Grand Prix 2019 Australian Grand Prix Practice, Qualifying & Race Discussion

There's still another test session before the F1 season kicks off in Melbourne on 17th March but lets get the hype going as we enter the 69th season of the Formula One World Championship. It will be the usual early start for UK viewers if you able to watch live with Sky starting their broadcast (or narrow cast if the declining number of viewers is true) at ten past five in the morning. Yes, there is a five o'clock in the morning now.

The 2019 season is long. We are starting earlier in March than normal and the last race is on 1st December at Yas Marina. In amongst all this the 1,000 GP will be held in China on April 14th. There had been suggestions of trying to run the race in the UK to bookend race 1 and race 1,000 at Silverstone but anyone who can recall the Easter GP of 2000 will realise what a very silly idea this would be. I went to a WEC race at Silverstone in April a few years ago and it snowed. Enough said.

So can we hope for a close, exciting and entertaining season with a close battle for race wins and the championship? I have no idea. Testing has suggested Ferrari are the team to beat but then it has suggested this for a few years and the Scuderia has failed to deliver. I suspect the Mercedes will be up to speed come Australia when then take the bag of cement out of the cockpit. Valterri Bottas is talking tough in the season build up, I have a feeling he will roll over and the team will take it in terms to tickle his tummy as each race goes by before they part ways at the end of 2019.

Charles le Clerc should give Sebastian Vettel a run for his money at the red team, it will be fascinating to see how the team dynamic develops and if the young pretender can rattle the four times world champion in the way Daniel Ricciardo did at Red Bull. Talking of Red Bull, it is a new era as they move to Honda power. Testing has shown the engine to be finally getting some reliability and Helmut Marko claims they are behind Ferrari but ahead of Mercedes. This may well be wishful thinking on Helmut's part but I do hope the Red Bull can mix it up the front.

Behind the top three teams Renault and the newly branded Alfa Romeo team look like being at the head of division two with Toro Rosso not too far behind. McLaren, Racing Point and Haas will be hoping to get closer to these two as the season develops whist poor old Williams will simply be grateful to met the 107% rule if current form continues.

So what of Melbourne itself? It took over as the home of the Australian GP from Adelaide in 1996 and has produced, in equal measure, some of the most exciting and boring F1 races I have seen. I hope 2019 proves to be the latter, if not I will have to look to Formula E to continue to compensate for the dirth of excitement in F1.

So stats fans, which drivers (according to Wikipedia) have the most wins at the Australian GP? Well there are two with four wins, Michael Schumacher (well durr) and Lex Davidson. Who he you ask? Well, as much as Formula One would like to think it holds the intellectual property on the term Grand Prix lots of other races have been given this title and Lex won races back in the 50's and 60's.

These races were run to different rules, Davdison's win in the the '54 race being to F2 spec, the '61 race was Formula Libre and looking at the list of entrants it's quite an eye opener. You had Cooper F1 and F2 cars racing against road cars like the Austin 8 and Zephyr. Can you imagine the bleating from today' s drivers if they came up behind a Fiesta or a Mondeo half way through a lap at Melbourne. It's bad enough for the poor little loves when they have to lap a back marker who's only marginally slower than they are.

Back to the Grand Prix pre-85. There is a stunning list of winners including Jim Clark, Graham Hill, Alan Jones and, inevitably, Jack Brabham and Bruce McLaren. These were the days when F1 drivers had to race in various series to make ends meet and were often contracted by the teams to run in F2 and F3 races as well as F1.

Here's another for you stats fans, the Australian GP has been won by two father and son combos (I wasn't sure how else to put this so please forgive my rather clumsy description). Graham and Damon Hill should be easy to work out but Alan Jones' father Stan won the race in 1959 in a Maserati.

Before I leave you to get excited about the upcoming season, one last pointless fact for you to take a guess at. Only one driver won the Australian Grand Prix at the full World Championship event and in the Formula Pacific era, who he?

Welcome to F1 2019.
 
I think that it's a bit of both, Vettel was very very slow at the end of the race, and I don't believe that it was just to a poor set of tyres, considering that he was complaining about not having enough power my take is that they had some reliability issue and gave him less revs to take the car to the end, on the other hand Leclerc was flying on the hard tyres whereas he was just about ok on the red ones.

The fact that they were faster on the hard tyres rather than on the mediums IMHO shows that they didn't have a clue of what was going on, had they knows they would have put Vettel on hard tyres rather than on the yellow ones.

My impression is that Ferrari didn't know what was going on, it was embarassing to watch because in qualy they weren't so bad, IMHO yesterday was one of the occasion when Ferrari completely loses the plot

The question is.....is this a one-of problem that is only occurring in Australia....or it is a sign for the entire season to come. I am leaning towards it being season long, as the difference between Ferrari and Mercedes was at least 0.7 seconds. I can see how they could make some adjustments and end up regaining 0.2 or 0.3 of that, which I assume they will (and which is why I think they are still ahead of Red Bull).....but I don't see how they are going to make up 0.7 without a new (re-designed) car.

Added to that, if Vettel's problem was a reliability issue, are they also entering the season with a fragile car against what appears to be the rock-solid Mercedes? None of this looks good.
 
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Question: Why did Ferrari bring two sets of hard tires for Leclerc but only one for Vettel?
 
cant remember who posted on here something like "that instead of criticising/moaning mercedes should praise them for doing a great consistent job." tried to find & qoute but to no avail

that sporting domination bar olympic events like redgrave or bolt. every team or individual becomes hated because its becoming "boring" & loved when underdogs look at red bull. it how sport is. domination is revered but in 10 times time. i bet by 1990 people were sick of mclarens but are loved now
 
F1Brits_90 That is why the rules change every 3 years or so but the teams with most resources always get there in the end

Mercedes probably were helped by the track which is not reliant on aero as Barcelona
 
F1Brits_90 No just Senna kept winning that's all and he seem to always win . As for Mercs they were weak on the slower twisty tracks last year so lets see if this is the same or not
 
Five theories to explain Ferrari's crisis: Five theories to explain Ferrari crisis

Briefly summarized:
1. They turned down the power so nothing would break
2. Couldn't make the tires work
3. Wing doesn't work on bumpy tracks
4. Set up was wrong
5. Lacking driver experience
6. Mercedes has a better car (that is my theory...they never state that in the article)

I think it is combo of #2 and #6.
 
Vettel complained about a slow car, so #6 may be true but that's not the core of the issue. #2 is also true though that's not a cause but rather a consequence. I'm going with #3. I hope they have something under their sleeve for next race or they might as well write off this season
 
I think sadly it's mostly #6, Mercedes has the better car, again, and were hiding their true pace in testing big time.
 
Article on Hamilton: https://www.yahoo.com/sports/f1-lewis-hamilton-visit-mercedes-073000072.html

A few points:
1. Hamilton says that the floor damage occurred on lap 4. I have not gone back through the race (which is recorded) and see if we can see a difference in his pace in the first three laps compared to the next 54 laps. But if this is the case, it should be easily visible. Also, we might be able to see exactly when and where and how the floor was damaged.
2. "No-one was expecting to have a gap like that when we came into the weekend."
3. "What I was shown and led to believe was that, from the analysis we were given, that they were ahead and obviously that wasn't the case during this weekend."

Now....at this point, I don't think that Hamilton has a lot of reason to blow smoke. So....that last quote is particularly interesting.
 
I don't know. Merc (not Lewis) have had a tendency to blow smoke about not being the quickest for the last 3 years now. It's a 'keep the fans interested' strategy they've had for a while now. Maybe this now extends to blowing it up their own drivers backsides.

I'll be honest Lewis has come out and said Bottas beat him fair and square and that's good enough me. I think damaged floor discussion is pointless after that.
 
Five theories to explain Ferrari's crisis: Five theories to explain Ferrari crisis

Briefly summarized:
1. They turned down the power so nothing would break
2. Couldn't make the tires work
3. Wing doesn't work on bumpy tracks
4. Set up was wrong
5. Lacking driver experience
6. Mercedes has a better car (that is my theory...they never state that in the article)

I think it is combo of #2 and #6.

I have found an interesting article on the subject on Motorsport.com Italy Analisi Ferrari: due micidiali concause che hanno mandato in crisi la Rossa - Formula 1 News

In essence they highlight the fact that Vettel's fastest lap was 2.3 seconds slower than Bottas' and 1 second slower than Leclerc. Leclerc's fastest lap was the last lap on the race whereas Vettel couldn't improve his pace after the pit stop despite a lighter car. Also they highlight the fact that Vettel's top speed was considerably slower than Bottas'.

On the basis of the above they claim that Vettel's Ferrari had some serious reliability issues during the race and as a consequence the engineers turned down his engine. In order to understand why that was the case (given that Ferrari hasn't mentioned any reliability problem) they point to the fact that in Malbourne the Ferraris were the cars with the smaller intakes for the radiators so they assume that Vettel's problems could originate in the overheating of some parts of the PU.

they also claim that the Ferrari has less suspension travel that the Mercedes and on the bumpy surface of Melbourne they couldn't find the right set up (a bumpy track is not always so easy to replicate on a simulator, let alone the effects of high temperature).

In essence they claim that (i) they couldn't find the right set up because the data fed into the simulator wasn't accurate enough and anyway the car has been designed in such a way that it is diffuclt to extend some parameters (ie suspension travel) and (ii) given that they didn't have enough cooling effect they had to turn down the engine to prevent a failure.

Both things are quite serious, on the one hand a severely restricted suspension travel means that their car is very extreme and not suitable to work at its best in borderline conditions. On the other hand the cooling issue is a textbook mistake and I'm not surprised that are cagy about it.
 
I have founf another interesting article on Ferrari on Analisi Tecnica F1 https://www.f1analisitecnica.com/2019/03/gp-australia-analisi-ferrari-sf90-la.html

They claim that Ferrari's main problem is their PU, they have some reliability issues and are working on them. The fact that their engine is not as strong as they wish it would be has led, according to the author of that article, to a very aggressive front of of the car. He claims that especially on qualy they suffered a lot of understeer (I can't comment on that as I didn't watch qualy). He claims that they also have some issues with their suspensions and couldn't find the correct set up for Melbourne on their simulator.
 
So if all those things about the Ferrari are true, why then Publius Cornelius Scipio did none of it show up in testing? That's what I don't understand. Surely they should have encountered some of these problems then and had time to do something about them, shouldn't they?
 
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