March 18th.
The F1 circus is back, and not a moment too soon. Even though the driving weather has been nice here for a few weeks now and all three Ferraris are running and driving, I still felt like an addict that needed a fix. The gloom and doom over the winter was the question of how the sport would go on without Michael Schumacher. Well, after this weekend, the entire sporting community learned that life does indeed go on and sometimes it gets interesting.
Kimi Raikkonen had some pretty large shoes to fill, but by taking pole in his first time out and going on to drive an uneventful race, he put his name up there with Juan Manuel Fangio who was the last person to make that mark in a Ferrari. Definitely a great way to start off a season. The Ferraris looked fast through testing and the flying Finn made it look easy. In fact, there wasn't much competition for the lead. It seems like he has picked up the rhythm that the Italian team seems to get.
The team with their two trophies.
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The show, or more correctly, the talk of the pit lane after the race was what was happening at McLaren. Darth Vader's team did well showing that the money they spent attracting Alonso to the silver arrows was well worth it with a second place finish. But, the rookie Lewis Hamilton's third place finish for his first F1 race overshadowed it. If Ron Dennis sticks to his public image and let's them fight it out, we could be in for some interesting inter-team battles that some of us haven't seen since Senna and Prost were racing. But, the Woking based team needs to find the extra speed to make it a battle for the win...
Nick Heidfeld brought the BMW home in fourth place, trying to imply that the former Sauber team is right there in it. But if you review the gap, all that could be said was the blue and white car was on the lead lap. Giancarlo Fisichella tried to prove to everyone in France that Renault still has it, but no one was buying it. Flabio's team was showing the effects of not really knowing how to deal with a Bridgestone tire, and the car just wasn't as competitive as it was last year. Felipe Massa was hot on his heels in the second Ferrari and the supermodel stalker was happy to see one of his cars ahead of the Ferrari. But if you were paying attention, you'll know that the Brazilian broke the gearbox in qualifying and had an engine replacement relegating him to the back of the grid. So, while Renault sort of was in there, the Ferrari can still come from dead last and finish in the top six. The other teams did take note of this.
The start.
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Rosberg finished a lap down in seventh, giving everyone indication that the Williams team is still nowhere near where they want to be. Not bad for one of the last of the privateers, but they aren't winning any new fans with this performance.
Toyota managed to score a point with Ralf Schumacher finishing in eighth. I guess I no longer need to differentiate between Schumachers. Trulli was right behind in ninth. Still a poor performance for a team whose budget rivals the GDP of most developing countries...
Kimi Räikkönen
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As for the rest of the grid, basically the also rans are still the also rans with new paint schemes. The surprise of the weekend was the Super Aguri team which is starting to show signs of "superness". The Japanese team was on pace with the factory Honda team while they were rumored to be driving an evolution of last year's factory car. I'm sure that they didn't spend the money to develop the new car if it really didn't end up that much faster.
Spyker is new, but all most Ferrari fans need to follow about them is to make sure they keep paying the fees for their engines...
Filipe Massa
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The race was still uneventful to watch, except when Coulthard ran out of talent and tried to use Wurz's Williams as a catapult. Red Bull may give you wings, but you will not be able to fly with them.
Now that Australia is done, the teams will take what they've learned and start trying to develop new bits to make the cars go faster. However, if they really want to have a show, they would follow what happened in the GT2 class at Sebring and put bumpers on them and let people start pushing others around. But that would mean that Juan Pablo would try to come back to F1 and we wouldn't want that to happen...
Kimi Räikkönen and Filipe Massa
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Race Results
