2026 Australian Grand Prix

I've seen melodramatic social media posts implying F1 is dead and nonsense along those lines and I'm not sure why. I thought this weekend had plenty of drama and didn't feel the race was any worse than previous years. I actually quite liked the start and opening ten laps.

While Mercedes appear to be the favorites so far this season, Ferrari had a good start and were all over Mercedes for many laps. In fact, both Ferraris occupied top three positions for several laps. Charles Leclerc spent several laps overtaking and being overtaken by the Mercedes of George Russell, and Lewis Hamilton kept his Ferrari right there ready to pounce. The other Mercedes of Kimi Antonelli lost a handful of positions at the start, but climbed back up. It was a thrilling opening to the race, and it looked to me as though the cars could follow more closely than they could in the past, as before they suffered too much from "dirty" air from the car ahead.

I think the only thing that really brought the excitement to an end was a Virtual Safety Car. The timing was earlier than I think most teams would have liked, but most drivers ended up capitalizing on the cheap pit stop, as they lose half as much time pitting under VSC as they would under green. Ferrari stayed out, though. A while later there was another VSC, and drivers that didn't pit under the first pitted under the second, except for Ferrari. The timing was too late for Ferrari when the second VSC came out, and when they came back around the pit lane entrance was closed. Consequently, they ended up pitting under green after everyone else got to pit under VSC, so the Ferrari duo lost around 11 seconds versus the two Mercedes cars. This prevented their earlier sparring from continuing.

Oscar Piastri was unable to start the race due to an accident during the reconnaissance lap, and Nico Hulkenberg was unable to start due to a mechanical problem. Their grid spots were left vacant. The Red Bull of Max Verstappen started from P20 on the grid to ultimately finish in 6th; a feat aided slightly by two cars ahead of him not even taking part in the race.

By the end, 16 out of 22 cars made it to the end, with six either not taking the start or failing to make it to the end. These six included, in order of race classification - Lance Stroll, Fernando Alonso, Valtteri Bottas, Isack Hadjar, Oscar Piastri, and Nico Hulkenberg. Technically Lance Stroll did finish, but he only completed 43 out of 58 laps. See, what was interesting to me here is that at one point Fernando Alonso was out of the race, but then ten laps later he resumed, until some laps later he retired again and for the remainder of the race. Lance Stroll also did this a while after Alonso, ultimately finishing fifteen laps down. I couldn't recall the last time a car has un-retired from a grand prix. I actually had to look it up, because it's rare. I turns out a handful of years back Red Bull un-retired Sergio Perez some forty laps down, based on the technicality that he had a five-second penalty he had failed to serve. I completely forgot all about that, and other wise can't think of any un-retirements in F1 in a long time.

Final race classification:

1) George Russell, Mercedes

2) Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes

3) Charles Leclerc, Ferrari

4) Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari

5) Lando Norris, McLaren

6) Max Verstappen, Red Bull

7) Oliver Bearman, Haas

8) Arvid Lindblad, Racing Bulls

9) Gabriel Bortoleto, Audi

10) Pierre Gasly, Alpine

11) Esteban Ocon, Haas

12) Alex Albon, Williams

13) Liam Lawson, Racing Bulls

14) Franco Colapinto, Alpine

15) Carlos Sainz, Williams

16) Sergio Perez, Cadillac

17) Lance Stroll, Aston Martin

18) Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin

19) Valtteri Bottas, Cadillac

20) Isack Hadjar, Red Bull

21) Oscar Piastri, McLaren2

22) Nico Hulkenburg, Audi