Grand Prix 2014 Australian Grand Prix Practice, Qualifying & Race Discussion

24 years old. Apprenticeship fully served, and finally arrived in one of the two seats that you've been working towards sitting in for years; that of the quadruple reigning champions. And to start with, your home Grand Prix. All you need is for the car and engine combination to maintain its previous stratospheric standards...

At time of going to press, testing has shown little sign that Daniel Ricciardo's dream will be realised. Although, it has to be said, at time of going to press, testing has not been quite as indicative as it could have been. We don't know who is going to be fast and we won't know until the lights go out in Melbourne.

Ricciardo's team-mate, paradoxical pantomime villain and quadrakaiser Sebastian Vettel is going for his tenth race win in a row, although early suggestions are that his assault on double figures might not be as straightforward as some of the previous nine. At Jerez, getting to double figures in terms of laps was a struggle..

Ricciardo will have to make sure he performs well this season to make sure he keeps the dream seat ahead of Daniil Kvyat, presuming the young Russian puts Jean-Eric Vergne's F1 career to sleep in a dignified and respectful ceremony.

Lotus, meanwhile, have very little money, necessitating the parachuting in of Scrooge El Duck as their driver to back up 2012's other panel-beater Romain Grosjean. Their nose looks rather different to anything else out there, and is closest in design to Williams' 2004 walrus nose. Which doesn't save the fears.

McLaren and Mercedes will back up their silver cars with a British World Champion, a Mercedes engine and a plethora of team principals. Button is, of course, the Melbourne specialist. They've got some running in at Jerez; it is unknown whether either are quick, but neither are stationary.

Fernando Alonso's Ferrari hegemony is about to be challenged by Kimi Raikkonen's arrival. Raikkonen won in Australia last year, so he's got form, and this race will be the first to tell us if Ferrari team radio this year will be a story of two passionate racers abusing their engineers, or two old men moaning about their backs.

Sauber's driver line-up is the most boring thing in Formula One since the US Grand Prix of 2005.

Nico Hulkenburg gets ready for his third consecutive last year before he is signed by a big team. A poor Force India will lead to the Hulk crying himself to sleep, while team-mate Sergio Perez comforts him with stories about how McLaren isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Williams have an interesting partnership; Felipe Massa released from the suffocating stranglehold of the Alonso anaconda and partnered with an almost-ripe pretender in Valteri Bottas. They have a new old livery, a new sponsor and new hope. Williams-Mercedes still doesn't sound right.

And, hey, the 2014 Australian Grand Prix has to be the best chance for Marussia and Caterham to actually score a point; only 9 of the other teams' engines need fall apart and 6 of them are made by Renault! Race finishing expert Max Chilton could be the beneficiary. Although he could actually finish 11th if there are only 10 finishers.

So, all that's left to talk about is Melbourne itself. Despite the rugby and cricket last year, the Grand Prix itself has been quite Pommie friendly in the last several years! The yellow lines at the edge of the track bordered by green walls have been a sign of F1 starting for a number of years, and there has been good racing backed up by poor reliability. And, boy, do we expect poor reliability...
 
Great show. Hammy nailing it in the wet. The big shock is that the Red Bulls do seem to of been sand bagging even harder this year with Dan taking second. The great news is at least Seb had a shocker out in Q2. Really really looking forward to the race now.

Oh yeh and Lotus are shit.
 
Two new chassis for RB so I presume they are seriously modified from the last test. Exciting session, let's see what the race brings.
 
Exciting Q. Enjoying this year so far. :)

Will the Lotus cars be able to race? Even if they have set a sort of OK lap time, they don't seem to be able to brake (judging by P1-3)... which I imagine won't help at turn 1.
 
Q2 was a really test for the drivers, mixed conditions, high winds. Those who can drive showed that they could. Those who struggled. With Red Bull, Ricciardo has proved that the car is capable but obviously not suited to Vettels driving style. He was one of the more twitchy drivers out there and was heading out before Kimi crashed.
 
Great lap by Hamilton beat Rosberg by nearly 0.4 sec and Magnussen in fourth.
What was Raikkonen been doing so far, quite a disappointment.
According to Horner, Vettels car had a software issue which restrained the power output to the engine.
 
It's a bit early to say and obviously the conditions this morning were hardly reprentative of what we could expect to see on a dry track, but with 3 Renault engines in the top-ten and one on the front-row it does appear as though pre-season reports of total calamity for the Renault-powered teams were greatly exaggerated.
 
It was a complete calamity for Renault and Red Bull in testing but it was always a case of when and not if they get it right. Both Renault and Red Bull still have issues but they're in much better shape already than we thought they would be this weekend. That doesn't mean there was any sandbagging going on in testing and it doesn't mean that their issues in testing were exaggerated, because their issues were huge.
 
McLaren had similar issues in 2011 but turned up with the second fastest car in Australia after effectively copying Redbull's rear layout. With their resources, I never believed Redbull's issues were going to carry on into the season opener. Lotus on the other hand will struggle to dig themselves out of the proverbial hole as they just don't have the same resources. I'd imagine they're already half way into their overdraft with a Maldonado shaped cheque.
 
Just reading post quali press conference and one of the reporters sounds like he could be from Fenderman's rooters. This guy's name can't be real:

Q: (Frederic Ferret - L’Equipe) To all three of you: how do you drive without the noise of the V8, does it change anything, the way you drive and the way you behave in the car?
LH:
How do you drive differently or...? Without the noise. It’s the same, it’s the same, it’s just you don’t hear it as much. You kind of hear mostly wind until you get down to fourth/fifth gear... fifth, fourth and third. It might be different for other people but otherwise the rest of the drivers are saying you obviously have to be a lot more gradual with the throttle, stability with your reflexes and all that stuff is quite important.

http://www.formula1.com/news/headlines/2014/3/15568.html
 
Will the stewards allow Maldonado to race since he set no time in Q1? The only time over the weekend that he had any running was in FP3 where he didn't exactly shine, presumably Lotus would argue that he was in amongst the back markers so deserves to get the nod.
 
I did find it slightly bizarre that in this qualifying session:

Raikkonen crashed on a slow in lap. (How, why? Is there anything the FIA need to look at here in terms of the ability to pilot a racing car?)
Kvyat, Vettel and Magnussen all improved on their laps through the yellow flags, but only Vettel and Magnussen were investigated (why?)
It is now apparently sufficient to merely show that you are in control of the car and aware of the yellow flags to avoid a penalty (cf Magnussen) - will this continue?

...Oh the joys of the consistency of stewards!
 
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