Sports After Dark

Recently I noticed that Sports After Dark seems to have turned into an exclusively rugby blog. I always intended to cover whatever sports took my fancy and recently that has only been the Super 14. I’ll likely cover some of the ICC Cricket World Cup once that reaches the Super Eights stage, but in the mean time here’s what happened at Albert Park in Melbourne.

Ferrari driver Kimi Raikkonen started in pole position and lead for virtually the entire race, coming home 7.2 seconds ahead of McLaren-Mercedes’ Fernando Alonso. The Ferrari car looked to be the best car on the circuit, as Raikkonen made the race look easy. Ferrari team mate Felipe Massa changed his engine just before the race, incurring a 10 place penalty and forcing him to start from the back of the grid, but was able to fight his way through the field finishing in sixth place.

One of the big surprises of the day was the performance of Formula 1 rookie Lewis Hamilton for McLaren-Mercedes. Hamilton started on the second row of the grid but was able to jump two places before turn one and spent much of the first 20 laps in second place. When Raikkonen went in for his first pit stop, Hamilton led the Grand Prix for a couple of laps before relinquishing the lead when he went into the pits.

When Hamilton returned from the pit he was pushing extremely hard, on several occasions on the verge of spinning off and was eventually told by his team to slow down, but still finished an impressive third.

Other incidents of note were the two Honda cars battling for places. Early on in the race Honda driver Reubens Barrichello complained to his crew that team mate Jensen Button was holding him up, but Button refused to move aside. Once Barrichello got past Button he was able to pull away from his team mate, assisted by a drive through penalty assessed to Button for speeding in the pit lane.

While the Ferraris made racing look easy, some of the other cars clearly still need a lot of work. Both the Hondas and the Renaults looked to have issues as the drivers appeared to be fighting the cars all the way around the circuit.

One of the new rules this season forces teams to run both tyre compounds for at least some portion of the race. As Bridgestone are now the only tyre supplier to Formula 1, they now provide two compounds to all teams, one hard and one soft. Today, in hot and dry conditions, was a day for hard tyres with most of the front running teams opting to use the softer compound for last third of the race, noticeably slowing their times. However this rule will help level the field amongst the top teams.

With the first Grand Prix now in the books it would appear that many of the teams have a lot of work to do. Ferrari and McLaren-Mercedes looked very well prepared today, while Renault, Honda, Williams-Toyota and Red Bull-Renault are not far away from having competitive cars. One thing Formula 1 does not need this season is another two team battle, and with the new rules and new talent, it looks likely that this will not be the case.

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The Raikkonen triumphs in Melbourne by Hamish McBrearty, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.