The Brits Go Flying!

On the weekend that Kimi Raikkonen clinched his maiden Grand Prix victory at the hands of a Ferrari it was a mixed weekend for the British drivers. The debutant, Lewis Hamilton flew round Albert Park and was unlucky not to beat his team-mate (the double champ Alonso) to second but lost time to Takuma Sato whilst trying to enter the pits. However on his Super Aguri debut Anthony Davidson was pitched up into the air early on in the race by the Spyker of Adrian Sutil and struggled throughout. Even though he battled on with tremendous back pain he was happy with completing a race for the very first time.

Lewis was undoubtedly the talking point of a race that really didn’t have that much else going on. At the very first corner of his very first grand prix he put in an overtaking move that would be worthy of his champion teammate. Charging down the outside of the first corner passed Alonso and moved into third place behind the leader Raikkonen and the Pole, Robert Kubica in second place. Unusually everybody got through the first corner at Melbourne without damage, however Davidson struggled to get off the line. Lewis would then go on to move up after the pit stop of Kubica into second place and would remain there until his second pit stop.

In an insane moment as he was trying to enter the pit lane Takuma Sato pulled off line and straight into the path of a storming Hamilton. This cost the Brit a few crucial seconds and ultimately the second step on the podium. However a controlled and levelheaded drive put Hamilton into third place only being beaten by Kimi and Fernando in the race. However due to Davidson’s aerobatics at the start he never properly got into the race but was nonetheless happy to finish his first Grand Prix in 16th place and still ahead of Sutil. This is made an even greater achievement when you think he went through the entire race with an intense back pain, which would eventually see him in hospital overnight. But never fear he should be back in action for Malaysia in three weeks time.

However it was the more established Brits who struggled throughout the race and both ultimately did not end up where they wanted to be. Unfortunately for the Austrian Alex Wurz, it was his car that David Coulthard decided to launch himself over and mimic the aerobatics of Davidson ten laps from the finish. Before this DC had had a fairly low-key race. He was seemingly on a one-stop strategy after a disappointing qualifying. A lot of his race was spent battling with the Honda’s in the midfield however he eventually rose to 11th place by the time he had a flying lesson over the Williams. The Austrian was very lucky, if he had raised his hands he may have lost his digits.

Then onto the only Brit who didn’t fly but by the time the chequered flag was dropped he must have been desperately looking forward to the flight home after an extremely disappointing race and whole weekend in general. The Honda earth car as well as looking ugly looked slow all weekend but his race was compounded further by appearing a lot slower than team-mate, Rubens Barrichello early on in the Grand Prix. He struggled throughout the race with a car with dodgy balance and he would eventually end up down in 15th place, being beaten by Takuma Sato in the sister Super Aguri who scored a very respectable 12th place

Referring back to the predictions I made in the season preview Massa failed to win in Melbourne. He was of course always going to have difficulty after the car failed in qualifying two but his race was made even worse after being held up by DC, Rubens and Jenson in the early laps. However he showed good pace and will be looking to challenge his Finnish teammate throughout the season. However my more general predictions are being proved right at this early stage. Williams looked solid down under as Wurz was running strongly for most of the race and Nico Rosberg surprised the paddock by snatching seventh place and two points. Also Heikki Kovaleinen struggled throughout his debut race running off the track several times being shown up by his much more experienced team-mate in fifth place. The usually outspoken Flavio Briatore went as far as to describe the debut race as ‘rubbish’.
All in all, the opening race disappointed me ever so slightly with minimal action and not much overtaking. Perhaps things will be a bit better in South-East Asia on April 8.