became a bottleneck for the Red Bulls. That allowed the top three to easily make their sole pitstops and emerge ahead of the Haas ‘train’. Räikkönen was first in, on lap 18, then Hamilton pitted a lap later from the lead.
But Vettel, on a ‘deeper’ strategy, decided to stay out, particularly as he was still clocking a good pace on his rubber. It proved to be a smart ‘long’ strategy from Ferrari since there followed a twist of fate that would determine the outcome of the race. Magnussen pitted from fourth, but as he approached Turn 3 after his stop, he slowed to a halt. The wheel nut on the left-rear had been crossthreaded and although the mechanic signalled thus, K-mag was allowed to depart anyway. Bad luck – but worse was to follow.
Romain Grosjean made his stop and this time the left-front was cross-threaded and – unbelievably – another Haas mechanic once again gave the signal that all was not right but the car was once again released. A despondent Grosjean stopped at Turn Two, prompting the activation of the Virtual Safety Car – the signal for the field to circulate at a reduced speed for safety reasons.
Pitting during a VSC doesn’t cost as much time, since your rivals on-track are not travelling at full racing speed. From entry to exit, a pitstop at Albert Park costs a driver roughly 23 seconds; under the VSC that’s reduced to 13 seconds.
Mercedes thought they had correctly calculated that Lewis was safe from Vettel even if he did pit during the VSC – but their calculations were two seconds out. Lewis hadn’t built enough of a lead to cover this.
When Vettel emerged from the pits ahead of the Mercedes, Hamilton was in disbelief. “What happened guys? Was that my mistake?” he asked on his team radio, but his engineer Pete Bonnington was equally surprised. “We thought we were safe,” he replied.
When, soon after, the actual Safety Car was deployed to remove the stricken Haas (the team would later be fined $10,000 for two unsafe pitstops), Vettel was able to keep his lead, despite a Hamilton challenge. A small lock-up at Turn 9 from a charging Lewis allowed Vettel enough of a breather to see him home in the lead, with Räikkönen finishing third.
Red and silver up front then, just as last year. But as a form guide for the true competitive landscape of F1 2018, Melbourne was tantalisingly inconclusive.