Round One: Australia Preview

Greetings all,

The season is now finally upon us with the first practice session getting the green light in around three hours, releasing the cars onto the track for the first time. For the tail-ending HRT team it will be the first time their new car will have operated at all since they missed the Barcelona testing to go to a media event in Monza, it's nice to have priorities in the world of motor racing - I just thought that the car would have been one of them - but what do I know. The rest of the grid will be facing off in a competitive session for the first time and we the audience get a first look at the running order and who will be on top.

This weekend will also determine whether the new gizmos the teams have been developing over the winter work or become a cataclysmic failure, and whether we all get to laugh at the FIA for the KERs and adjustable rear wing combination if it all goes tits up. Of course all the teams won't be running KERs, those folk at the most distant region of the grid, those teams who need to use their passport to find their starting positions. Which on race day could widen the void between the front and the rear, and scenarios such as Spa 2009 where a faster non-KERs Force India couldn't pass a slower but KERs enabled Ferrari. Then there is the tyres which seem to be as durable as cheese and will last about as long, Pirelli have sent extra tyres to Australia because of the high rates of degradation - where we will have a race of cars crawling around on mashed tyres.

The Circuit

Now the track, the 5.3Km of twisting tarmac that the 24 drivers (22 once the HRT cars break) have to take on. The circuit is a temporary stretch of road that circulates Albert Park in Melbourne winding around the boating lake in the centre of the park - it makes for an exiting opening to what could turn out to be a tremendous season. The promise of Melbourne as an opener offers much more than the original setting proposed in Bahrain which often drags on especially with the introduction of the elongated section track in 2010. The layout is composed of 16 corners and several overtaking opportunities, so that mixed with the tighter confines of the temporary track is often a recipe for some general mayhem, with those half-chances turning all to easy into safety car periods.

What to expect


At this really early stage of the season the formbook lies blank on it's opening page, with only the sketchy and unrevealing testing data to look at. So who do we expect to be close to the front - well of course the usual suspects should be guarding the top of the timesheets. The likes of Red-Bull, Ferrari and McLaren should be battling for ultimate supremacy - but the grid certainly does not end there competition at the front could well be interrupted by the Mercedes duo of Schumacher who is still around, and Rosberg.

The group following in behind these will be the most intense with Renault, Sauber, Force-India, and Williams  all running around the same pace and fighting for any points on offer left by the big four teams. These four teams will make the second phase of the opening qualifying edge of the seat as long as a space is reserved for Kamui - not that I'm biased or anything - everyone else can fight for entry into the final top ten shootout.

What about those at the back of the grid, the three new arrivals from last year coming back for another go at chasing the established runners. I think that the gap between Lotus (the green one - not the black one which is also renault)/Marussia Virgin and the bottom end regular Torro Rosso, which should be abolished to bring back Minardi - the greatest team ever (not that I'm biased... again) will close. This may have nothing to do with the newcomers getting better, but STR getting worse and falling into their clutches.

And then there is the HRT team, well I can imagine the back row of the grid from now to the end of the season being booked by the persistent tail enders. Though pre-season comments suggest that the car is completely new with now parts carried over from last year, but with no testing and no experience on the new unpredictable tyres there is a high chance of being last. The team is piloted by Force India refugee Liuzzi and blatent pay-driver Karthikeyen who will be battling competitively for last.

What about this season's rookie driver line-up, GP2 graduates Perez, Maldonado and D'ambrosio will be looking to make an early impression. How many people will they hit is another question, last year rookie Petrov racked up a significant repair bill - though mostly by colliding with more inanimate objects like walls. Other grid newbies include Force India's Di Resta graduate of Germany's DTM series and progressing from a test role into a race seat. It can be assumed he'll be less of a destructive risk than Perez or Maldonado, but the inevitable safety car interventions in Melbourne have to start somewhere.

So people of the internet get ready for round one of F1 2011!