Every team arrived in Australia without knowing what to expect but determined to give their very best in the season opener. This, afterall, could lay the foundation on which the teams will progress throughout the rest of the season. This season is a big one in itself and with 17 races to go after this, everyone was sure of wiping out the incompetencies, if any. This one was set to break many illusions developed during the winter testing but a failure here in no way means the end of the world.
The first qualifying of the season took place amid tweaked regulations. The first part of the qualifying round was extended to 20 minutes while the final part being shortened to 10 minutes. The teams no longer will have to go through the torturous “fuel burn” period. The top teams like Ferrari and McLaren were satisfied with their pre-season form and were expecting to do much better than the rest. McLaren didn’t disappoint in that regard with Lewis Hamilton taking the pole position. Robert Kubica of BMW came in with a huge surprise when he succeeded in lining up his car next to Hamilton in the starting grid.
Things, however, were not so rosy for the Ferrari cars. Their world champion driver, Kimi Raikkonen, witnessed the worst possible opening to a season and had to retire after Q1. His engine apparently failed to respond due to a fuel pressure problem. His team-mate, Felipe Massa, looked fuel heavy and as a result, couldn’t challenge the leaders up ahead for the pole position. He eventually ended the day at P4. Heikki Kovalainen, the new recruit at McLaren was able to grab P3 without any issues.
On the race day, everyone was expecting Ferrari to bounce back and was looking ahead to Kimi in particular. He made a great start and took full advantage of other cars going off track in the first few corners. Massa spun off for no apparent reason and lost a few places. Probably, he is finding it difficult to adjust to the recent ban of driver aids. At one point of time Kimi was up to 3rd place owing to a good race strategy but threw it all away trying to make an over-optimistic move on Kovalainen. He later spun once more while trying to overtake Timo Glock.
In the end, both Ferrari cars failed to finish the race due to engine problems. Lewis led the race from start to finish and completed a great win. He was followed to the podium by Nick Heidfeld of BMW and Nico Rosberg of Williams. Former champion Alonso had an exciting race for Renault and finished in 4th place, well above expectations. Heikki finished 5th which would come as a disappointment after a superb qualifying. Ferrari will have their hands full in trying to determine what went wrong. They need to bounce back soon as the next race in Malaysia is just a week away. We hope to see a great race there.
It was a difficult race with only 7 cars being able to cross the finish line. Rubens Barrichello finished 6th but was later disqualified for jumping a red light during the safety car period. Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastien Bourdais were classified as finishers and were awarded points despite not being able to finish the race. The full results from this race are as follows -
1 - Lewis Hamilton - McLaren-Mercedes - 58 - 1:34:50.616
2 - Nick Heidfeld - BMW - 58 - +5.4 secs
3 - Nico Rosberg - Williams-Toyota - 58 - +8.1 secs
4 - Fernando Alonso - Renault - 58 - +17.1 secs
5 - Heikki Kovalainen - McLaren-Mercedes - 58 - +18.0 secs
6 - Kazuki Nakajima - Williams-Toyota - 57 - +1 Lap
7 - Sebastien Bourdais - STR-Ferrari - 55 - +3 Laps
8 - Kimi Räikkönen - Ferrari - 53 - Engine
Ret - Robert Kubica - BMW - 47 - Accident
Ret - Timo Glock - Toyota - 43 - Accident
Ret - Takuma Sato - Super Aguri-Honda - 32 - Transmission
Ret - Nelsinho Piquet - Renault - 30 - Accident Damage
Ret - Felipe Massa - Ferrari - 29 - Engine
Ret - David Coulthard - Red Bull-Renault - 25 - Accident
Ret - Jarno Trulli - Toyota - 19 - Electrical
Ret - Adrian Sutil - Force India-Ferrari - 8 - Hydraulics
Ret - Mark Webber - Red Bull-Renault - 0 - Accident
Ret - Jenson Button - Honda - 0 - Accident
Ret - Anthony Davidson - Super Aguri-Honda - 0 - Accident
Ret - Sebastian Vettel - STR-Ferrari - 0 - Accident
Ret - Giancarlo Fisichella - Force India-Ferrari - 0 - Accident
DSQ - Rubens Barrichello - Honda - 58 - +52.4 secs
