The first wake-up was at 2 am so literally in the middle of the night to watch the Q2 and Q3 which had been postponed for today due to the weather conditions yesterday. Red Bull were as strong as I expected: Vettel took pole position and his team-mate Webber completed the first row by being second fastest! Hamilton in his Mercedes managed to pull out a fantastic lap qualifying 3rd. The Briton was followed by the Ferrari duo Massa in P4 and Alonso in P5. Hamilton´s team-mate Rosberg made it to P6. Lotus´ performance was a slight disappointment to me as Kimi was only 7th fastest today and his team-mate Grosjean 8th. But I knew Kimi would be up there to fight for a podium finish!
Then I went back to bed and woke up 4 hours later to watch the season-opening Australian GP. You could really feel the excitement when the lights went out. The start is always a heart stopping moment! Vettel was able to maintain his lead whilst his team-mate Webber had a lousy start and lost many positions. Both Ferraris had excellent starts. After the first corners Massa was second and Alonso third. Kimi in his Lotus had a dream start as well and during the first three laps the Iceman was able to gain three positions and make his way up to 4th place!
All the top drivers started the race with supersofts so the first stint was less than 10 laps for most drivers. The key to the victory was the pit-stop strategy. All the other top drivers had a three-stop strategy except Kimi at the wheel of his E21 who stopped only twice! Sutil in his Force India also had a different strategy as the German started the race with the medium compound and used the supersofts at the end of the race. Until the last stint it seemed to be a well-working strategy but on the closing laps the supersofts got blistered and Sutil lost many positions.
Alonso was able to get past Vettel in the second pit-stops. The Spaniard pitted a couple of laps later and got ahead of the German Red Bull ace. But one thing was very clear: Kimi was unstoppable today! He was able to manage his tyres in a perfect way and did only two stops today, which was the key to the victory. Tyre management is a huge advantage for Lotus. Alonso gave everything he could trying to catch the flying Finn at the end but Kimi was out of reach. The Iceman even made the fastest lap at the end of the race! Kimi took a sweeping victory today, Alonso finished 2nd and Vettel 3rd. Massa was 4th, Hamilton 5th and Webber 6th. Force India had a strong weekend: Sutil drove to the chequered flag in P7 and his team-mate Di Resta in P8. Button in his McLaren was able to score only two points by finishing 9th so McLaren is definitely struggling with their car!
Bottas´ race debut can be considered quite decent. The Finn finished 14th today with a car that is very difficult to drive. But Bottas made no mistakes and brought the car to the chequered flag unlike his team-mate Maldonado who made a mistake and went wide which lead to his retirement from the race. Rosberg also had an electrical failure in his car and he was out of the race as well.
It´s difficult to find words to tell you how much I enjoyed watching Kimi and Sebastian celebrating on the podium today! These two guys seem to get along very well and they always seem to have fun! Kimi seemed to be unable to enjoy his champange as the German Red Bull driver kept squirting champange on the Iceman´s face! This was an absolutely perfect start to the season and I can´t wait to see what will happen in Malaysia next week! So after the first race it´s Kimi who´s topping the drivers´ standings and Ferrari topping the constructors´ standings. Getting up in the middle of the night and very early in the morning has definitely mixed up my sleeping habits but this GP weekend has been soooo worth it! Congratulations to Kimi: the Iceman was colder than ice today! I have a feeling that we can expect great things from this Finnish Lotus driver this year! Suddenly Red Bull doesn´t look like such a superior team any more but we´ll hear more of certain Sebastian I´m sure!
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