The Official 2015 Australian Grand Prix Thread ***SPOILERS with Flux Capacitors***

It is easy to be judgmental in hindsight. I hope for the best for all parties involved - from the employees of Sauber to the management team and the drivers involved.

This being said, though, I must admit that the reason for what happened is not purely down to F1 being cruel on small teams. Why do teams, such as force india and lotus not have such troubles? O.k. you can speculate about the kimi situation, but it still got out of the picture relatively quietly and fast.

What I see as additional problem here is that Monisha is managing Sauber as a business, not as a sports team with tradition. Her thinking represents the one of the likes that managed Enron, Lehman Brothers, GS etc. In other words, she is all about opportunism and exploiting the people that work for you. Indeed, I can't see too much of a difference of how Monisha managed her drivers and how Enron managed its employees. As a result I would make the following recommendation (although I realize no one asked for it :~D):

Monisha should leave the team for (at least) two reasons:

1. Frist, the team has been performing increasingly poorer since she took over Sauber.
2. Her management style is not sustainable. It is driven by short-termism and profit maximisation, rather than by creating a mutually supportive, sustainable team culture.

You could easily add tons of other reasons, such as her staying im charge would be bad publicity for Sauber; inability to attract major sponsors for 2 seasons now etc.

What's with the tv graphics? If they were the official graphics used by F1, then the driver numbers should be there. So I don't get why it's different. And on top of that, why aren't the 2 commentators doing commentating on each session? It's confusing for me.

As for the weekend, I'm hoping to see another team step up and stop Mercedes from taking pole position for the race. I'm just not sure who that may be though.

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Ricciardo has clearly got Seb's old car this year.

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The TV graphics have just been given a routine update I think. They'd been basically the same since 2010(if not earlier), it's never stayed the same for more than a few years before so I guess they saw this as being the right time for a reboot. Driver numbers will probably get added in due course.
It confused me a bit too, I keep looking for the clock at the centre top of the screen during FP, it took me most of the first session to realise it had been moved to the top left corner, where it's partially obscured by the edge of the screen on my ancient TV. I'm getting the feeling the lap counter during the races might be the same.

Overall I don't mind the new graphics so far though.

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Oh dear.

Mercedes - oh dear.
Mclaren - oh dear.

Red Bull are nowhere.
Force India are nowhere.

Lotus and Toro Rosso impressed me.

But oh dear.

i'm glad they finally moved the graphics to the edges of the screen, as it looked odd them being inset just to accommodate ancient 4:3 displays that virtually no-one is still using these days (sorry EC83). you should have an option to view the full widescreen display using a "letterbox" setting, so you will have black bars top and bottom but at least you will see the full width of the output.

Sky F1 channel made a massive blunder. i didn't watch quali live, but the rerun a couple of hours after the live broadcast. during the buildup there was an ad break and in it they included a 10 second teaser advert with Simon Lazenby giving a quick update to sky viewers of the top 3 in quali and reminding them of the race start time tomorrow morning.

DON'T REVEAL THE RESULTS OF QUALI IN ADVERTS DURING THE RE-RUN OF QUALI THAT PEOPLE ARE GOING TO WATCH IF THEY DIDN'T WATCH IT LIVE!!!!!D'oh!

it's like saying "catch the highlights of when Chelsea beat Man Utd 2:1, coming up next in Match of the Day".

David Croft said something really stupid during practice 2 yesterday. discussing nose crash tests, he asked Jolyon Palmer, who was co-commentating, what happens to a nose once it's passed its crash test, and do they then use that actual nose. are you serious? what a stupid question. crash tests verify the design and construction of a nose, and during testing it is obliterated and the force required to break it is measured and must meet certain thresholds. they then build noses of that design to race. by "passing" a crash test, it doesn't mean it is in perfect condition to actually be used on a car. a moment of brain fade it seems, as he must surely know how crash tests work. i'm surprised Jolyon didn't correct him.

Button's 'tache looks ridiculous, maybe it's to distract us from the car's performance...

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RIP Jules, never to be forgotten. #KeepFightingMichael

Sky F1 channel made a massive blunder. i didn't watch quali live, but the rerun a couple of hours after the live broadcast. during the buildup there was an ad break and in it they included a 10 second teaser advert with Simon Lazenby giving a quick update to sky viewers of the top 3 in quali and reminding them of the race start time tomorrow morning.

DON'T REVEAL THE RESULTS OF QUALI IN ADVERTS DURING THE RE-RUN OF QUALI THAT PEOPLE ARE GOING TO WATCH IF THEY DIDN'T WATCH IT LIVE!!!!!D'oh!

I was so mad about this I took to Twitter to have a rant at @SkySportsF1! Such a dumba$$ thing to do on their part, glad I wasn't the only one to notice this but it did ruin it for me.

The BBC were just as bad.. I missed watching live because of work, no worries I thought, I'll simply watch on iPlayer.

Well I missed the 'live' rerun aka qualifying highlights on BBC1, and then after 3 hours getting bored waiting for them to show up on iPlayer, which they didn't btw ... I headed to the red button which my freeview box assured me would be showing the highlights at 18:00, only to similarly foiled by a bulletin type report squeezed into a couple of minutes.

I had successfully avoided all mention of the results up to then.

And I thought Sauber were a clusterfuck.

Well, the highlights finally and very belatedly found their way on to the iPlayer, and so here are some of my thoughts about the state of play.

The cars are beautiful this year, I can even tolerate the Sauber (when it's out of focus), but more so than ever if you painted the cars all the same colours then you'd have a job telling any apart.

Sparks! obviously a deliberate gimmick, not quite upto to 80s/90s spec... but I like it.

Group 1:
No surprises. Merc out on their own, Hamilton asserting himself over Rosberg as expected.
Car looks simply awesome.

Group 2:
A possible humdinger of a race between Williams and Ferrari, with very little to choose between them. Shame about Bottas, quite an impressive effort considering the problems with his back. Good to see Vettel and Kimi on a par with each other at this early stage.
Both cars look very good on track (when not being over driven).

Group 3:
Not sure whether to be surprised by Red Bulls apparent lack of form or impressed by Toro Rosso's apparent parity with them. Admirable damage limitation by Riccardo, strong start by Sainz and a vital first blow in his rivalry with Verstappen (epic save btw). Kyvat disappointing.

Both Grosjean and Maldonaldo seem to be enjoying having a car that isn't a complete pig, but Lotus still have a way to go to bounce back to 2012/13 form.

Force India are unsurprisingly on the backfoot, but I wouldn't rule points out just yet.

Solid effort by Nasr, but what combination of drivers will Sauber have field from now on? Or could they settle on some kind of driver rotation arrangement?

The cars in this group seem to bite back a bit, which makes for entertaining viewing.

Group 4:
In 1998 Mclaren were five seconds up on the pace of any other car at Melbourne. Today their best effort was five seconds off the final pole pace. How the mighty have fallen. They can talk as positively as they like, but not only is the car currently unreliable, it's also very very slow. We all know Mclaren can develop cars rapidly but they have a massive mountain to climb this time.

"Computer says no" to Manor, but I'm still massively impressed and glad that they are there at all. Hope they get the car running for Malaysia.. It could even give McLaren a thumping.

i'm glad they finally moved the graphics to the edges of the screen, as it looked odd them being inset just to accommodate ancient 4:3 displays that virtually no-one is still using these days (sorry EC83). you should have an option to view the full widescreen display using a "letterbox" setting, so you will have black bars top and bottom but at least you will see the full width of the output.

Cheers, I do have that setting control somewhere on it, might try that.
I actually bought a new widescreen LCD TV ages ago but haven't got round to setting it up yet while the old one is still working(How bad is that? LOL). Maybe this is a hint that I should finally start using it.

Sky F1 have been annoying me too - not with the spoilers, I was lucky and got to watch quali live, then slept through most of the rest of the day(Although that must've been infuriating for you guys, I totally agree). Their programming seems to just be lazy. They've just been looping the most recent live action(P1 and P2 all Friday, quali all yesterday and tonight) with one or two filler features that have been shown regularly since last year. No classic races or variety in the programmes, which is just disappointing, bearing in mind what must be available to them to show. Considering the subscription fee for Sky Sports, it's @#$%&.

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Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/15/2015 05:14AM by EC83.

Shame about Bottas not racing, although he did look pretty sore after quali. This will be an insanely small grid.

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What an insane buildup! At this rate a Lotus could end up winning or something.

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Dones a little bit of research... excluding extrodinary circumstances in Imola '82 and Indy '05, I believe that this is the smallest F1 grid in over 45 years. A shambles

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GPGSL -
GPGSL-3 - Pizza Party Racing manager and driver
Nations Cup - Team Scotland manager

EC83 Wrote:
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> What an insane buildup! At this rate a Lotus could
> end up winning or something.


obviously not Crashdonado tho...

(to be fair it wasn't his fault, for a change)


I still can't stand Simon Lazenby, he is really poor. i had hoped they'd replace him by now. the level of journalism and questioning is really low from him. i realise he must be being fed the questions from the directors of the coverage through his earpiece, but still, his whole style is a bit naff.

a yes, you must set up your new tv, what better reason do you need than the start of the F1 season!? i just upgraded to a 49" LG as my old 47" developed problems.

gutted for K Mag and Kvyat. and i wonder how Kimi and Seb's friendship will be after their turn 1 contact.

about Sky's repeated coverage, i think repeating practice and quali is acceptable on the friday and saturday so everyone gets chance to catch it at some point. after all, that is the footage you want during a race weekend and what people pay their subscription for. the same will happen for the rest of today for people who missed the race, or just want to see it again. but during the week they could definitely diversify a bit more and expand the range of shows and features they air.

they have robbed us by stopping Race Control though, that was great with onboard and pitlane cams to have on your laptop/tablet alongside the main feed on your TV.

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RIP Jules, never to be forgotten. #KeepFightingMichael



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/15/2015 06:51AM by Muks_C.

the green light was on allowing Kimi to leave the pitbox, must have been a loose wheelnut.

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RIP Jules, never to be forgotten. #KeepFightingMichael

With a bit of an alternative approach, I think this race can be said to show case the effect of the hybrid engine rules.

Caterham, dead which in no small part is due to the engine regs. As I showed in a post last year, the new engines are FAR more expensive than the old ones.

Manor, died but was resurrected, unable to start. Again this is in no small part due to engine regs. With an auction of assets looming, the hard drives were wiped, and no backup could be found. The way these engines work, there is no way to get them going without a lot of computer programmes doing their magic in the background. Sure there are probably other parts not working too due to the loss of the hard drive content, but perhaps a less demanding engine could have seen them sorting out the rest in time.

Ricciardo already on the second of four possible engines, before the green flag of the first race.

Kvyat retired on the warm up lap after a clutch procedure failed to fix whatever problem he experienced with the drivetrain.

Magnussen retired on the warm up lap, with a massively detuned Honda engine spilling it's innards on the track. Very likely the end result of the engine problem he had during qualifying.

McLaren Honda in general doing an utter pathetic job of running some -200 bhp of what the engine should be able to produce, despite having had 2 years to develop and test the engine, and having insights from the best engine on the grid due to McLaren's experience with it. It would probably be unrealistic to expect them to challenge Merc right from the get go, but surely it should be possible to do better than this. With a merge 9 tokens to be used to upgrade the engine during the season, it is hard to see how they are going to fix this mess.

The smallest starting grid in decades...

Soooo.... was this what F1 wanted from the new engine regs? Or is it safe to say, that those regs have had massive unintended and unwanted side effects?

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

Thought Toto... I mean Arnie did the podium well... but dissapointed he didn't slip "Get to de choppah!" in.

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Morbid
Soooo.... was this what F1 wanted from the new engine regs? Or is it safe to say, that those regs have had massive unintended and unwanted side effects?

By the middle of last season the engines were generally perfectly reliable. Ferrari looks reliable and much faster. Mercedes looks reliable and much faster. That Renault have managed to go backwards over the winter both in pace and reliability takes quite an effort and shouldn't be a reflection of the rules, more their inability to exploit them (or unwillingness to exploit them until Mario Illien has looked over them - they do have the most tokens of all the manufacturers).

Of course there's a very real chance that we'll lose 8 cars this season, with Sauber and Force India apparently in poor financial states, and Lotus at the very least uncomfortable in recent years. Then there's Manor, and who knows what their future holds (and they were contracted to run this weekend, and didn't, so could face ramifications there, and serious ones at that). And who knows how long Red Bull will hang around while they're languishing so far back, slower than even Sauber? I can't imagine them panicking just yet, but you have to think at some point Dietrich Mateschitz is going to stop funding a team with no prospect of returning to anywhere near the front. He's in it to sell cans of Red Bull, and there's plenty of other marketing areas which fit their criteria.

Bernie has got a massive problem on his hands, but the teams aren't going to help him. They have rejected the simpler engine, going back to a N/A has never been considered and 3-car and customer teams were quickly dismissed... so stalemate. A 2-tier system is surely the only solution, and no-one would be happy with that. I don't have a sensible solution, and I said late last year that F1 is in real danger of imploding as there's simply no way of giving the teams and fans what they need, and with already diminishing viewing figures there will be no sponsors... and without sponsors and fans, no works or customer teams.

F1 is in the worst health it has been for a long time (perhaps ever), but it only has itself to blame, and I don't think the engines themselves are the real reason, more they have exposed just how fragile it was under the surface.

The only positives is that Honda have returned, Renault are re-evaluating making a works comeback (again) and there were murmurings early in the winter that with Honda back, that Toyota would also consider a return... though Honda's initial troubles might just have wiped that plan off the table.

It was definitely a bit of a stuttering start.

No Manor, so two cars down already, then Bottas's back injury put us three down, Magussen's engine popping before it even got to the grid meant four down (Alonso will be relieved he stayed home), then Kyat's failure put us five down before we even started.

Then the first corner fracas and generic unreliability put both Lotus out after one lap. Maldonaldo's result was true to form although not strictly his fault for once.

The Mercs were simply untouchable as expected, despite Hamilton's verbal anxiety over the fuel usage at the end I sense that they turned the cars down very early, as there was no need for them to push. Rosberg keep Hamilton in sight but let's be honest this was nothing less than a comfortable arms length victory for Hamilton.

So Ferrari emerged with a slight edge over over Williams. Traffic and strategy helped Vettel leap frog Massa but once he was ahead it was game over. It will be interesting to see how this develops, it could ebb and flow for a while. Bad luck for Kimi, but at least he seems comfortable in the car again.

Good debut by Nasr, out raced Ricciardo's Red Bull in a Sauber. Can't say fairer than that, and good job by Sauber overall today.

Solid if largely un spectacular debuts for Sainz and Verstappen, they look set to be talents to watch.

Points for Force India by dint of being reliable as I sensed might happen.

Impressed that Button finished. I think that car was massively detuned, but it was entertaining to see Button's 'let have some fun' approach and some awesome trolling on Perez.

Obviously a farcical start with 3 missing out, and the 2 Lotuses not making the second lap. While the turn 2 crash was just a racing incident with no one driver to fault, it was always utterly stupid having an accident given the chances of picking up easy early season points. Probably more Nasr's fault than anyone's if I really wanted to apportion blame, but that would be extremely harsh.

Good to see genuine pace from Ferrari, and it's looking like a ding-dong battle between them and Williams this year.

I was staggered at how far off the pace Ricciardo was. I realised they weren't in top form coming here, but I thought come the race they'd be mixing it with the Ferraris and Williams, but they were miles off the pace, being slower than a Sauber pay-driver at the end (though over a stint it might have been close, had Ricciardo been able to pass). Forget about Alonso's move away from Ferrari - what a move from Vettel!

Nasr was awesome. Ericsson wasn't. Giedo van der Garde was nice in letting them race, and thank @#$%& he did! It'll be interesting to see if Sauber actually negotiate now, as they said they would, rather than blankly ignoring him all winter, hoping he'd go away.

Cracking pace from Sainz and it was a shame his pitstop was as dire as it was. It would have been nice to see what sort of form Verstappen had if he'd used both tyres. All weekend Toro Rosso were almost as good as Red Bull were bad.

Boringingly dominant from Mercedes, but it's up to the other teams to catch them. Rosberg almost threatened to make a race of it, but Hamilton always looks like he loads in hand, able to reopen the gap at will. We need some different strategies from the Merc boys this season to get some interest going.

I was disappointed with Force India. Given how reliably they ran once they got up and running at Barcelona, I was surprised they didn't have any pace at all here. It doesn't look like the new car has had an awful lot of development on it, externally at least. They'll get quicker, but I can't see them making into the top 10 too often on pace alone. That Perez with a 2015 Merc only managed to overtake Button with the onset of the McLaren struggling to shift gear and with so little power bodes poorly, irrespective of how many testing days they had. They should have been quicker than that.

Honda's shocking form continued, and if it is heat that is the reason for the lack of power, then the situation can only get worse at Sepang. Still, I thought they'd be slower in the race than Button was, even able to race another car for the first half, and I didn't think there was a hope in hell of them making the end, no matter how little power they opened up. Still, the issues they have are ones they will overcome and I still think they'll be in the top 10 by mid season, and rather tasty next year. A relatively good day for Button, and no doubt a host of useful data gathered. I think Magnussen's failure was the first proper mechanical blow-up they've had too, so while that in itself might not be something they'll have get used to, it is a worry that all they've done this weekend was to try and keep their quota at the max, yet in all likelihood they have lost a unit without even starting a race.



It's worrying that a traditionally great race, as Melbourne is (and indeed any Australian GP) was as boring as it was. Not at all promising for the rest of the season.

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EC83
What an insane buildup! At this rate a Lotus could end up winning or something.

In hindsight that's an awesome post.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/15/2015 09:21AM by gav.