Let's Go Racing!

A 3.30am start, a race filled with thrills and spills and a number of curse-filled rants at the ineptitude of the commentary of James Allen. It only means one thing, Formula One is back!

I hate Melbourne starts. The time was supposedly changed to suit people getting up but I didn’t feel it all. The start been mired in the middle of the night calls on fans to make a difficult decision – whether to stay up or to catch a couple of hours and wake up for it. I chose the latter and paid for it later on in the evening with falling asleep trying to watch NASCAR.

Was it worth the hardship? Definitely. We were treated to a race that had everything with the exception of a rain shower. The race drew many parallels to Montreal last year. Hamilton avoids all the mayhem and produces a mature assured display that saw him pick up the win. The McLaren driver controlled the race and rarely found himself under pressure. Heidfeld again drove a steady race whilst all the talk was about his front-row winning team-mate Kubica to collect second, followed by a stellar drive from Rosberg. Behind that we got treated to crashes, passes and blow-ups.
Ferrari once more find themselves on the back foot and with the exception of Raikkonen’s win last year, they have not been impressive at the Albert Park circuit over the past few years. There is no point having a fast car if it won’t last the race distance. With only a week between Melbourne and Sepang there is little opportunity to rectify the problem. However Raikkonen did pick up a point following the disqualification of Barrichello and if last year is anything to go by, every point counts. Massa’s performance will be of more concern. We saw the Felipe of old out on track leading to suggestions that the loss of traction control will affect him most.

Toro Rosso looks like a team capable of springing a surprise or two. While Bourdais was quiet, he showed the maturity of a champion to keep himself out of trouble and was on the way to 4^th when his car broke down. The abnormal amount of retirements meant he picked up two points allowing the Frenchman some reward for his drive. We can only speculate what Vettel could’ve of done had he not been eliminated in the first corner scuffle.

Renault was a massive disappointment in qualifying. Piquet’s debut was the stuff of horrors, drawing some parallel’s to Kovalainen’s last year. There’s only one way up he will be thinking! Alonso drove a determined race after a poor qualifying and was involved in a great scrap with the man he traded seats with. Would’ve been interesting to see Ron’s face after Alonso re-passed the young Finn after seeing his absolute delight with Heikki getting past the former champion. Haven’t seen Ron that happy in ages!

One must feel for poor Barrichello. The most experienced driver on the grid put a torrid 2007 behind him and showed the sort of race craft that saw him drive a Ferrari. It all went wrong in the end but his performance shows a beleaguered Honda operation that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

It was great to see the embrace between Rosberg and Hamilton heading up to the podium. Usually when we are talking about emotions in Formula One, the positive stuff remains within the team and any emotions showed to another competitor is negative. For a change it’s great to see two of the sports brightest young talents so happy for each other. The result for Rosberg is the accumulation of two years of hard work by the starlet and the first of many. Of course, many can say that when you put the Ferrari’s into the equation he wouldn’t get there, but Rosberg more than had the pace to stick with the BMW’s who themselves were hardly shabby on pace.

PC’s Driver of the Day: Nico Rosberg. The young German drove flawlessly all day keeping the BMW of the vastly experienced Heidfeld honest. With the Williams lacking the financial clout of the works team it only goes to put his performance into perspective. His reward was his first podium.