F1: Australia GP 2024 Review
Qualifying Battles and Race Day Drama: Surprises, Penalties, and Ferrari's Resurgence Dominate Australia.
Albert Park, which is often known to be full of surprises, didn’t disappoint this year.
A race with a Weekend Attendance of 452,055 fans was a record-breaking blockbuster as it threw a complete surprise with the World champion Max Verstappen’s brake issues that led him to retire. The results were - 86th Ferrari 1-2 with a McLaren on Podium.
Here’s a review of the events for the Australian Grand Prix.
Qualifying
Max Verstappen clinched his third consecutive pole position of the season after enjoying a close battle with the returning Carlos Sainz. The two cars were only separated by two-tenths of a second which is pretty close considering Verstappen’s recent performances.
There were only 19 cars in contention as the Williams team had decided to give the chassis of Logan Sargeant to Alex Albon after the Thai driver crashed heavily in the practice session.
The other Ferrari of Charles Leclerc had to abort the final lap attempt after he went wide under braking at turn three.
"The front wasn’t as strong as I wanted and then on the last run I went very aggressive with the front wing and obviously we went on the other side. So a bit of a shame, but it’s like this."
Elsewhere, Sergio Perez had qualified third but later got demoted to 6th as he faced a three-place grid penalty for impeding the car of Nico Hulkenberg during the Quali.
Hamilton had a dismal qualifying lap with him getting knocked out in Q2 itself, whereas his teammate, Russell just managed to put his car in for Q3 where he managed to be the 7th fastest.
The McLarens had a great qualifying, overall. Norris qualified fourth after being promoted to 3rd whereas the local boy, Oscar Piastri managed to qualify 5th after the promotion. The two Aston Martins and Tsunoda's Visa Cash App RB completed the top 10.
Race
Max Verstappen's race got off to a promising start, but signs of trouble emerged early as Carlos Sainz overtook him with a DRS-assisted move before turn 9. Soon after, smoke billowed from Verstappen's car, leading to his retirement due to a right rear brake issue, marking his first DNF since the 2022 Australian Grand Prix.
“We could see in the data that, as soon as the lights went off, the right rear brake just stuck on,” he said. “Of course, the temperature kept on increasing. So it was also basically driving with a handbrake on and that’s why already I felt that the car was really weird to drive in some corners. It was just very snappy.”
Max’s retirement meant that Carlos Led the race with Norris behind him followed by Leclerc, Piastri, and Perez.
As the race went on, Leclerc managed to clear the cars ahead put himself into the second position, and held onto it till the very end as Ferrari did not mess up their tyre strategies and took the right calls concerning the pit stops. It was a double positive for the Italian team as they snapped the 9-race winning streak of Max Verstappen and claimed their first Ferrari 1-2 since the 2022 Bahrain Grand Prix.
The other Red Bull of Perez had been a surprise throughout the weekend with him being pretty much toothless when compared to the cars ahead. Post the race, Perez said that he wasn’t happy with the setup of the car and struggled with the front tyre grip throughout the race. It was also revealed later that Checo had a tear off stuck to his floor that affected his pace.
Redbull Team Principal, Christian Horner said
"We went long on Checo’s first stint. His actual pace when he was coming through the field on the hard tyre as he closed in on Fernando was strong and matched that of the leaders. Then literally as he's passed Fernando, he's picked up a tear off underneath the floor and it's got lodged in an area that's caused significant load loss. Then the car's not working as it should. Then you start to see degradation on the tyre and again at the end of the second stint, which has been unusual for our car."
The McLarens solidified their position in the mid-table fight as Lando grabbed the first podium of the year for the Papaya team and Oscar finished 4th in his home race. Although, they would look to improve further to catch up with Ferrari and Red Bull given that a long season waits ahead.
The lean patch for the Silver Arrows continued after a not-so-great qualifying session from the drivers which further meant that they had a big job on their hands on the race day. But the disappointment continued for the Britons as Hamilton had to retire from the race after losing power due to suspected engine failure and Russell crashed into the barriers in the final lap of the race after chasing Alonso for 6th place.
Russell said in a post-race interview that when he was only half a second behind Alonso, the Spaniard suddenly braked and got back to power which surprised George and ultimately resulted in him losing the apex and hitting the wall at turn 6. Subsequently, Alonso was given a 20-second penalty which saw him falling to 8th place.
The Penalty later became a topic of discussion amongst the Fans which saw disagreements about the fairness of the penalty considering the incident had Russell’s mistake to play a part too.
Fernando Alonso later commented via his Social media :
The other Aston Martin of Lance Stroll had a comparatively quiet race with him getting a handful of points at 6th place whereas the Visa Cash App RB of Yuki Tsunoda managed to finish 7th. It was a double-point delight for the Haas drivers as they managed to grab the final positions in the Top 10.
The race was uneventful for the other Aussie Daniel Ricciardo who finished P12 behind the Williams of Alexander Albon.
When questioned about Daniel’s results RB CEO Peter Bayer said
" He [ Daniel Ricciardo ] has been helping us to find the weakness in the car, especially with Setup - Relation between Aero and Technical balance, Ultimately Yuki is actually benefitting from that. "
Redbull Racing CEO Christian Horner’s comments about Daniel’s performance were
”Obviously he had a tough weekend. It looked like he had pretty similar pace to Yuki in the race. he had a tough day yesterday getting that lap disallowed, so just wanted to give him a bit of encouragement.”
Max Verstappen’s DNF and Perez’s lack of pace have provided the rest of the grid a tinge of hope of turning the season around.
However, it would be quite early to say that Red Bull’s reliability is in its own greatness as Max had finished 43 races before this without any DNF. However, the teams will turn up with full preparation for the next time the light goes out at the Japanese Grand Prix in two weeks at the Suzuka International Circuit.
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