It would appear that there was far more drama off the track rather than on the track during the Australian Grand Prix weekend. The Sauber court case left a bad taste in the mouths of many over the weekend, but Felipe Nasr and Marcus Ericsson both took part in the race.
2015 Australian Grand Prix Summary
Before the race had even begun, three cars had gone after qualifying. Valtteri Bottas was deemed unfit to race after hurting his back in qualifying, whilst the McLaren of Kevin Magnussen and the Red Bull of Daniil Kvyat both failed to make their way onto the grid. This, paired with both of the Manor cars failing to even turn a wheel resulted in a grid of a pathetic fifteen starters.
Lewis Hamilton simply annihilated his competition, which turned out to be his team mate Nico Rosberg. Hamilton led from the start and never looked back, leaving the rest of the cars to fight it out. Pastor Maldonado was on the wrong end of a first corner tussle between himself, Nasr and Kimi Raikkonen’s Ferrari, the latter being squeezed by his team mate Sebastian Vettel at the start. Marcus Ericsson pitted after the first lap to ditch his medium tyres whilst the safety car was out.
Romain Grosjean was the next victim, and his day was done after just one lap. He pulled into the pits with what appeared to be a gearbox problem. Behind the two Mercedes, Felipe Massa in the Williams was holding off Vettel’s Ferrari, with the German struggling in dirty air. Raikkonen, now further down the field, tried to make his way back up through the pack.
There was a nice battle between Nasr, Carlos Sainz in his first grand prix, home favourite Daniel Ricciardo and Raikkonen. Whilst it appeared that Sainz was having the odd bit of problem with his power unit, Raikkonen stopped early and managed to jump the lot, despite a slow stop.
There were a lot of sloppy stops today, especially from Ferrari. Sergio Perez also lost out quite significantly and had to resort to battling the woeful MP4-30 driven by Jenson Button. The next victim was 17 year old Max Verstappen, who came to a halt after making his first pit stop. There was a significant change of position towards the front, as Vettel leapfrogged Massa for third.
There was just one more retirement to be had in this race, and that was the unfortunate Raikkonen, who was released unsafely and will likely face a penalty for Malaysia. Marcus Ericsson managed to make his way past Sainz for eighth in the closing stages of the race.
Hamilton cruised to what appeared to be a very easy win to the delight of the Mercedes team and fans. Eleven cars made the finish, meaning that a lot of gremlins have made their way into the power units. Jenson Button managed to somehow complete the grand prix in a car which had only done 12 laps consecutively all weekend, but failed to secure a point. On the positive side, Ferrari seemed to be much better than this time 12 months ago, whilst Sauber picked up 14 more points in this race than they scored in all of last season. It would appear, however, that Red Bull and McLaren have a lot of work to do.
Provisional 2015 Australian Grand Prix Classification
- Lewis Hamilton – Mercedes
- Nico Rosberg – Mercedes
- Sebastian Vettel – Ferrari
- Felipe Massa – Williams
- Felipe Nasr – Sauber
- Daniel Ricciardo – Red Bull
- Nico Hulkenberg – Force India
- Marcus Ericsson – Sauber
- Carlos Sainz – Toro Rosso
- Sergio Perez – Force India
- Jenson Button – McLaren
