It’ll be interesting to watch how things unfold in Bahrain and China on more standard tracks—ones that should actually suit the Ferrari car better than this one. I don't buy any nonsense about Mercedes being held back; when Toto Wolff slams his fist on the table, you know he isn't acting. And Lewis is just being Lewis—whenever he loses, there’s always some conspiracy theory floating around. It mostly looks like Ferrari was stung by those indecisive moves early on and decided right from the first race who the number one and number two drivers are. A solid approach for the long term, but if they want to hit those ambitious goals, the car needs to perform a bit better than it did today. Ricciardo seems to have traded a stallion for a donkey, and I honestly think if there were mutual interest, he could find his way back to Red Bull. As for everyone else, Kubica is clearly feeling that eight-year gap plus the injuries, while McLaren and Renault were a letdown. Haas and Alfa Romeo looked really good.
Look, we saw this exact same thing happen last year. Sebastian Vettel managed to snag pole position three races in a row, beating Lewis Hamilton by a few tenths or even half a second. This particular track is tricky and doesn't really give us the full picture yet, but once we hit Bahrain and China, things will get real. If Ferrari isn't showing more pace there, then it's game over for them...
It was pretty mindless to try and judge everyone's form right after testing, and honestly, it’s not that smart to start guessing the qualifying order based just on free practice sessions. Still, you can read between the lines on a few things—like how Williams looks convincingly the slowest, while Alfa Romeo seems to be leading the pack. It also looks like this weekend's fight for pole and the win will boil down to Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel, and there's a good chance one of the Bottas / Leclerc duo (probably the latter) ends up kissing the barrier and grabbing a DNF.
Max is such a brat. He shoves him right off the track and then acts like he was the one who touched his tire! If it weren't for that, Vettel definitely would have lost the championship today due to this kid's mistake.
I told you guys Kimi would grab pole, and tomorrow Daniel Ricciardo is a billion percent going to set the fastest lap—it's a total lock. And yeah, Bottas has been miles off his game the last few races; he wasn't exactly a top-tier driver for Mercedes before, and now he's struggling even with Force India.
Way to go, Kimi Räikkönen! At 39 years old, absolutely tearing it up on home soil against a driver the entire team has been favoring over him for four years straight... just priceless.
With sunny skies forecast for tomorrow and the day after, today's conditions don't really matter much. Otherwise, Ricciardo is swapping out some components on the car, which means he's looking at a penalty—so we might be smelling an FL if nothing unexpected happens. There’s also a chance we could try one more thing: betting on Kimi Raikkonen for pole position. He’s the only real threat to Vettel here, and since Vettel has already grabbed pole and stays right on his heels during qualifying this season, I think taking those 6.0 odds is worth a shot...
And honestly, I find Fernando Alonso's situation a bit ridiculous—whether he was pushed out of Ferrari or just decided he'd had enough of settling for anything less than a win. He seemed fed up with those constant second and third-place finishes, yet now he’s acting all satisfied because, in his fourth season with McLaren, he finally managed to land a fifth-place finish that he’d been dreaming of. Where's the logic in that?
Race control's indecisiveness basically handed the win to Sebastian Vettel, which is such a shame because from what we saw, Lewis Hamilton totally deserved it.
Kyle Edwards5 said:We'll see how things shake out during Sunday's race. It's looking pretty tight among the top three teams regardless. Supposedly there's heavy rain coming tomorrow. That means Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen are set for the PP 🤔...
Daniel Ricciardo gets a 3-place grid penalty for speeding under the red flag, plus 2 penalty points.
I'm a bit skeptical about the rain hitting on Sunday, especially since the forecast shows very light intensity right during qualifying tomorrow. If it stays dry, Ricciardo could try to go for a fast lap now and test out a different strategy.
If Ferrari isn't seriously sandbagging right now, they're looking at another season defined by disappointment. Red Bull looks solid—I think they have a real shot at winning races—but we'll have to see how things play out once the season gets going. In my opinion, Max Verstappen is still way too green and tends to overdrive the car, while Daniel Ricciardo seems stuck in a rut he just can't break out of. As for McLaren, there are no more excuses; they’re running the same engine as Red Bull Racing, so given their resources, they should be performing at least as well as the teams currently sitting ahead of them. Toro Rosso, Williams, and Force India are a disaster; they'll be lucky if they even pick up any scraps this year. Haas, however, is the big surprise this weekend—they might actually walk away with some decent points here.
analogpilot16 said:McLaren really needs to hold it together for at least 6 or 7 laps before the end of the race 😁
A 2.20 gap means Fernando Alonso isn't fighting for position while he's only 2.10 ahead of Stoffel Vandoorne. Given those ridiculous reliability issues McLaren dealt with during testing, I wouldn't be shocked if they ran into something similar here.
Does anyone have any betting ideas for this weekend? Since it's the season opener, there might be some opportunities to capitalize on. For instance, could McLaren pull off a surprise (maybe getting Fernando Alonso into the top 3), or will they totally fall flat? Also, when looking at the Ferrari-Red Bull matchup, who are you guys leaning toward?
You shouldn't take everything Lewis Hamilton and the rest of the crew say at face value. I remember last year how he was claiming before Australia that Ferrari looked pretty solid, maybe even better than them—and it turned out he was right. Now he's saying the same thing about Red Bull, which might also be spot on. But regarding Ferrari, last year you could really feel after testing and heading into Australia that they had done an amazing job, whereas this year, based on what people are saying, I'm just not feeling it. I'm honestly worried they might end up being the third-best team in Melbourne...
Lewis Hamilton didn't have a clue back then; he left McLaren because he was fed up with their incompetence, especially during that 2012 season when the car let him down at critical moments. He knew the regulations were changing in 2014, but there was no way he could have been certain Mercedes would come out on top—especially since they actually had a worse car than the year before by the end of 2012. Besides, Mercedes had already revitalized themselves by 2013 and ended up as the second-best team on the grid. Since 2013 didn't see massive shifts compared to 2012, the engine changes weren't even the main factor; Mercedes might have risen to the top regardless.
Sebastian Vettel clocked a 1.17,6 on the hyper soft, which puts him over a full second ahead of Stoffel Vandoorne (1.18,8) in the McLaren using those exact same tires. It looks like McLaren will be fighting just to make it into Q3 in Melbourne, and honestly, I don't see them doing much more than that.
The only way this crew jumps from 9th straight into the top spot or at least the top three is if there’s a massive rule change, which isn't happening this year. As things stand, McLaren is looking at a best-case scenario of 7th or 8th in qualifying in Austin, unless we get some rain...