After 2 long years without the Aussie GP on the F1 calendar cause of goddamn Covid, R3 of 2022 brings us back to the historic Albert Park Circuit. The teams and Honey Badger, Daniel Ricciardo were welcomed by a record-breaking attendance for any sporting event in the land down under. So, let’s dive back in and relive some of the most entertaining moments of the weekend.
Free Practice
FP1 was underway on Friday on a newly remodeled track with chicanes 9 & 10 deleted and turn 11 remodeled for better racing. And an astonishing 4 DRS zones from the earlier 3 was announced to improve overtaking. The session was a fairly standard one in comparison to earlier races but with 2 red flags. Which were brought out by Sergio’s body work coming off on track. And Vettel in his first outing of the year having to stop on track due to overheating issues.
FP2 was no different for him. He sat out the session as his Aston Martin’s engine couldn’t be changed in time. Hilariously Vettel was also handed a 5000 Euro fine for riding a scooter back to the pit lane on track. Which is reserved for use off track. His teammate meanwhile brought out the only red flag of the session when his wheel brow was shed from the car. Standout from this session is Alpine who put their cars on P4 and P6 with Fernando especially showing incredible speed.
FP3
As Fernando’s speed continued to impress, Vettel’s practice outings continued downhill with the German finding the barriers and retiring from the session. His Aston Martin teammate followed soon but with a relatively smaller shunt. Amidst the red flag confusion Lando took P1 as Max complained about his cars balance and Mercedes were way off the pace as usual.
Qualifying
Q1
Qualifying Saturday evening was off to a good start, up until 2 minutes left in Q2. When a bizarre crash occurred between Lance Stroll and Nicholas Latifi. Latifi clarified post-race that he let Stroll by thinking he was on a fast lap. But soon tried retaking the position after finding out he wasn’t. And as he tried to retake the position, Stroll swayed right and into Latifi’s back left tyre retiring both of them from the session, making their already forgettable seasons even worse. Stroll was given 3-place grid penalty for causing that collision which resulted in the red flag. Which gave Aston Martin enough time to repair Vettel’s car. And send him out for the last 2 minutes even though he wasn’t able to get out of Q1.
Q2
In Q2 we sadly saw Bottas’s 103 Q3 appearance streak end, with the Finn later mentioning it may have been due to the front wing choice. On the other hand, Alonso was steaming through in Q3 looking at an easy P3 or maybe even a P2. When unfortunately, he lost the car and hit the barrier bringing out the red flag. The red flag in turn deleted Carlos best time right before he crossed the line. P9 was the best he could manage after the stoppage due to tyre warm up troubles. His teammate Charles took P1 with Max and Checo taking P2 & 3 respectively.
Race Day
Three years since we last raced here. And yet, Lewis placed his car brilliantly into the first corner after a great start to take P3. Sainz on the other hand starting P9 after a disastrous qualifying and rushing to gain places goes way to deep into turn 9 and beaches his car bringing out the Safety Car. A few laps go by with nothing much happening and lap 23, boom Perez retakes his position from Lewis by simply out dragging him on the straights with no DRS. And on lap 24 Vettel, who has already had a few offs at this point, crashes after getting on the curbs at turn 4 giving Russel an amazing opportunity to pit and keep his track position under the Safety Car (SC).
The SC restart was the only chance other than the start where Max had a chance to pass Leclerc as he was simply too fast for anyone to close up to him. Nevertheless, Max was unsuccessful and surprisingly stopped the car and retired on lap 39 after smelling some leaking fluid. More reliability woes for Red Bull? With 2 DNFs out of 3 races for the defending World Champion. Only time will tell. One thing we know for sure, Ferrari are out ahead, and Mercedes are taking advantage of the situation to get ahead of Red Bull. George even took P3 with Lewis taking P4.
Williams’ Surprise Point
But the most impressive of the Day in my opinion was Alex Albon who drove the entire GP distance minus one lap on a single set of hard tyres. Came into the pit on the second to last lap to satisfy the “at least 2 different compounds of tyre per race rule” and still came in P10 taking the first point for Williams this season.
