Yes I know I’m very, very late in writing my reflections on the opening race, I’ve been quite busy unfortunately. But as the first free practice for Malaysia starts in less than 6 hours (another early morning then!) I feel I’ve just about got time to write this before it’s officially silly to do a review. At least leaving it this late means I have a pretty good idea who finished where - but it seems in F1 these days you can never be 100% certain of the race results (more on that at a later date).
So as it’s quite a late reflection I won’t go into too much detail as you’ve all probably read more than enough reviews of Australia already.
The Good
Change of fortunes
Having the Brawn team rise from the ashes of Honda and the have an almost perfect weekend in the first race was an absolutely fantastic start to the season. I, like pretty much everyone it seems, was really happy to see Jenson, Rubens and Ross on the podium.
Also seeing Williams regain some form really pleased me and I believe (like Rosberg) that this year it won’t be a single flash of brilliance of the season like his Podium was at Australia last year.
Thanks go to the OWG for the regulation changes
Although very early days for the new regulations the signs were quite positive after Australia. To my amateur eye it did seem that the cars were able to get closer to each other (just ask Kimi and Rubens) and were able to fight more. We had a few gripping battles, with the highlight for me being Vettel vs. Kubica. Exactly what Bernie (and everyone else) wants from the sport — all without a silly winner-takes-all points system.
I think that Kubica and Vettel will really feel the pinch of that accident after a couple of races. As if Brawn continue their dominance throughout the next few races then there will likely be very few chances to get on the bottom step of the podium never mind challenge for 2nd or 1st.
The KERS assisted drivers also seemed to be able to use it to their advantage both in defending their position (see Alonso vs. Glock) and overtaking (of which Lewis’ charge through the field in a less than perfect car is a great example) and the teams without KERS are looking to get it on the car as soon as possible.
Welcome back BBC, we missed you
Finally the BBC coverage was really top notch, except for a couple of issues — which I’ll leave for the next section. Live coverage of all sessions and commentary, check. Great presenting team with good discussion (and some proper debate with disagreements), check. No adverts, check. Extended coverage, discussion and dissection of the race, check. It had almost everything you could want from F1 coverage and the team seemed to get into their stride quickly. This post by Jake Humphrey really shows the dedication to great coverage that the team aimed for in Australia:
…until word filtered through that there may be an issue with Toyota’s rear wing.
Cue a dash all the way back to the circuit in the dark to track down the Toyota boss John Howett, get the full sp and then re-record the closing link for the re-run of qualifying that was transmitting minutes later.
I love this type of skin of your teeth, reactive broadcasting and the teams were very understanding of our extra-late shift, so kept us happy with coffee and rather odd apricot pastry things.
We piled in the car at about 12.45am local time, back to the hotel 1.15am, into bed 1.45am.
The Bad
More information please
There was very little information on the use of KERS (and zero information on the use of the adjustable front wing) throughout the race. When the KERS info was presented it was a really good graphical representation giving you all the information you need in a succinct and efficient manner. However this information shouldn’t (in my opinion) be classed in the same category as the other information it was presented with (what gear the car is in or what revs they’re at etc.) - that information is superfluous most of the time, but nice to have every now and then.
At a minimum I would like to see KERS icons for all cars you are currently watching on screen, just a little roundel next to their names (maybe on the leader board) would suffice; green for having charge, red for when activated and grey for when depleted. As this was the first race in the season and the KERS graphics were announced very late (I think they were confirmed the Thursday before the race) I’m hoping that we will get adjustments here.
The split screen view on the BBC red button was awful and completely useless for me. The second screen appeared to be the size of an envelope and was really pixelated, while the large screen was reduced in size quite a bit as well with lots of empty space on my lovely new TV making me feel cheated. I tried watching this for about 3 minutes before giving up on it altogether.
Those pesky stewards
Like I said at the start is now over 5 days ago since the chequered flag fell on Australia and I’m still not 100% sure that third place onwards will remain what I currently understand them to be. I have a longer post planned on this topic but this continued changing of the results after the race makes a mockery of the sport and no-one likes it. Never mind the fact that Trulli’s and Vettel’s penalties seemed very harsh and somewhat un-justified.
Vestigial rules creating a mess
The mandatory usage of 2 compounds of tyres has always seemed a slightly forced-way to introduce a shake-up in the order and to "encourage overtaking". Widening the gap between the compounds for 2009 has made it much more glaringly silly. All it did was undo the hard work of people like Rosberg when driving on tyres that were completely un-suited for the conditions.
Un-lapping under the safety car; OK I understand the reasons behind this rule and it does make some sense, but why-o-why did we have to wait sooooo long for it to take place. I think Nakajima’s car was out of the way after one lap under the safety car but we had at least 4 or 5 laps behind the safety car for nothing. At least it gave me chance for a bathroom break (maybe I do miss the adverts… erm nope definitely not).
Overall
Overall the good points we can take away from Australia far out weigh the bad; and all the bad points could be addressed in some way or another. It really is looking like it could be the truly fantastic season that winter testing was suggesting it could be. Although I would dearly love for Button & Brawn to win the championships I do also hope that they don’t get it too easy for the rest of the season. Here’s looking forward to Malaysia!