65 replies to this topic

[Risil]

Best Driver:
Best Team:
Best Overtake:
Best Moment:
Best Restart:
Three Words to Describe the Race:

 

[Disgrace]

If we ignore the final red flag and the chaos that ensued, it wasn't promising. The first red flag was the real villain of the piece. All three races this year have been below-average.

[ConsiderAndGo]

1.

How anyone can give anymore than that is silly

[Massa_f1]

1/10 poorly directed race by the FIA yet again. 

Made more for a quick two minutes of entertainment for the casual netflix audience.

[messy]

1, absolute farce and not a sport.

[SenorSjon]

1

No matter what happened, the red flags for non-red flag events should stop, as are standing restarts.

[KeithD68]

Dreadful

 

I can't decide if F1 races should be conducted to the Benny Hill music or Mendelssohns's Funeral March

 

They've ruined our sport

Edited by KeithD68, 02 April 2023 - 08:18.

[Laster]

Best Driver: I don’t know whoever kept their head and avoided the carnage? Verstappen, Norris, Hulkenberg all had good races.

Best Team: One of Red Bull, Aston Martin and Mclaren.

Best Overtake: I don’t know DRS felt overpowered 4 makes it too easy they should think a bit more about where they place them.

Best Moment: I don’t think there was one.

Best Restart: Bleh.

Three Words to Describe the Race: Badly written rulebook.
1/10

Edited by Laster, 02 April 2023 - 08:19.

[Peat]

Booooooooo

[HP]

Either make a flag yellow and keep it yellow, or just throw red at first for the first incident. That was bad, already.

And then the end just showed us what we knew a restart with 2 laps to go is absolute stupid. Finish the race stop. Things is however the rest of the race was rubbish so... 1

[Ev0d3vil]

1. Bloody boring, Red Bull still too quick.

[Huffer]

1

No matter what happened, the red flags for non-red flag events should stop, as are standing restarts.

 

I gave it 2 because it was satisfying after Alonso's "average car" comment. The rest was a complete farce though. 

[Quickshifter]

One word to describe the race: CHAOS

[sofarapartguy]

1/10. 

 

And I have seen bad races. But this one felt like being constantly manipulated. 

 

Why is it so hard to find a RD with common sense and a pair of eyes? 

 

Also shows how sprint races are a bad idea. Half of the field going all in with the other half being over cautious. F1 is not a deathmatch, it's a chess game ffs. 

Edited by sofarapartguy, 02 April 2023 - 08:29.

[NewYorkF1]

Yeah the red flags were a mess. And Red Bull is too good right now. But at some point in the race (not during a restart ;-)) everyone was within seconds of each other and you had potential fights up and down field. If not for Red Bull, this race and this season could be legendary.

[ANF]

1/10 because I'm sick of unnecessary red flags and standing starts and carnage and lottery.

[Topsu]

Not a sport anymore.

[jjcale]

It was good "content" ... I watched to the end and was never bored .... and people will be talking about it for weeks. 

 

Liberty will be very happy.

 

Me - I am not bothered ... for me F1 officially stopped being a sport when Merc withdrew their appeal after AD21. ... and Alonso warned us years before that, so we should not have been surprised

 

.... for the people who were cool with AD21 .... I hope you enjoy what F1 has become. 

 

With that said, it was a good technical race ... up to the second red flag.... even if the first red flag was highly sus..... 7/10

 

Best driver - many contenders... but SLH .... that Merc was not faster than that AS over a long run .... but he held off FA with no drama by out thinking FA - and FA was being quite clever himself.

 

Best overtake - LH on MV .... that's how you do it when then the other guy has more to lose than you do.... a good reminder that he didnt go completely soft in those easy years when Merc was the clear best car.

 

Best team - again many contenders. ...McLaren exceeded expectations. And LN is a beast - in terms of talent. ... with that said, he needs to leave them fast, he is not progressing with them. Its all about raw talent and no finesse ... after what? .... 5 years or so. ... compare his development as a driver to GR's or CL's.

 

3 words - Liberty are happy!

[Neno]

Not a sport anymore.

That true. But it hasnt been since 2008.

[Afterburner]

Best Driver: Gotta be Verstappen
Best Team: Red Bull
Best Overtake: Russell and Hamilton on Verstappen on Lap 1
Best Moment: Mercs in the lead
Best Restart: None of them
Three Words to Describe the Race: Ridiculous, farcical, unwatchable

[JimmyClark]

5/10. Some good racing, albeit very DRS-aided, but seeing moves in the run-up to the fast chicane was nice. 

 

But the red flags were just awful. The first one ruined what was turning into a very intriguing race with many different tyre strategies, and the second one created the all too predictable farce. 

 

I saw some comments saying 'Full Indycar!", but frankly that was an insult to Indycar. 

[FullThrottleF1]

Wow, a lot of salty people in this thread

[PayasYouRace]

That true. But it hasnt been since 2008.

A strangely specific year to choose.

I remember Alonso saying it wasn’t a sport anymore back in 2006, when he got a penalty for giving Massa a tow in qualifying.

[PayasYouRace]

I’ve given this race a 3. Race control just weren’t competent.

[Bartonz20let]

Wow, a lot of salty people in this thread

Watching your favourite sport turn into a TV dramality series has that effect, I suppose.

[Coral]

I voted 4 but only because it was a good podium for Lewis.

 

Other than that, it was a fiasco.

[IrvTheSwerve]

5.

 

Maybe voted too highly though.

 

DRS boredom-auto-passes, crazy race direction…

 

The initial part of the race was brilliant. Take DRS away and we have a great battle at the front. When Max was in third I almost felt no excitement because of the inevitability.

 

Our sport is in a right mess.

[Nemo1965]

I thoroughly enjoyed it. But then again I am someone who does not flip his position regarding safety cars, red flags and so forth every other GP. (This should have been a red flag! But THIS should have been a rolling restart. And THAT should have finished behind the safety car. Repeat ad nauseam. )

DRS was too powerful, I’ll admit that.

Best driver: Sainz. Max was cool as a cucumber. Red Bull as a team a bit… subdued. Don’t get it.

[jcbc3]

...

Best driver: Sainz. ...

 

 

Placed 12th on account of bone headed move.

[RacingFan10]

Not a good race. Even after removing the chicane, it is still very hard to overtake in this track. Too much procession, drivers struggled to pass or even to get close to others, due to dirty air.

And of course as long as RB/Max absolutely dominate, races are hardly going to be good if we talk about the competitiveness and excitement for the wins. Sad because Ferrari, Merc and Aston seem to be quite close

 

 

 

Placed 12th on account of bone headed move.

 

Turn 1 racing incident after a restart, and an absolutely ridiculous penalty. 

Before that, he had very bad luck with the first red flag, and did a very good job at overtaking and charging through the field

Edited by RacingFan10, 02 April 2023 - 15:58.

[djparky]

Aside from the first few laps it was more of the same, fast driver in comfortably the fastest car would have won by a country mile were it not for the red flags

The F3 and F2 races were good though

[P123]

Gave it a 7/10.  The bits around the red flags were reasonably entertaining given Melbourne can have some complete snoozefests.  Driver of the day was Norris.

[jwill189]

1/10. I watch F1 because it's supposed to be F1, not WWE/Nascar.

[Ruudbackus]

A 2 from me, there was plenty of on track action and some nice moves but ultimately race control messed this one up really badly. For me the 1 is the outwash of Spa a few years back. That was worse even.

 

Best Driver: To me Hamilton, Verstappen made a few bad starts and had an off-m,oment. Hamilton didn't put a foot wrong all race!

Best Team: Redbull

Best Overtake: Sainz on Gasly

Best Moment: Uhmm, that it ended eventually I think

Best Restart: There were no good restarts adn they should overthink the standing restart rule

Three Words to Describe the Race: Totally Utterly Disgrace

[IrvTheSwerve]

Can I just say, it was ****ing awesome watching the cars around here. I could actually watch this when nothing was going on, and still be entertained. The opening couple of laps were breathtaking.

 

With the right rules, today could have been great. Another brilliant weekend at Albert Park, soured by things outside of the actual racing.

 

It felt a bit ‘Abu Dhabi 21’ today and I never wanted to go there again.

[404KF2]

It had good moments....the restarts were fun to watch though some of the drivers would have been more at home in a demolition derby.

 

Faint hope that maybe a third or fourth team might be able to challenge for podiums.

 

Happy to see Alonso on the podium again, too.

 

Max Verstappen reminds me of Wayne Gretzky - a great performer who is such a whiner that I can't say I'd ever want to meet him.

[sheSgoTthElooK]

It was better than the last race imo, but then again I don’t like the Arab races at all.

[Ruusperi]

Racing itself was 3/10. First laps were interesting, but once Max got into the lead, the whole race stagnated. Couple of nice fights and overtakes by Perez and Ocon.

 

For FIA's tomfoolery: -10 points. We thought Masi was bad, but Wittich is a totally incompetent. He was already blamed harshly during his DTM-tenure, and in retrospect it's no wonder.

It's very unfortunate that F1 seems to be unable to find a race director who doesn't make bad decisions. Maybe they should give F2 race director that role?

[MKSixer]

6/10

 

The drivers did a great job of fighting and except for the red-mist restart fueled carnage at the end, it was enjoyable.  The stewards, Liberty and the FIA are ruining the sport.  TV Direction is a disaster, which is no surprise.

Edited by MKSixer, 02 April 2023 - 18:59.

[RacingGreen]

I'm reading a lot of  it's "not a sport anymore" ,"just a lottery" type comments here. 

While I agree it's not the sport it was when I started watching, and the rules seem to be aimed at maintaining a fake "high adrenaline" action for a modern TV audience with the attention span of a goldfish (the type of people who think Marvel super hero movies are good because the don't bother with story or character development and just go straight to the CGI/cartoon explosions,) BUT (big but here) at some point you have to look at the podium; Max, Lewis, Fernando. Not a bad selection of driver talent. Now if it was Zhou, Carlos, and Logan we'd have a problem, but as it is for all the race controller's contrived bollocks the cream still rises to the top. 

 

 

EDIT

That's Zhou because the manufacturers want to sell a lot of cars in China,

Carlos because he drives a Ferrari and that's good for the sport's glamorous image  and

Logan to help the big marketing push in the USA.

 

It's nothing personal against those three, although coincidently, they are all overrated.

Edited by RacingGreen, 02 April 2023 - 22:15.

[wingnuts]

Boring as bat-sh*t race as usual at this venue, until they decided to give it the Netflix treatment at the end.

[John B]

About a 3 for on track, with a dubious combination of race management and bad existing rules.

[William Hunt]

Best Drivers: 

 

- Nico Hülkenberg: utterly dominated Kevin Magnussen all weekend, would have been on the podium if FIA had applied restart rules correctly.

 

- Lando Norris: managed to extract impressive speed from a poor car, was quite a lot quicker as Piastri during the race

 

- Ayumu Iwasa: a perfect feature race win catapults him in the lead of the F2 Championship, putting himself in contention for an AlphaTauri seat.

 

- Gabriel Bortoleto: He won his second feature race in a row and is now an early runaway leader in the F3 Championship.

 

Honourable mentions best driver:  

 

- George Russell: scored 2nd on the grid, lead covincingly after the start, fantastic pace. Since his engine let him down he had to retire.

 

- Grégoire Saucy continues his consistent points scoring form in F3

 

- Pepe Marti From zero to hero: stunning race driving from the complete back of the grid (30 cars) to 7th at the finish in F3!

 

- Zak O'Sullivan won his first F3 (sprint) race on Saturday in although he came 2nd after the other Williams Jr Colapinto who was disqualified

 

- Dennis Hauger won the F2 Sprint Race and was also driving strongly on Sunday until Victor Martins bumped him out

 

- Arthur Leclerc in the past he was often over agressive, this year he seems to have learned from it by choosing more carefully when to attack. He may not have been able to match his team mate Iwasa on Sunday but he had a splendid weekend with a 4th & 3rd and he only scored 5pts less as Iwasa over the weekend.

 

- Yuki Tsunoda had a very strong first half of the race, then kept on dropping back (tyre wear?) but at the end of the race he fought back, avoided all mayhem at the red flag restart and would have been classified a stunning 5th overall if the FIA had not messed up their rules.

 

- Pierre Gasly  had amazing race pace, matching and sometimes beating the lap times of the very quickest cars, kept on slipstreaming Sainz whilst Sainz was the quickest car in the race. Unfortunately his race ended beiing pushed in the wall by his team mate Ocon.

 

Worst driver

 

- Nyck de Vries  was lightyears behind Tsunoda in the race. In his defence: he was most of the race on the wrong tyre (the medium) but what's worrying is that when he had the soft tyre for his final stint he was'nt much quicker as Tsunoda who was on old hard's......

 

Honourable Mentions Worst driver

 

- Kevin Magnussen  saying that you had to retire because you accidently (his words) "brushed the wall" when you in reality had a massive shunt that even ripped a tyre off.... Frankly this reminds me of the days of Andrea de Cesaris at Ligier in '85.....

 

- Valtteri Bottas  was dominated by Guanyu Zhou all weekend, lacklustre, where is the pace he showed in Bahrein?

 

- Logan Sargeant  Albon completely trashed him pace wise. Was stuck on the wrong tyre. At the restart he drove straight in the back of de Vries.

 

- Tommy Smith Had a huge crash on Saturday during his home race. On Sunday he had his best F3 race so far with a 12th but he still gets this honourable mention because he destroyed his car in the Sprint Race, no doubt giving his mechanics an all night work to rebuild it.

 

From Hero to Zero:

 

- Alex Albon A strong qualifying and superb early race saw him running 6th when he lost control and threw away a bag of points for Williams.

 

Whiners of the Weekend

 

- Isac Hadjar  Acted like a crybaby on the radio. Old shool Tsunoda radio stuff but not as bad as vintage Dan Ticktum (that's unbeatable).

 

- Lewis Hamilton  Complained that Russell got the better strategy (wich was quickly reversed with the first red flag). Sounded very insecure, in particular about his tyres.

 

Most unlucky drivers

 

- Franco Colapinto  Crossed the line well deserved first in F3 on Saturday but got disqualified for a silly technical infringement.

 

- Charles Leclerc  He seems to win this award every race in 2023

 

- Every driver that got screwed by the FIA not implimenting their red flag restart rules correctly (Hülkenberg even lost a podium).

 

 

BEST TEAM

 

- If I ignore Mercedes suffering an engine blow-up on Russek's car they would win it because of the pace they found but since that can't be ignored I guess Red Bull?

 

WORST TEAM

 

- Pace wise it's a tie between Alfa Romeo & AlphaTauri (Tsunoda dropping back after a strong beginning) although both still scored a top 10.

- Result wise it's got to be the embarrasing moment for Alpine with both cars in the wall but at least their car was surprisingly quick.

 

BEST OVERTAKE

 

- Kevin Magnussen  when he tried to overtake the wall but ended up just "brushing it" (his own words, ignoring it was a heavy shunt)

 

BEST MOMENT

 

- George Russell  leading the race

 

* If we ignore the farce at the end with the FIA even manipulating the results by not applying red flag restart positions correctly, then this actually was the most entertaining and soectacular race so far this year.

 

What was more interesting in Melbourne is that the lap times of the field were so much closer as in the previous races. Max wasn't the  quickest driver for most of the race, I think that was Sainz for the most laps but the quickest car was one lap Max, then Russelll, then Gasly or Lewis. It changed every lap which made this a much more interesting race to follow as the other races,  Max actually had to fight very hard for it this weekend so that made this race the best one of 2023 IF I completely ignore the red flag / restart farce at the end. *

Edited by William Hunt, 03 April 2023 - 02:34.

[RacingGreen]

 

- Lewis Hamilton  Complained that Russell got the better strategy (wich was quickly reversed wit the first red flag. Sounded very insecure.

 

 

He also complained about how much debris was on the track after Albon's crash. It would be interesting to know if it was the stewards listening to him that led to the race being red flagged. The odd thing is that at the time of that particular whine he was actually in the lead and would have probably done better to tell the team over the radio "it's not too bad out here, we only need a couple of laps under the safety car and will be racing again soon." 

[Ragamuffin]

Three words: sh it show

[Ruudbackus]

He also complained about how much debris was on the track after Albon's crash. It would be interesting to know if it was the stewards listening to him that led to the race being red flagged. The odd thing is that at the time of that particular whine he was actually in the lead and would have probably done better to tell the team over the radio "it's not too bad out here, we only need a couple of laps under the safety car and will be racing again soon." 

 

He did it after the magnussen crash when he was 8 seconds behind, not after the Albon crash, that was the "big disadvantage" one.But thats something all drivers would do, if they see a change to close the gap up, they will be on the radio. 

[Baddoer]

3 red flags out of 3

[RacingGreen]

He did it after the magnussen crash when he was 8 seconds behind, not after the Albon crash, that was the "big disadvantage" one.But thats something all drivers would do, if they see a change to close the gap up, they will be on the radio. 

 

I stand corrected - thank you.

[Ali623]

The furstrating thing is, it could have been an interesting multi-strategy race if the Albon incident was not red flagged as it shouldn't have been. But of course, that isn't enjoyable enough for the masses apparently...

Edited by Ali623, 03 April 2023 - 09:01.

[Risil]

The furstrating thing is, it could have been an interesting multi-strategy race if the Albon incident was not red flagged as it shouldn't have been. But of course, that isn't enjoyable enough for the masses apparently...

 

I think the second red flag was a bit suspicious but there's no way anyone could've thought the first one would "improve the show". I would've thought a race stoppage is a prime opportunity for a TV audience to wander off and not come back. I'm not really sure why it was necessary from a race operations standpoint though.