Australian Grand Prix: Don't panic, first race of the year is always a snooze fest

It was the typical first race of the season, Mercedes the team that dominated the pre-season tests were in top form. Lewis Hamilton led a boring race from start to finish, with team-mate Nico Rosberg in second place, followed by Sebastian Vettel (Ferrari), Felipe Massa (Williams), the very impressive debutant Felipe Nasr (Sauber) and Australian Daniel Ricciardo (Red Bull). Before the race began – the new team on the block, Manor, were disqualified, and the 18 cars on the starting grid fell to just 15 after Valtteri Bottas, Kevin Magnussen and Daniil Kvyat were unable to race. Bottas failed to start from P6 due to a back injury, whilst both McLaren and Redbull had a far from prefect start to the season after Magnussen and Kvyat suffered technical problems on their warm up laps, sadly giving their 2015 season a false start. [caption id=“attachment_2155061” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg, sprays champagne on teammate Lewis Hamilton on the podium after the Australian Grand Prix. AP[/caption] The number of cars on the track fell even further after Lotus’ Pastor Maldonado crashed out after an incident with rookie Felipe Nasr which saw him go flying into the wall and brought out the safety car after just one lap in Melbourne. Teammate Romain Grosjean soon followed suit and retired with technical difficulties after loss of power, reducing the cars on the grid to just 13. The other two retirements were 17-year-old rookie Max Verstappen and Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen. The Ferrari driver had good form even though he was outpaced by new teammate Sebastian Vettel, but a costly mistake from his pit crew, where they failed to tighten the left-rear wheel after his pitstop left him stranded at the side of the track with just a few laps to the chequered flag. The most exciting part of the race was when Arnold Schwarzenegger came out to conduct the podium interviews. This year’s race had the smallest Grand Prix field since 1982, it also lacked excitement and was completely snooze worthy. But there’s no cause for concern, this was like any other first race of the season. The teams are still adapting to the changing rules, they are still trying to get the technology to work in their favour and they’re racing as best as they can with bare minimum work that has gone in to get the cars ready for the new season. The sad truth: the smaller teams with smaller budgets cannot provide the competitive edge to their cars or drivers to make the race as exciting as the fans want it to be. Be it the 2010 season opener in Bahrain labelled “boring”, where the Daily Mail said “the racing should be sparkling rather than as dry as the desert,” or the 2013 season opener in Melbourne this debate has been raging on for years. The teams have to start from scratch every season end and develop new cars adhering to the new rule specifications in an incredibly short amount of time. They simply need more time to test out their cars and as the season progresses so will their machines’ performances, making every successive race better than the last with better cars, and hopefully more excitement. [caption id=“attachment_2155075” align=“alignnone” width=“380”]  Lewis Hamilton wins the Australian Grand Prix 2015. AP[/caption] Even Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo slammed the race calling it “probably not the most exciting race for fans.” “We got 58 laps worth of data to try and make something of it but we got lapped so we have got some pace to find,” he added. What we got from the opening weekend was Mercedes are better prepared. Their ‘data’ is in place while the other teams are still gathering theirs. Maybe somewhere in the middle of the season, a shift will take place but at the moment, Mercedes have the pace and the other simply don’t. But it is a bit of a shame that Bernie Ecclestone and Co. can’t allow teams to test more in the off-season. It would give even the smaller teams a chance. It would raise hopes of an upset win. But instead, we once again fall back on data. Some might even say that this isn’t motor-racing, this is simply data-racing. It is a shame but then that is F1 in the modern age. Hopefully, the rest of the season will make up for this.