While the Australian round of the 2024 F1 season wasn’t a show-stopper, it did provide two big surprises for this season. One was a different race winner and the second was Mercedes losing both cars in the race.
First of all, congratulations to Carlos Sainz on an excellent drive. As is well known, Sainz is losing his seat at Ferrari at the end of the year. He’s already pumping up his résume with a podium finish in the season opening round but a race victory added to his tally is now making Sainz look like a worthy investment for any F1 team. His podium in the first race was also somewhat understandable considering his team-mate had break issues, but this time around, Sainz owned the race right from the beginning.
Granted, this did require Max Verstappen’s sudden exit thanks to a break malfunction of his own. This was a pretty rare sight to see in modern F1s but there really wasn’t anything Max could do. Apparently, his right rear wheel’s breaks just froze and then caught fire from the friction as a result. This all meant that Ferrari took both of the top podiums and also provided McLaren with a great result as Lando Norris took 3rd and Oscar Piastri 4th in the race.
Conversely, the race was quite dire for Mercedes. Lewis Hamilton had a horrible weekend with his car at first not set up properly, dropping out during the Second Qualifying on Saturday and then his engine failing during the actual race. This meant Mercedes was looking at a low points tally to begin with but George Russell crashing out on the final lap was really the last straw. No points and McLaren now has twice the points the Mercedes make team does.
Granted, I do believe Red Bull will recover from this disappointment but for Mercedes this was truly a massive flop. Hamilton has been suffering some undignified races thus far, but Australia felt like he was having the rug pulled from under him the whole way. Mercedes used to be the very picture of professionalism and quality on the F1 grid and now they’ve really let it slip.
Conversely Haas and RB are now slowly turning things around with Yuki Tsunoda finally on points and Haas actually also getting both of their drivers into the top-10 as well.
However, one team whose performance in the Aussie round was inexcusable was Sauber’s. For the third race weekend in a row, the team fumbled a pit stop for seemingly no reason and for the second time in a row, this fumble probably cost them points. Guanyu Zhou had a bad qualifying with Valtteri Bottas having a slightly better start to the this race and being up quite a few positions. But just like how Zhou’s chances for points were wrecked in the Saudi round, the same happened to Bottas in the Australian round. I really can’t understand how Sauber isn’t able to hammer home this one outstetched rusty nail.
So, it was not my intention to make another race post this soon after the previous one, but I really do have to give Sainz all the recognition he deserves. Also, I really do expect the Verstappen dominance to continue once Red Bull has regrouped after this incident. Ironically, I think Sainz is making a good case to be a replacement for Hamilton thanks to these performances but now I actually have to question whether Sainz should actually shoot for a different and more reliable team. But then again, it’s only the third race of the season and lots can still change before the end of the year.
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