Race 03: Melbourne

Murder and mayhem Down Under.

For those of you who watch Formula 1 races in real-time, you’re already aware of the complete mayhem that was the Melbourne Grand Prix. For the rest of you who wait with bated breath for my race recaps, buckle up. This was by far the most chaotic race I have witnessed in all my years of following F1 (two, it’s been two years).

For me, the entire weekend hinted at the chaos to come. Most of the teams struggled through Free Practice (FP) 1, 2, and 3, with the cars not handling the way they usually do. Max Verstappen (Red Bull) topped FP 1 and 3 but a rain-blighted FP 2 went to Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin). Even though Max topped two of the three practice sessions, he looked choppy through each session and not like his typical collected self, with a fun little spin in FP 1. He did manage to pull it together in qualifying and put himself narrowly on pole position for Sunday’s race.

“Choppy” doesn’t even begin to describe Sergio Perez’s (Red Bull) mess of a weekend. While he started relatively strong with a third-place time in FP 1, he ran off the track FOUR separate times in FP 3 and was understandably frustrated going into qualifying later that day. Unfortunately for Checo, his woes continued into qualifying when he ran off track in Q1, beaching his car in the gravel pit, and ending his session in last place.

This put Checo on the very back of the grid for Sunday’s race with his teammate on pole. Red Bull sandwich anyone? Checo’s tragic weekend put quite a dent in his fight to be World Champion.

The biggest surprise in Melbourne (other than the events of the race which I’ll get to) was Mercedes. So far this season (and last) they’ve struggled. Immensely. Team Principal Toto Wolff is describing this spell as a “Valley of Tears.” Because there has been so much focus on what a poor start Mercedes has had this season, no one expected to see George Russell and Lewis Hamilton qualifying second and third respectively, with Russell finishing only 0.236 seconds off Max’s lap. My Max-loving, Hamilton (and Russell/Mercedes by default)-hating heart was STRESSED to say the least.

The Race

Where do I even start? The top five grid positions for Sunday were Verstappen (1st), Russell (2nd), Hamilton (3rd), Alonso (4th), and Sainz (5th; Ferrari). I was admittedly very nervous about George “Lap One Incident” Russell starting next to Max, with Hamilton right behind. George is known to be a bit chaotic at the start and Max has had his fair share of Lap One incidents so I went into the race expecting the worst.

Max looked sluggish getting off the line and was passed almost immediately by Russell. Adding insult to injury, he was overtaken by Hamilton going into Turn Three and found himself stuck behind both Mercedes for the first time in a long time. In typical Melbourne fashion, a safety car was deployed before the cars had even completed Sector One when Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc went flying off the track and into the gravel pit in turn three. 

The safety car came in on Lap Four after Leclerc’s hopes and dreams had been hauled off the track and the race got underway again, but not for long. At this point, the top three are still Russell, Hamilton, Verstappen. Hamilton is starting to close in on his teammate with DRS now enabled but his progress is halted on Lap Seven when Alex Albon (Williams) crashes into a gravel pit, sending debris all over the race track and bringing out a second safety car. 

Russell sees this as the perfect opportunity for a free pit stop and comes in for new tires, leaving Hamilton out in first and Max in second. Ordinarily, this would have been a good strategy call. HOWEVER, moments after he changes his tires the race is red-flagged.

When a race is red-flagged, that means everything stops. The clock stops ticking and everyone has to get off the race track and go back into the pits. A red flag also means the race will restart from a standing restart (same procedure as the initial start) AND, once the race restarts, the drivers line back up on the grid in the order they were in when the race was red-flagged. This means that Max who started first in the initial start will now start second behind Hamilton at the restart. 

Guess what place Russell is now in after leading for seven laps and then pitting for new tires moments before the race stopped? Seventh. Cue Symphony of Sorrowful Songs by Henryk Gorecki for Mercedes’ real live Russian nesting doll (Aaron’s words, not mine, sorry George!).

FIRST Restart (this title is a spoiler alert-don’t read into it)

Albon’s car has been carted off the track and the gravel has been swept away – we’re ready to go racing again. Quick side note - I was very impressed with Albon up to this point. He looked strong in qualifying and surprisingly quick (for a Williams) so I was disappointed to see his race over so soon.

With Hamilton in first and Max in second at the restart, I was having flashbacks to the 2021 season and given their history, I fully expected them to take each other out in the first corner. Lucky (?) for me, Max got away slowly again and settled uneventfully in behind Hamilton. Hamilton lead the race for about three laps before Max flew past him on Lap 12 to take the lead. I don’t write “flew” lightly. Watching him pass and almost immediately put two full seconds between himself and Hamilton was beautiful and allowed me to breathe again. It was in this moment I realized I might care too much?

For the next 46 laps, Max pulled away from the rest of the pack, at one point leading by 11.099 seconds (this is an eternity by F1 standards). Unfortunately for Russell, his bad day got worse when his car caught fire on Lap 18 ending a weekend that initially looked very promising. Besides the Lap 18 incident, the race continued on without any more hitches. With Max locked into first place, the fight was going on behind him with Hamilton, Alonso, and Sainz all battling for second and third place.

Can you believe that I haven’t even gotten to the most chaotic part of the race? Tell me again how boring you think Formula 1 is…

Max is cruising along at the front with enough of a cushion that he was able to run off the track on Lap 48 and still stay seven seconds ahead. Reminiscent of his 2022 Hungary "spin and win". Heading into Lap 54 of 58, everything looked nicely packaged up for a Red Bull-Mercedes-Aston Martin podium ceremony.

Let me repeat that: Lap 54 of 58.

Reason number 12,792 Formula 1 is amazing – you can never get too comfortable.

Out of nowhere, with no real explanation or reasoning, Kevin Magnussen (Haas) hits the wall at the exit of turn two.

His back-right tire goes flying off his car and into the middle of the track. A safety car is deployed initially but the crash has scattered debris all over the track again (this is an issue for the other drivers for many reasons, including the high likelihood of punctures). So, the track stewards decide to red flag the race for a second time on Lap 55 of 58.

This presents a problem for Max (me) given the fact that there will be a second standing restart. The seven-second gap between Max and Hamilton will now be gone, and so far, Max’s starts have been lousy at best. Under racing regulations, the cars have to follow the safety car around the track and back to their grid positions for the standing restart and the lap they complete behind the safety car counts towards the total racing laps. Meaning after leading by a large margin for most of the race, Max will now have two racing laps to restart and try to stay ahead before we can hear the Dutch and Austrian national anthems again.

SECOND Restart (again, this title is a spoiler alert-don’t read too much into it)

So once again, the track is cleared of debris and we’re ready to go racing for the final two laps. Max is first, Hamilton second, Alonso third, and Sainz is in fourth. I’m not sure what the stewards thought would happen when they restarted the race with two laps to go, 16 drivers fighting for points, and everyone on new tires. I like to think they knew the chaos that would ensue and counted on it creating a huge spectacle, but that would be giving them too much credit.

Max gets away from the line cleanly and covers off Hamilton, maintaining his first-place position. Things aren’t so clean farther back.

Going into turn one, Sainz tags the back of Alonso’s car, spinning him around and out of third place down into twelfth. Logan Sargeant (Williams) runs full tilt into Nyck de Vries (Alpha Tauri) pushing both himself and Nyck into the gravel pit and out of the race. Sergio Perez runs wide, driving off the track and through the gravel and grass before returning to the track in one piece. Pierre Gasly (Alpine) also runs wide and off the track, returning to the track in one piece before crashing into his teammate, Esteban Ocon, in an explosion of pink debris. And Lance Stroll (Aston Martin) runs straight off the track into turn three for no apparent reason but somehow manages to recover and rejoin the race.

In the span of 30 seconds, four more drivers are out of the race (adding to the four that were already out – Leclerc, Albon, Russell, and Magnussen) and two of the top contenders (Alonso and Stroll) have been knocked out of the points positions entirely. I have never seen so much happen on an F1 track in such a short amount of time. Utter mayhem.

The race is red-flagged for a third time, which means with only one lap to go, the cars will have to complete the race behind the safety car. Cars cannot overtake behind a safety car, meaning the positions they line up in for the third “start” (not really a start at this point) are the positions they will finish in.

After the second restart, the order of the top ten had shuffled to: 

1. Verstappen; 

2. Hamilton; 

3. Sainz; 

4. Hulkenberg (Haas); 

5. Tsunoda (Alpha Tauri);

6. Norris (McLaren);

7. Piastri (McLaren);

8. Zhou (Alpha Romeo);

9. Bottas (Alpha Romeo);

10. Perez.

Except nothing is ever as it seems. Remember reason number 12,792 why Formula 1 is amazing*? (*Read – “genuinely awful” if you’re Carlos Sainz).

THIRD (and final) Restart

To accurately classify the drivers’ positions for the final restart, the stewards had to revert back to the grid positions from the second restart. This is because the cars hadn’t completed sector one of the grid so the stewards had to go off the most recent data point of grid positions, which was the second restart order. This same restart procedure was utilized in Silverstone last year when Zhou Guanyu had a massive crash before Turn 1 of the race.

With the order re-shuffled again, the final restart, and final grid positions were:

1. Verstappen;

2. Hamilton;

3. Alonso;

4. Sainz;

5. Stroll; 

6. Perez;

7. Norris;

8. Hulkenberg;

9. Piastri;

10. Zhou.

But because no one - especially not Ferrari - can have nice things in Formula 1, the stewards handed Sainz a five-second penalty for causing a collision with Alonso on the previous restart. This penalty, combined with the fact that it was announced prior to the completion of the race so everyone behind Sainz knew they just needed to be within five seconds of him to bump themselves up one spot, dropped Sainz from fourth to twelfth and out of the points.

There’s a lot to be said about how ridiculous and harsh this penalty was. On top of the five-second penalty, Sainz received two penalty points on his super license after the FIA found him “wholly to blame” for the collision. The penalty points will remain on his license for a period of 12 months. If he receives a total of 12 penalty points during the 12-month period, he will be banned from one race.

[Ed: As the self-appointed legal representative for Scuderia Ferrari I would like to state unequivocally that this penalty was bullshit. The stewards reset the starting order because no one completed the first sector. The whole kerfuffle was erased, Alonso got his place back, but Sainz was penalized anyway. It’s also a first-turn racing incident on a full restart, where tires are cold and close quarters are unavoidable - things happen, and leniency’s usually warranted. Furthermore, the stewards totally ignored the blatant Alpine-on-Alpine violence and Logan Sargeant forgetting how to brake properly. It’s madness. Even Alonso thinks it’s madness. The FIA can rest assured Ferrari will be pursuing any and all avenues of possible redress up to and including being a salty, salty bitch about it.]

In the end, the three drivers on the podiums in Australia had a combined total of 11 World Championships between them, with Max and Alonso both at two and Hamilton at seven. All in all, the Melbourne Grand Prix was a shit show. But Max pulled it off again and is still the driver to beat for the 2023 Driver’s World Championship.

The Chinese Grand Prix was canceled this year due to COVID restrictions, so the next race isn’t until April 30th in Baku. Anyone else getting up at 4:00 a.m. to watch?

Here are links to the full qualifying and race results so you can check out how your favorite driver did in Melbourne.