My opinion of Driver Rating’s for the 2018 Australian Grand Prix in result
order.

Sebastian Vettel – 8

Sometimes you make your own luck, staying out longer than others certainly
paid off and with high chances of a safety car at the compact track, a win
was always a possibility. The German was out-qualified by his teammate on
Saturday but kept Hamilton behind him.

Lewis Hamilton – 8

It looked good for the reigning World Champion on Saturday, an amazing lap
by the Brit, he was a whopping 0.6 seconds quicker than anyone else, which
is a lifetime in the sport. He can’t be blamed for the error resulting in
Vettel taking the lead. He may have had the pace but a silly mistake cost
him in sector 2 which also cost him a possible chance at the end.

Kimi Raikkonen – 8

The Finn looked like he had adapted well to the 2018 car, with consistent
speed throughout the opening weekend. He managed to out-qualify his
teammate too. He must have felt a bit hard done by with the bottom step of
the podium, but you can never tell by his facial expressions, can you?!

Daniel Ricciardo – 7

Daniel did well to recover from his silly mistake of not slowing down
under red flags in practice. He seemed to lack the outright speed of
teammate Verstappen but luck may have been on his side to enable him to
finish so high up. He performed one of the few overtakes on track with his
trademark lunge early on.

Fernando Alonso – 8

It was nice to see Alonso back at the top end of the field, although not
competing for wins just yet. The Mclaren doesn’t seem to be the finished
article, the more they work on it the more tools it gives Alonso, who is
regarded as one of the best on the grid. We saw a very good race from the
Spaniard, after starting 11th after an average qualifying. Frustrated
Verstappen late on with his speed.

Max Verstappen – 6

A weekend to take a deep breath and forget about for Max, it was a what
could have been weekend for the Dutchman, Errors cost him a front row
start in qualifying and a spin in the race damaged his tyres and dropped
him places on Sunday. You could say he overdrove the car, he has the out
and out speed as we all know.

Nico Hulkenberg – 7

One of the most consistent drivers on the grid in modern Formula 1, again
delivered points for his team. Quiet throughout the weekend but knuckled
down and got on with it. Things look promising for him this year with a
better car at his hands.

Valtteri Bottas – 5

The pressure was already piled on his young shoulders, he certainly didn’t
do himself any favours. His error in Q3 resulted in a penalty and heavy
work for the team. He struggled to make his way through the field and
didn’t pick up a single place at the start. Only a points scorer due to
others misfortune.

Stoffel Vandoorne – 6

Stoffel has one of the best teammates, much like Bottas with whom he can
easily be compared too. He was within two tenths on Saturday but didn’t
take advantage of the virtual safety car hence why finished further down
the field. Solid weekend for him but nothing to shout about.

Carlos Sainz – 6

Carlos is a great talent to have on your team, so much so he is on a
technical ‘loan deal’ from Red Bull. He was battling with his idle Alonso
for the majority of the early stages of the race after a poor start. He
ran wide which gave Alonso the place and he never really recovered
thereafter.

Sergio Perez – 6

Perez was on the cusp of points for the majority of the race, a veteran in
his eighth season in the sport, comfortably out-qualified his teammate but
not much action on Sunday. A track which might not suit his car well, so
watch out for future races.

Estaban Ocon – 5

The Frenchman struggled to get into his groove in Australia, he didn’t
really seem with it. A relatively new car which might be a bit difficult
to instantly get to grips with. Completed the race, more miles for him to
understand the car.

Charles Leclerc – 7

A strong performance by the highly rated Ferrari academy driver. Looked
confident with what he had available after many spins in testing.

Lance Stroll – 5

In his second season for the historic team, the pressure is on the
Canadian. He did well in qualifying with P14, separating the Force India
drivers. A poor race though, with lacklustre pace from him resulting in a
quiet and dull afternoon.

Brendan Hartley – 4

We saw Honda’s true pace in Australia which still doesn’t seem to be great
but the gap is closer than ever, which resulted in the Kiwi dropping out
at the first stage of qualifying. A heavy lock-up at turn 1 ruined his
race as he had to pit. Finished a lap down.

Romain Grosjean – 7

Heartbreak for Romain, a failure with the wheel gun brought an
unexpectedly early end to his race when solid points were possible. He
turned the whole race on his head where he parked his car.

Kevin Magnussen – 9

Heartbreak again! The same issue albeit on the rear tyre for him, great
start to jump Verstappen, taking advantage of him being boxed in on the
inside of turn 1. He kept his cool as he followed, points should come
next round.

Pierre Gasly – 4

The Frenchman had a weekend to forget, a poor qualifying resulted in him
starting last due to two mistakes on his fast laps. He had to retire the
car with mechanical issues. Great raw talent, just hope his car doesn’t
overshadow that.

Marcus Ericcson – 5

Quiet weekend, retired with car failure, out-qualified his teammate, but
with his many years behind the wheel, you’d expect him to be more than a
tenth ahead of his rookie teammate.

Sergey Sirotkin – 4

It may have been overheating that resulted in the Russian’s failure to
finish, but it looks concerning for him. 0.5 off his teammate and P19 on
Saturday. Did Williams make the right choice picking him over Kubica?

The driver of the Weekend Award

No outstanding performances which resulted in a perfect 10, but the driver
of the weekend goes to Kevin Magnussen. Out-qualified his teammate and
frustrated a fast Red Bull. Could have walked away with no points but Haas
does look like they have the fourth best car with one of, if not smallest
overall team.

For a long time now F1 has had issues with strung out fields, cars unable to follow and as a result a lack of overtaking. This year’s Australian GP had a mere five on-track passes after the initial start, equalling last year’s official race total. Clearly, the problem is a big one and could be even worse this year than 2017, according to some drivers.

Lewis Hamilton struggled for the latter half of the race to get near Sebastian Vettel, Max Verstappen was unable to pass Kevin Magnussen despite being considerably faster and home hero Daniel Ricciardo was stuck behind Kimi Raikkonen for the majority of the race. In addition to this, there were problems throughout the mid-field with Esteban Ocon saying that he was unable to capitalise on his strong race pace because he couldn’t get close enough to the cars in front, a view echoed up and down the paddock.

Sure, Melbourne has never been a good track for overtaking, there have always been problems so the rest of the season should be at least a slightly different story but with F1 having had such a hard time of it, it’s easy to forget that some series have got overtaking sorted.

One of these such series is IndyCar which, thanks to their new universal aero kit, had no less than 366 overtakes in their first race at St Petersburg, a street track. The aero kit was introduced at the start of the 2018 season with a view to make the racing as close as possible by simplifying the aerodynamics, thus reducing the turbulent air produced by the cars, meaning that the cars can follow each other in close quarters without problems. As a result, they have incredibly close and unpredictable races that deliver action, right up until the very end.

IndyCar legend Mario Andretti singled this out as the area where F1 loses out to other single seater series the most; more mechanical grip, more weight and more aero all increase the turbulent air left behind by the cars and decrease the overtaking.

Now, let’s get one thing straight, F1 will never introduce a universal aero kit, end of. The teams would never agree to it and it goes against the development race that F1 is; aero development has become such an integral part of the sport that Liberty Media would surely never dream of getting rid of it.

So, if a universal aero kit isn’t the answer, then what is?

There’s no ‘quick-fix’ to the matter, if there was it would’ve been found, utilised and we wouldn’t be having this debate but there are things that F1 could’ve and probably should’ve put in place to prevent the problem from becoming this large.

The 2017 aero-orientated regulation change was surely a huge opportunity for this; F1 had the chance to massively improve the racing but no, they opted instead to make the cars look better and go faster – worsening the overtaking problems. Now it’s all well and good breaking all the lap records and all however, speed doesn’t equate to close racing and that was clearly an oversight in last year’s regulation change.

While IndyCar and other series like it can’t offer a perfect solution to F1, they can provide some sort of inspiration and direction for Liberty to take the sport. 366 overtakes isn’t something that’s going to happen in F1 anytime soon but they can do a bit better than 5.

It’s going to take some addressing but just think how much better it would be to have proper racing back in F1, who wouldn’t want that?

In Formula One, the prize may remain the same and contenders look like remaining the same as the 2018 season draws upon us.

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Those aspects aside however, and the sport has taken a very different direction.

We have a new logo, a halo, no grid girls but grid kids, races at ten past the hour and who knows, maybe some Honda reliability?

We all know that you can never take testing times seriously, but even by recent standards this winter, snow and all, offered remarkably few clues as to this year’s world order.

Tentative forecasts suggest that the big three teams of Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull are very close together, but all six of their drivers have kept their cards close to their chests and have instead lavished praise on their competitors. Oddly, that’s probably the way their employers like it.

And if you are going to use the Australian Grand Prix to look for the running order for the rest of the season, you may even end up being disappointed there too.

While Mercedes won three curtain-raisers in a row between 2014-16, Melbourne has gained something of a reputation for throwing up a surprise result.

Indeed, Sebastian Vettel won only one Australian Grand Prix during his four-year dominance of the sport at the start of the decade.

The battle to be best of the rest is similarly unclear.

Early suggestions are that it’s between four teams; Renault, Haas, McLaren and Force India.

If Toto Wolff is right, Haas will be the ones picking up the pieces should the top six come to blows, and the American team seemed to show good pace in the winter as they bid to improve on two successive eighth place finishes in their first two seasons.

McLaren had been struggling until the final day when they finally showed something like their true pace, while Renault threatened early and went about their business quietly thereafter after hitting small technical gremlins.

McLaren are hopeful that their switch from Honda to Renault Power Units in the close season will give them around a second in pace, after three torrid years with Honda. Ironically, Honda look to have finally started to get their own act together with Toro Rosso.

All of that is helpful with only three of each of the Power Unit elements allocated for 2018.

Not all of these questions will be answered at the first race in Australia. In fact, the evidence gathering only starts now.