Gentlemen, start your engines!
The F1 Grand Prix season started yesterday in Australia, and what a great start! Traction control has been banned this year so we are back to drivers being fully in control rather than software engineers, and what a difference it made. The joy of seeing the cars wriggle and slide instead of running on rails!
Lewis Hamilton took poll position on the grid in his McLaren and then lead from start to finish, never really being challenged. Not terribly exciting, but good for him. The real fun was behind him, with lots of drivers and teams in contention, plenty of overtaking and some really daft lunges to get the adrenalin pumping. Driver errors were punished and skill was rewarded.
Ferrari really messed up their weekend, having looked so strong in the build up, while BMW have clearly been pulling the wool over our eyes in pre-season testing. Great performances from Williams, Toro Rosso and Red Bull added to the excitement and even Honda and Toyota seem to have made some progress.
The attrition rate was astonishing – only six of the twenty-two cars were still running at the finish – so a number of star performances went unrewarded and the three safety car periods brought bad luck to some, particularly Kovalainen (McLaren) who would have finished second if he’d been able to take his last pitstop before the final safety car period, and Barrichello (Honda), who received a stop-go penalty for refuelling while the safety car was out (he would have run out of fuel otherwise) and was then disqualified for leaving the pitlane illegally.
So it seems that BMW may have joined Ferrari and McLaren in the top flight, while there’s little to choose between those in the chasing pack. The signs are good for a great season ahead of us.
