Racing Thoughts: Australian GP

Great race today with a winner I can certainly live with. A stat that sticks in my mind is that Raikkonen completed every single race lap last year. If he can combine that consistency with a few more race wins we could have a non-Vettel F1 world champion this year. That certainly would be refreshing.

It does seem the gap to Red Bull wasn’t that big after all. That’s certainly good for the season. Webber’s start was plagued with another KERS failure. Red Bull has never got KERS completely figured out.

As people were saying before the race, Mercedes would find issues during a long race run. That seems to have happened. Rosberg went out with an electrical fault and Hamilton went backwards two spots.

Looking at the back of the field, the rookies at Marussia finished the race, which is great. Charles Pic put in a good performance too. You can tell who I have in the Badger GP fantasy F1 competition, can’t you?

The BBC coverage was good. Very impressed with this year’s on-screen graphics. It looks gorgeous. Suzi will need to get used to F1. Some were saying she has no passion for the sport. To me that is to be expected. Her thing is really Moto GP. I’m once she has a season under her belt she’ll love F1 and that will show through.

I did find myself getting a bit fed up with the mistakes of Ben Edwards today. Thankfully Coulthard was there to keep him on the track.

Racing Thoughts: Australian GP, Qualifying, Part 2

Oh dear. Being a McLaren fan this year could be very annoying. With yet another bad tactical choice in Q2 (slicks when they should have been on inters) that cost Perez a place in the top 10. McLaren do have a history of bad decisions during qualifying. But when the track dried towards the end of Q3, Button’s McLaren was plum last. That car really is a dog. They better do something about it soon. And I think I’ll already be making a change to my Badger GP Fantasy F1 team. Shame, but I think it’s got to be done.

Mercedes did a great job and in the dry at the end of Q3, Hamilton out qualified Rosberg. Phew! I wonder if the pattern of Rosberg being better than Hamilton in the wet will carry on during the year?

An all Red Bull front row then and looking like they’ll finish up that way.

But then you Sky viewers already know what’s happened. Please don’t tweet me anything. I won’t read it anyway until after the BBC highlights are finished. I am planning on getting Sky later on in the season. Those days last year, having to wait all day for the BBC highlights to come on were dire. I really do like my F1 at lunchtime.

Racing Thoughts: Australian GP, Qualifying, Part 1

So it was a very wet summer’s day in Australia today, which meant we only had Q1. A bit disappointing. More on that later.

Turning to the BBC coverage for a moment. I thought they introduced Suzi quite well. I also liked the new title sequence with all the old F1 footage with a bit of added CGI effects. Much better than the abstract graphics of last year.

The on track action we did get to see was quite entertaining, but didn’t mean much. The worst performing car was the Williams they really shouldn’t be where they ended up. Maybe Bottas can do better tomorrow.

Hard to glean the performance of the other drivers from today. We’ll see what happens tomorrow. Good of the BBC to you put an extra qualifying highlights programme on in the morning. A bit early though, so will have to record it and watch it at breakfast time.