Australia 2024 Wrapped

With races back to their Sunday scheduling, Melbourne was the first race after the opening doubleheader which reinforced Red Bull's dominance, with two 1-2’s both won by Max Verstappen including 2 poles for the driver. 

Albert Park usually produces an exciting race so let's have a look and see how things shook out over the weekend. 

Practice

The biggest takeaway from practice was a huge shunt from Albon in FP1. This left his chassis in tatters, and with no spare, it meant only one Williams would be able to compete in Sunday's GP. Despite crashing Albon was ‘gifted’ Sargeants car - on his birthday… in a best effort to score points. Although a tough decision which Sargeant said was ‘the hardest in his career’ the move had been made - which perhaps illustrates and reinforces Albons No.1 driver in the team.

Following this season's trend, we saw 3 different drivers topping the charts in free practice, which is slowly making Friday an unbridled day of hope that we have a fight on our hands at the front. The McLarens and Ferraris were looking strong though, so maybe this week, the fight was real. 

Qualifying

Q1

With only 19 cars geared up for the qualifying hour with Albon piloting Logan's car, it was Sainz who led from the front. This result continued the positive trend the Scuderia seemed to be on so far. 

Missing out here were the Sauber of Zhou, Gaslys Alpine—the RB of Riccardo which increased questions around his seat following a string of sub-par performances. The last spot went to the Haas of Hulkenberg who was notably impeded by Perez in the Red Bull which was to be investigated ahead of the session. 

Q2

It was again Ferrari who reigned supreme with a 1-2 led by Sainz. 

The biggest shock of Q2 was the exit of Lewis Hamilton in the Mercedes. Qualifying P11 his performance was reflective of the worries Mercedes carried into the weekend, with attempts to fix issues which didn't seem to be working as both drivers expressed their woes with the car all weekend. The 7x world champion was joined by the alpine of Ocon, Magnussens Haas, Bottas in the Sauber and Albon in Williams’ sole entrant. 

Q3

Despite differing signs in the previous sessions, it was Max Verstappen who took his 3rd pole of the season with a 1.15.915 followed by Sainz in the Ferrari and Perez in the second Red Bull.

Yet qualifying wasn't QUITE over, remember Q1’s impeding incident between Perez and Hulkenberg? Well, a post-race investigation found this to be the case and Perez was hit with a 3-place grid penalty dropping him to 6th and promoting the McLaren of Norris up to 3rd. 

Although it was Verstappen claiming pole again, hope ran through the paddock with the Ferraris and McLarens looking very promising on race pace. 

The Race  

With 19 cars lined up on the grid, it was lights out and off the cars went into turn one, with all making it safely through, and Max Verstappen maintaining his lead. The cars snaked through the high speeds of Albert Park and on the way to turns 9&10 the move came and Carlos Sainz overtook to lead the Australian GP, cheers rained through grandstands and it looked like we truly had a fight on our hands.    

Verstappen quickly came over the radio stating he ‘lost the rear’ an uncharacteristic slip for the dominant world champion, but this wasn't the end of his woes, reporting problems the No.1 car began to slow and for the first time since the same race in 2022 Max Verstappen was forced to retire with a mechanical failure with his rear left catching into furious flames as he trundled down the pit lane. 

The race now seemed wide open and any sleepy Europeans (me included) were wide awake with what was guaranteed to be the end of Verstappen's dominant 9-win streak.

From then on, Sainz started to pull a convincing gap on the field including his teammate Leclerc pitting early (lap 9) to benefit from the undercut of Norris, this was successful with the Mclaren driver appearing behind the Ferrari after pitstops. 

On McLaren an undercut to cover off Russel meant Piastri overtook Norris during the pit sequences, he was subsequently asked to swap positions promoting Norris up to P3 a decision which went down like a lead balloon for the home fans leaving Piastri to hold P4. 

Despite this, it was an extremely positive outing for the papaya and scarlet teams underpinning the convincing claim that Red Bull are seemingly not as dominant as last year. This was backed up by Perez’s fairly anonymous race with the driver unable to advance any higher than P5.

Australia 2024 podium source : google

Further Back on the grid, Mercedes continued their worrying form with Lewis Hamilton retiring from the race on lap 16 with an engine failure. This left Russel as the sole Mercedes driver who found himself in a tight battle with Fernando Alonso for 5th place. This battle endured until the very last laps, and ending in disaster at turn 6 on the last lap, a break testing incident between the pair, took Russel on a trip through the gravel and left his car stranded rather impressively at a right angle. This incident capped off a double DNF for the Mercedes team, and post-race investigations round that Alonso was in the wrong thus giving him a 20s time penalty dropping him down to P8. 

The aftermath of Russell's crash - driver OK. source : google

On an overwhelming positive Yuki Tsunoda was able to put in a strong performance which after Alonso's penalty was applied left him in P7 which was a big haul and the first haul of points for the rebranded RB team, comparatively Ricciardo completed a rather anonymous race coming him in P12 in front of the home fans. 

And perhaps the biggest shock of the weekend was the stellar performances of both Haas’ coming home in P9&10 a team who was predicted to be the worst ahead of the season is now on a 2-race scoring streak, building a convincing case for the team which came under heavy fire over the winter. 

Overall, this race is always going to be heralded as an exciting one because we saw a new winner. Yet, I do wonder how it would have played out had Verstappen not DNF’d. After the race, Perez was outspoken in the fact that he was ‘absolutely’ sure Sainz would have won had Verstappen not DNF’d such was the pace of the Scuderia over the weekend. 

Maybe there was a close battle for the lead on our hands, but alas it's certain that the 2024 Australian GP was one for the books, following from an appendectomy just over 2 weeks ago to the top step of the podium Sainz came to deliver an exciting and much liked podium. 

Is this the turning point of the season? Can we expect fights for the win from here on out? 

Share what you think below, and see you soon for Suzuka!! 

TTYL with some more content and in the meantime don't forget to follow me over on Instagram @loudandclearblogs

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