Learnings from Melbourne
And it's not all about Lando Norris
Yo! Happy new race season! I hope it’s treating you well.
The season got off to a cracker with a great race in Melbourne. Max was saved by the rain gods, while others suffered. The bandwagon of Lando Norris for Champion got rolling well. I’m part on it. It’s a dangerous place to be, but I’m managing so far. But, I’m not here to give you a race report, because those are too time critical for me. So, here’s a few things I learned from the Australian Grand Prix…
Driver of the day: Anthony Hamilton
Isack Hadjar, Racing Bull’s new rookie, had a horror start to his first season with a crash on the formation lap. Yea, it was a rookie mistake. But, then again, Fernando Alonso crashed out during the race, so it was also a massively experienced mistake. It his first time on intermediate tyres, and on a damp street circuit. Plenty of extenuating circumstances.
But the guy was clearly having an emotion about it. Many are saying he was crying his eyes out, but we don’t know that—he was still wearing his helmet. But, even if he was crying, so what? The track marshals were giving him supportive pats on the shoulder before Hadjar made it back to the paddock. But then we had the invasive shots of him walking through the paddock trying to hide his face from the cameras. When, out of nowhere, a wild Anthony Hamilton appears to offer hugs. This is Lewis Hamilton’s father, by the way, and Lewis was (is?) Isack’s racing hero. The moment showed that there is a heart somewhere within F1.
Stefano Domenicali, current CEO of Formula 1 Group, later popped by to see Hadjar in his driver’s room early during the race. In contrast to this, Helmut Marko said that Hadjar’s response was “embarrassing.” The only embarrassing thing about it was Marko’s response. This could be indicative of the problems Red Bull are having; there’s no empathy there. (Or Marko just needs a good cry.)
The Aussie Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) got it right.
Their forecast said it was going to rain, and it rained. Just an acknowledgement that when you give competent professionals appropriate tools, they can do their jobs.
Race engineers are important.
Lewis Hamilton has inherited Carlos Sainz’ previous race engineer, Riccardo Adami. Things got a bit awkward between the two of them during the race with, Adami seeming to repeatedly insist that Lewis push the K1 button, and Lewis repeatedly saying that he doesn’t want to. But it’s literally early days still. And hey, we heard some beautiful “words of wisdom” from Charles Leclerc’s race engineer, Bryan Bozzi, as well.
Many race engineers had new drivers at the Australian GP, 10 of them if we don’t count the odd race together last season. Pierre Hamelin, Isack Hadjar’s new race engineer at Racing Bulls, on the other hand is up to four different drivers in the last two years. Conversely, Lance Stroll is up to three different race engineers in the last two years.
Lance Stroll had a good race
I’ve already said too much; we mustn’t acknowledge this lest folks stop bagging on him.
Carlos Sainz makes his debut as a race strategist
Carlos crashed out under the safety car in the opening laps. Despite what Lando Norris and Max Verstappen were saying during their post race interviews, Carlos Sainz still deserves to be in Formula 1.
His early exit from the race meant the Williams team got to have his expertise on hand to contribute to Alex Albon’s race when the rain came again. And indeed, they not only let him talk but acted on what he said. Even though Albon didn’t agree with the decision to pit at the time, it quickly became apparent it was the right call, and yielded the best result for Williams in a long time.
I made a quip last year that Ferrari were getting rid of their best strategist in dropping Sainz to make room for Lewis Hamilton. Current evidence suggests I was not wrong.
The actual strategists often got it wrong
The race promised to be a challenge to the race strategists, which means that after the fact some look like heroes and some look like idiots. This time around, we had just watched the track take about 30 laps to dry enough for dry tyres, and some thought dry tyres would be sufficient to manage a lot of rain in a short length of time. There were about 12 laps til the end of the race after everyone either switched to inters or crashed out (see below) and the inters were still going ok at the end.
Red Bull Racing possibly sabotage Liam Lawson
I’m exaggerating here, yes, I know. Just let me get this bee out of my bonnet. After his poor qualifying into 18th place, the team pulled Liam’s car from parc ferme to make some changes, resulting in him starting from the pit lane. So far, not unusual. But the team cranked on a lot of rear wing, which naturally hampered his speed. So we got to see Max Verstappen nudging the pointy end of the field, while Liam Lawson could barely get past a Sauber at the back. And was lapped before the late race rain mixed stuff up again.
The team made the call to keep Lawson out on dry tyres during that later rain spell, during which he unlapped himself and ran far higher than he had been. But spun twice, and the second time found a wall that ended his day. The team had also told Max Verstappen to stay out, but he overruled them and said he needed inters. I’m just an armchair expert here, but if Max “I’m a four time world champion, I know what I’m doing” Verstappen said he needed inters, maybe the rookie did as well?
Christian Horner, team principal at Red Bull Racing, said afterwards that Liam had had a tough weekend, and he needed a couple more races to get up to speed with things. This sounds a lot like extending Liam a little grace in this moment, but I doubt it. We saw, or at least *I* saw —and probably all of Mexico, but I don’t speak Spanish—last season how RBR was quietly making Checo Perez’ racing life difficult, and those moments were often accompanied by similarly sympathetic words from Horner. Publicly, at least. There seemed to be a lot of knife sharpening going on in the background.
*sigh* This is hard being a Lawson fan; I’m concerned for his career at Red Bull, but also really excited to see him in a top car.
(I found a really good image of Liam Lawson on the Red Bull photo collection for media type folks, but I can’t use it because they removed it. Imagine it: Liam Lawson kitted out in his Red Bull race suit, standing in a warehouse with classic cars hazed out dramatically in the background. He’s standing in front of the RB21, arms at his sides in a Power Pose. He’s looking off camera, but his expression is a Look of Intent. His stance is Hero. It’s his world and we are just NPCs in it. This man is pure Determination, maybe it’s even his middle name. But, alas. I can’t post it. Sad face.)
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