We just witnessed a reinvigorated
Valterri Bottas dominate the Australian Grand Prix. He was close to
Hamilton in qualifying, but snatched the lead convincingly at the start and drove away to win by over 20 seconds. Granted that Hamilton's car was damaged, it was still an impressive margin of victory.
Verstappen had to overtake cars in front of him to finish where his pace deserved and
Ferrari's pace had vanished this weekend having to settle for 4th and 5th, unable to find a good set up and use the tyres properly.
But, as they all say, this is Australia, and it throws up some odd results and can give false readings as to how the season will pan out. Melbourne has hosted the opening round of the F1 World Championship since
1996, though Bahrain opened the season a couple of times in 2006 & 2010. There used to be a trend where the winner of the first Grand Prix usually goes on to win the World Championship. I've gone back and looked through race winners compared to champions from 1990 through to today to see how true it is.
1990s
Only twice in the 90's did non-champions win the first race.
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Here is Coulthard's
McLaren in pre-season testing livery. Coulthard would win another Grand Prix that year, as McLaren and
Mercedes were starting to become more competitive, but they weren't title contenders. That would come in 1998, but it would be
Hakkinen who would win the Championships.
Villeneuve was taken out by
Eddie Irvine's Ferrari on the first corner of the season and retired, opening up the opportunity for McLaren to take their first victory since Senna won in Adelaide in
1993.
1999 Eddie Irvine
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1999 was meant to be the season that
Michael Schumacher finally won the title in a Ferrari, but a broken leg half way through the season put an end to his challenge. So Ferrari rallied behind Irvine, kind of, to take the challenge to Hakkinen and McLaren. Hakkinen should have ran away with the title that year but mistakes from him and the team made it much more difficult. And Ferrari? Well I think they'd rather wait a year than break their duck with Irvine to be honest. Hakkinen retired from the first race with throttle problems, whilst Schumacher had issues before the start of the race that meant he started at the back of the grid and finished outside the points.
2000s
Similarly in the noughties, only twice did the race winner not go on to win the title.
2003 David Coulthard
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Coulthard makes the list again in 2003. Ferrari were so dominant by now that they started the season with the previous years car and were still competitive. Having said that, McLaren did the same for 2003 and ran the updated car for the whole year. Schumacher damaged his car whilst battling with
Raikkonen, whilst
Montoya spun out of the lead, leaving Coulthard to pick up the pieces and win the race.
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Remember F1 went through a phase of single shot qualifying, where drivers took one turn each to set a qualifying time? It comes unstuck if the weather changes half way through, which it did in Australia 2005.
Alonso qualified in 14th position whilst team mate Fisichella took pole. Fisichella showed the potential of the Renault car by taking victory at the opening round. But it would be his team-mate who would take the title, whilst Fisichella faded into the number 2 driver role.
2010s
However, when you enter the last decade, 6 times, more than half of the winners of the first race has not gone on to win the World Championship. Before we delve into why that is, let's have a look at the each case first.
2010 Fernando Alonso
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Alonso's debut with Ferrari ended with victory at the Bahrain Grand Prix. The car wasn't that quick, but a late season charge meant that he was in contention for the championship going into the final round, but a strategy error cost him the title to
Vettel.
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Australia was the 2nd race that year and
Jenson Button justified his decision to leave the team whom he won the Championship with, to go to Hamilton's team and prove himself. Button took an opportunistic victory at Melbourne, making the best strategy calls in a race with changeable conditions. But over the course of the season, Button was not able to mount enough of a challenge to defend his title.
2012 Jenson Button
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Button won in Australia again in 2012, but the first half of 2012 was about the teams trying to get their heads around the new Pirelli tyres, which saw seven different winners in the first seven races. It wasn't until mid-season when Vettel gained the upper hand on the Championship despite a plucky challenge from Alonso in a much slower Ferrari.
2013 Kimi Raikkonen
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Kimi Raikkonen started off the 2013 season with a win, having won at the tail end of the 2012 season as well. Whilst the car showed flashes of pace, it was not quick enough to mount a serious title challenge.
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Mercedes were miles ahead when the 2014 season started in the new turbo hybrid era, but it was Rosberg, not Hamilton who would take the first victory of 2014. Hamilton was on pole, but engine issues meant he was third in the first corner and fifth at the end of the first lap before retiring. The battle between the two teammates ran to the final Grand Prix where Hamilton was triumphant.
2017 Sebastian Vettel
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With a major change in regulations, Ferrari built a competitive car, though it wasn't quite on par with the Mercedes, but Vettel made good use of it, leading the championship for more than half the season - not the important half though. After mid-season, mistakes and misjudgments were costly and their challenge fizzled out. At the Australian Grand Prix, again Hamilton took pole position, but Vettel remained close in 2nd. When Hamilton pitted early, he was held up by
Verstappen
who was yet to stop, allowing Vettel to come back out ahead of Hamilton after his stop.
2018 Sebastian Vettel
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2018 started so promisingly for Ferrari. Though Hamilton aced qualifying, an opportunistic pitstop by Ferrari under Virtual Safety Car propelled the German to first place. By half way through the season, Vettel was leading the championship, and in a strange case of deja-vu, Vettel's challenge faded in much the same way it did in 2017.
So what can we conclude? Formula 1 is a lot less predictable than it used to be and whilst it's not as competitive as we'd like, it's still in a better place than it was. We still moan that it's only ever going to be one of two, possibly three, teams who can win the title, but there were seasons in the past where one driver dominated for much of the season.
Is Bottas going to win the title, challenge for the title, or was this a one off? Time will tell, but all the predictions for Melbourne turned out to be wrong, as Ferrari were slow and Mercedes were well ahead. Nobody gave Bottas a chance, but the reality is, if the Mercedes can be competitive throughout the season, Bottas has all the tools to challenge. But his team-mate is five-times World Champion, Lewis Hamilton, and when he was on it, he was unstoppable last season. However we haven't seen that kind of form throughout an entire season yet, and he has been beaten before, but that took Rosberg using everything at his disposal to throw Lewis off his game, personally, I can't see Bottas doing that this season. Hamilton has been on pole 8 times in his career, and has won 4 of the last Championships, but has only won this race twice and only one of those times in a Mercedes.
