Australia
Australia is a great track and a great season opener. I couldn't wait to see the cars back on track again and especially for qualifying, where we would finally find out who had speed. At least for one lap. The race would provide a clearer picture.
Except it didn't. Like last year, the teams started out nearly in the dark with respects to understanding Pirelli's tires. Pirelli has given the team all new compounds for this season, and they promised the tires would degrade faster with a bigger "cliff" when the tires gave up their grip and lost all performance. These new tires are like pencil erasers. Button came in on lap five to swap the super-softs for the mediums and, like everyone else, didn't look back after switching compounds. So it's hard to say after one race (even two) who has real speed, as the teams struggled to figure out the tires. Some did better than others.
Thanks, in no small part, to McLaren slipping a few rungs down the ladder. Hamilton looks like a genius now, doesn't he? I figured this was going to be a rough season for McLaren but the opening round results were really poor, while Hamilton qualified 3rd and finishes 5th in the Mercedes. If they can develop at the same pace as Red Bull and Ferrari, and there's good reason to think they can, they may actually compete for several wins, possibly even the championship. But it's still really early in the season, I'm making no predictions!
Other notable stories include Sutil also running a two-stopper and nearly pulling it off for 5th place outright. The super-softs gave up on him in the closing laps though, and he couldn't hold off Webber and Hamilton, dropping to 7th in the end, just ahead of his Force India teammate. Had the cards fallen just right for him with a bit of rain at the end of the race, he could have possibly won the race. A win is looking more likely for that team this year.
Finally, I swear Ferrari have a "move" they've practiced and successfully pulled off in Australia. I think they have a plan for when the running order is Ferrari - Competitor - Ferrari, where the trailing Ferrari goes around the outside, the leader holds the inside, staying in front of the sandwiched competitor. This squeezes the competitor giving them no place to go, allowing the trailing Ferrari to slip past the competitor. They did this to Hamilton on the opening lap. I don't know, maybe it's nothing or maybe this is an old trick. But it's the first time I saw something like it, and if they did indeed anticipate and practice such a maneuver, then that is awesome. That's the kind of crazy detail that makes F1 so fascinating.
Malaysia
Malaysia is a really terrific track. One of Hermann Tilke's earliest designs, it has great corners and two long back-to-back straights. And it always rains. Malaysia is a fun race to watch and one of my favorites.
It's still hard to get a really clear picture of the pace of the cars since Australia and Malaysia are very different tracks, and the rain throughout the weekend in Malaysia also muddied the waters. What is still clear is that Red Bull is again quick this year. Ferrari has real pace already (and Massa is back from the dead). McLaren really is in bad shape, and Mercedes really is fast. Lotus' pace is a little more questionable this time around.
Again I feel like a big story is the tires. They were near useless on the Sepang International Circuit, lasting barely ten laps. For either tire! For most teams, the medium compound lasted longer than the hard, while still providing more grip and was therefore the preferred tire for the weekend. Thanks to one extra pit stop for teams to get off the intermediate wets that the wet track dictated they start on, most teams completed four pit stops. This is crazy. I liked how Pirelli's difficult to understand tires mixed up the racing last year, but it's getting dangerously close to, well, dangerous in how fast they lose grip. It also risks becoming a bit of a joke.
Of course Alonso's broken front wing is the subject of much discussion and speculation. After damaging it on the opening lap it was hanging half off, throwing sparks in the air. But Alonso's pace wasn't suffering too much as a result, so he stayed out. After all, if he could stay out a couple laps they could save a whole pit stop by swapping the wing and the inters at once. The team were in the pit lane, ready to receive him, but he went right by pit entry. And, irony being extra efficient this day, he lost the wing on the following straight and ended his race. This is uncharacteristic of Alonso, who won his two championships at Renault in large part to finishing more races than his competitors. But everyone makes mistakes, Ferrari and Alonso sure did on Sunday. The big question is, who decided to keep Alonso out? If the team did indeed order him in and expected him, but he decided to stay out, that's fairly significant. The drivers are bound, often by contract, to obey all team orders. Disobeying would carry serious consequences.
Which brings me to the big topic of the weekend. Team orders. For the record, I don't particularly like team orders, I like to see everyone race. But I understand them. I understand them as McLaren and, it seems, Mercedes do. That is, both drivers are free to race, neither gets special treatment. But as the season wears on and one driver pulls ahead of the other, that driver earns the backing of team and teammate. Mercedes, with Ross Brawn, Hamilton, and Rosberg, exhibited this on Sunday. Both drivers ran their race, and Hamilton ended up ahead of Rosberg. In the closing laps Brawn instructed both drivers to hold position and just bring the cars home. To the teams, the constructors championship is paramount. It is this championship that determines prize winnings for the teams. The driver's championship is only for bragging rights. Red Bull, with Christian Horner, Vettel, and Webber however, did not. Well, two did. Vettel took advantage of this understanding to swap places with his teammate and win the race. Afterwards he was contrite and said he made a mistake. Bullshit, we know that's not true. He wanted to win. Winning is everything. Everything else is nothing. As Will Buxton points out in his blog (do check it out, he is one of my favorite F1 journalists), Senna is famous for this quote, “We are competing to win. And if you no longer go for a gap that exists, you are no longer a racing driver.” Is this also Vettel's philosophy? If so, why apologize for it? I can't imagine Senna ever apologizing for winning. It's all perplexing, and frankly it leaves a foul taste in my mouth. I like Vettel, he's a real phenom and seems a nice guy. But maybe I've been neglecting my cynicism. Many F1 drivers are unsportsmanlike these days, and many of the champions of the past have been too. Rare are folks like Mika Hakkinen who race to win, but not to extremes. That's enough on this topic for me. Seriously, plug #2 for Buxton's blog, he has this topic spot on.
Prediction Update
Not that I had any bombshell predictions, but I think in these early days the true picture is close. The biggest miss is that of McLaren and their major drop off in performance which has left a gap that Mercedes and Lotus seem to have filled. Hamilton is really looking like a savvy player now.
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