Australian Grand Prix Thoughts

Yesterday's Australian Grand Prix gave us a lot to talk about and answered a lot of questions we had over the offseason so let's take a look at some of these topics.

Mercedes looks as dominant as we thought they would be and possibly even stronger than they were last year. The two Mercedes cars were for the most part a second up on the closest opposition and then walked away with the race. If Mercedes continues like this over the next few races, people will start to ask if they can win every race this season again. This is somewhat worrying because it would probably not be good for the sport to have them run away with the championship without any competition for the second straight year. It will take some serious development from any other team just to be in a position that they can be even with Mercedes and have a chance in an even fight. As far as the matchup within Mercedes, Rosberg looked to have the advantage on Friday but then Hamilton had the advantage Saturday and Sunday. Based on the way Hamilton finished last year and his form this weekend, I don't think he will let Rosberg keep the championship as close as he did.

A bit further down the grid, it looks like Ferrari definitely has improved drastically over last season's performance. Ferrari looks to be in a straight fight with Williams at the moment for the second fastest car on the grid. We did not however get to see Raikkonen's true pace throughout the race as he spent much of the race not in clear air. Raikkonen did look slightly slower than Vettel all weekend but if he stays like that he should still be fighting for top 5 finishes. As for Williams we did not get to see Valtteri Bottas unfortunately. Bottas missed the race die to a lower back injury but we will hopefully see him back in Malaysia. With Bottas in the race it would add another variable for Williams and give them a second car to beat Ferrari with.

The fight at Toro Rosso between Carlos Sainz and Max Verstappen should be an interesting one to watch during the year. There were lots of questions about whether or not Verstappen was ready to debut but he looked ready both on and off the track. As good as Verstappen looked Sainz seemed to have a bit of an edge on him. Despite this, we did not get to see how Verstappen would have finished the race on soft tires. He looked to be on a strong strategy and probably could have finished ahead of Sainz and maybe even as high as 5th if things went right for him.

Sauber had a very difficult weekend off the track but they had one of their best weekends on the track for a while. Felipe Nasr had a surprising debut race by finishing in 5th and Marcus Ericsson scored the first points in his career. Many people doubter that Sauber's testing pace was real but they looked like they are quick enough to be in a position to fight for points all year. The question over the next week though will be how will the Giedo van der Garde issue be resolved. The two sides are now talking and a resolution should be coming. If the sides agree to let van der Garde drive then we have the question of which of the two drivers loses its seat. Stay tuned over the next week to see how this resolves.

McLaren on the other hand had a very difficult weekend as was expected. Kevin Magnussen did not even get to start the race after his engine failure on his installation lap and Jenson Button cruised around as one of the last cars in the race and then ended up last among all the finishers. Just finishing though was a positive for Button so the team could collect data and learn how to improve in the future. If reliability is going to be an issue like it was this weekend we can expect many difficult weekends ahead this year.

For the overall race, I thought it was not the most exciting race I have seen but it at least answered some questions for us. There was not a ton of on track action but part of it was there were not a lot of cars left in the race. We learned that everyone except Mercedes has work to do if they want to be able to fight for wins. Hopefully as the year goes the field will get closer to each other which will allow for some closer racing up front which is something we would all welcome.

What are your thoughts about the Australian Grand Prix? Were you happy with the race or disappointed?  Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.