Luke’s Weekend Review – Australian GP 2023

Red Bull had such a good race car this weekend and even though we saw Max Verstappen lose the lead on lap 1 it wasn’t long after the 2^nd restart to claim back the lead from Hamilton where we saw Max overtake Lewis on the outside on the straight leading onto turn 9. From then on Max got on with his race and started pulling ahead. Sergio Perez also had a brilliant race, where we saw Perez starting from the pit lane and finishing in 5^th. Along the way Perez pulled some brilliant moves and had some nice overtakes which is why he was voted the Driver of the Day.

In Australia we saw McLaren getting their first points of the season with both their drivers finishing in the top 10, Lando Norris had a good battle with Nico Hulkenberg on lap 51 where we saw Hulkenberg almost going off as he was trying to defend against Norris. Oscar Piastri also had a respectable race and on his first home race he finished in 8^th place bringing in his first 2 points in F1.

On lap 54 we saw the 2^nd red flag coming out after Kevin Magnussen went wide on turn 4 where he lost his rear tyre, and this is where it is all about to get interesting. As expected, everyone put on the red stripe softs on for the 3^rd restart of the race in Albert Park and the remaining 16 cars lined up on the grid to get going for the last 2 laps of racing, or so we thought.

Chaos hit as early as turn 1 after the restart where we saw Perez out braking himself going straight through the gravel, Alonso being spun round going from 3^rd to last, Logan Sargeant hitting Nick de Vries in the back taking out the both of them in turn 1 and after Pierre Gasly managed to avoid all the chaos he didn’t see his team mate on his right and after colliding with Esteban Ocon both Alpines were out of the race. All this happened before all cars were past Sector 1 and the 3^rd and final red flag was brought out sending the remaining 12 cars back to the pit lane.

The FIA had a lot of decisions to make but the main one was the order of the cars with 1 lap left in the race, this decision was taking the FIA some time, so the fans had no choice but to start enjoying themselves doing the Mexican wave. After a while, the FIA came to the decision that the order of the cars should be put back to that before the 3^rd restart of the race given that not all cars had passed Sector 1 at the time the red flag came out. Given that there was only 1 lap left the lap was carried out more as a formality behind the safety car and the cars taking the chequered flag in the order the FIA determined.

This decision didn’t go down well with Haas specifically as Nico Hulkenberg had managed to get himself into 4^th place through all the chaos that was happening after the 3^rd restart of the race. Haas protested to the FIA about this but to no avail. Haas wasn’t the only Ferrari powered team who lost out in this chaos as we saw Ferrari themselves scoring no points at all in the Australian GP with only Carlos Sainz left in the race and after a decent drive from the Spaniard we see him finishing 12^th overall as he was given a 5 seconds penalty for colliding with his fellow Spaniard and childhood hero Fernando Alonso after the 3^rd restart drama in turn 1, and with no actual racing on the last lap this meant that all cars were bunched up together when crossing the finish line pushing Sainz from 4^th to 12^th.

As perfectly put by Fernando Alonso in the post-race interview held by David Coulthard, this race was a roller coaster of emotions from start to finish. I think we can all agree that I spoke way too early 2 weeks ago when I said that the Jeddah GP was the best race so far in the season. As an F1 fan I think this race was the best one so far in terms of action, drama, chaos and heartbreak.

Who do you think were the biggest winners and the biggest losers of the Australian GP? Signing off for now and I will see you all in 3 weeks when F1 will travel to the Azerbaijan GP in Baku.