Australian GP 2019: My highs and lows

The 2019 F1 season has kicked off in Melbourne. It was a fascinating race, here are my personal highs and lows of the first race of the 2019 world championship.

High:

1. Fastest lap point

Perhaps one of the best changes in years, might be the addition of rewarding a fastest lap with a point (For top 10 runners only). It gave a great motivation for drivers to keep posting fastest laps throughout the race, which in itself was a positive thing to see. Last couple of years, the last part of the race could be boring, as there was nothing for the fastest lap, whereas today we saw a great fight for that single point. Although we need to see how much value is given to this single point throughout the season, I do love the fact that the F1 is willing to test these kind of rewards.

2. Valtteri Bottas

The best race he's ever driven so far. That is how Valtteri described his victory in Melbourne. I won't judge on that quote, but it was a great showing from him. He was consistent in his times, no errors and he seemed unlike the Valtteri from 2018, which is a positive thing. The only thing I do hope, is that he is capable of keeping this going, as I did believe his 2018 was not too bad (Should have won Baku, for instance). But those problems seemed  to have it's influence on his performance last year, so I'm curious to see how he will handle trouble this year.

3. The rookies

Yes, none of the rookies scored a point. True. But I do believe they did fine: Norris, Russell and Albon out-qualified their teammates, whereas Giovinazzi (if he would be seen as rookie) struggled a little bit more comparing to Räikkönen. That isn't something to shame for, as Räikkönen is still one of the fastest drivers in the field.

Norris managed to reach Q3, but the race pace of the McLaren just wasn't that great. Albon did have a crash in practice, but did well in qualifying. And Russell is just not in the car to show how competitive he can be, he can only try to beat Kubica to at least show he can beat someone as talented as Robert.


Low:

1. Ferrari

Perhaps the biggest letdown so far, is Ferrari. They seemed very fast in testing, but were not even close to Mercedes during qualifying and even lost ground to Max Verstappen in both qualifying and the race. And not to underestimate the performance of the Dutchman, but I did not expect him to be able to beat both Ferrari's on race pace. Ferrari gambled and lost and seem to still miss out on strategic level. They were half a minute ahead of Magnussen in P6 and they might have had pitted Leclerc to chase the point for fastest lap. Now, it went to rival Mercedes, which might be an expensive mistake at the end of the season.

2. Williams & Kubica

Was it a surprise? Definitely not. But they are not even remotely close to the rest of the field. Qualifying was very close in Q1, resulting in the elimination of Gasly. But Russell was +1.3 seconds down on P18, who was Carlos Sainz Jr. It's a shame to see such a historical team struggle for pace and see them slip down more and more by the year.

And to say Williams is slow, is a understatement, but Robert Kubica's performance throughout the weekend was terrible. His little love tap against the wall outside of turn 10 wasn't a wise thing, he hit Gasly going into turn 1 and damaged his front wing, but above all he seemed to struggle for pace in the race. It is too early to say it comes from his handicap, but I never believed he recovered 100% from it and I always thought it would hamper his pace in a race. I will give him the chance to proof my wrong, but I find it hard to believe he can. He once was a very talented driver, who had a great future up ahead, but I don't see it happen anymore.
I've heard and seen people compare it to Alex Zanardi, though the impact on the driving aspect is just different: Alex lost his legs and does all the driving with his hands (Having modified cars in WTCC and in DTM last year, click here for a youtube video about his one-off DTM car.), which is in my opinion easier than being handicapped in your arm while racing an F1 car.

3. Grosjean's retirement

You'd say, as a team, you would learn from errors you make. Their double retirement in Melbourne last year was their worst weekend in their existence, and I would say you would do anything to avoid another one of those errors. And yet again, something went wrong during the pitstop for Romain, Not only did the pitstop take much longer to finish, after a couple of laps the wheel came loose and eventually led to the retirement.