I should start with a caveat before I get into my winners and losers from last Sundays race. I was unable to watch the inaugural race of the year in Australia so this race was my first of the season.
Winner: Sebastian Vettel
Sebastian Vettel not only actually won the race but put together a spectacular showing, pulling an extra nine laps out of his Pirelli Soft tires and eking out a 0.6 second victory. When Vettel was forced to go to his backup strategy thanks to an accident with Ferrari’s pit crew I was sure he would not be able to hold off Valtteri Bottas on fresher, harder compound tires. It certainly helped Vettel that Bottas closed the gap surprisingly slowly giving himself only a couple real chances over the last two laps to attempt a pass. But Vettel was able to hold off those attempts, despite Bottas’s DRS advantage and win his second race of the season.
Loser: Red Bull Racing
Shortly into the race Max Verstappen passed Daniel Riccardo who had stopped on the side of the track with a total loss of power. Verstappen had his own issues; he had punctured his left rear tire attempting to pass Lewis Hamilton on the second lap. The ESPN coverage quickly cut to a Red Bull engineer holding his head in his hands in a despondent manner. I would like to imagine he was thinking “this couldn’t get any worse” because only two laps later Max Verstappen’s car (fitted with a new tire and fighting for position in the back of the pack) also lost power and was forced to retire. Red Bull had some reliability issues last season and was hoping this offseason would be time enough to sort them out. If they are unable to find reliability over the course of the year they will find it almost impossible to compete with Ferarri and Mercedes in the Constructor’s championship.
Winner: The Halo devices
A lot of fuss was made before the start of the season over F1’s new mandatory safety feature. Fans were concerned about how it would affect the visual aesthetics of the car and that F1 was headed towards a closed cockpit future. I personally had wished that F1 had explored some other alternatives like Indycar’s ultra thick windscreen idea. However, I found that the Halo device was hardly intrusive at all. From some camera angles you could hardly see that it was even there, and even when it was visible it didn’t take away from the viewing experience in the slightest.
Honorable Mentions:
Despite concerns about Toro Rosso’s Honda power engines Pierre Gasly had an excellent weekend. Qualifying in 5th and finishing his 7th ever F1 race in improbable 4th place.
Although I still miss the old NBC announcers ESPN’s coverage of F1 has been very good so far. At no point did they go to commercial during the race, in fact they didn’t even go split screen once. I also found the ESPN team to be insightful if somewhat unfamiliar.