It was a great feeling to wake up this morning knowing that it finally was the first race day of the season! I didn´t even need an alarm to wake up - I guess a passionate F1 fan like myself automatically wakes up at the right time on a race day, haha!
Sebastian in P12 and Sauber´s Gutierrez in P21 were the only drivers on the grid with the prime tyres. It was absolutely thrilling to wait for the lights go out and the excitement multiplied when there was a second warm-up lap due to Marussia`s Bianchi stopping on his grid slot. Finally the season-opener got underway! Both Finns had an excellent start and Kimi made his way up to P8 and Bottas to P10. Rosberg in his Mercedes stormed to to the lead from P3 and Ricciardo at the wheel of his RB10 managed to maintain his second place. A crash wasn´t avoided in the first corner, which wasn´t a surprise. Caterham´s Kobayashi crashed into the rear of Massa´s Williams and the race was over for both of them, which was highly frustrating especially for Massa. Even Kimi in his Ferrari got hit by Kobayashi in the collision but luckily there was no damage in Kimi´s F14T.
Yesterday I wrote that I couldn´t get rid of the fear that there would be technical problems for Red Bull in the race. Unfortunately my nightmare came true as Vettel was having problems already on the second warm-up lap. Sebastian was asking on the team radio if it was normal that he didn´t have any power in the car. The German had lost a couple of cylinders which lead into reduced power and Sebastian had to retire already on lap 5! I was disappointed, there´s no denying that. Although I had tried to prepare myself for this scenario on the basis of the winter tests... But to be honest, you can´t actually prepare yourself for seeing your favourite to retire the race! Sebastian wasn´t the only top driver to face problems. Also Hamilton in his Mercedes lost a cylinder and had to retire the race on the opening laps.
Right from the opening laps the pace of Bottas´s Williams was staggering. On lap 7 Bottas managed to overtake his compatriot in the Prancing Horse. Only a few laps later Bottas hit the wall with his right rear tyre, which caused the Finn a puncture! Luckily Bottas made it to the pits and was able to continue the race. There, however, was some debris on the track due to the puncture and safety car was deployed. All top drivers pitted for a new set of tyres. Bottas dropped down to P16 but right after the re-start the Finn began storming forward position by position.
On lap 32 Button pitted for the second time. During his pit stop we saw a weird-looking incident when a piece of the nose of the car got off when it was lifted up. That didn´t turn out to effect Button´s race which was going to plan. Kimi seemed to be struggling with braking and there were several incidents where the Iceman locked his front wheel in braking. Performance of both Ferraris seemed somehow lame, as if neither Alonso nor Kimi was getting the maximum out of the car. During the race I read on Twitter that there were some electrical issues on both of cars, which explains a lot.
There was absolutely no one who could challenge Nico Rosberg for the victory today. Mercedes seemed to be in a class of its own, pretty much the way it was expected to be. Towards the end of the race Magnussen in his McLaren managed to get on the tail of Ricciardo´s Red Bull. In this chasing situation we saw an aspect of the need to save fuel. Magnussen was told on the team radio to save fuel for a couple of laps and then try to attack Ricciardo on the two final laps. The two Finns were responsible for many entertaining overtaking moves today. At the end of the race Bottas had already passed Kimi for the second time and he had stormed his way past both Vergne in his Toro Rosso and Force India´s Hulkenberg. Can´t help thinking about what Bottas would have been capable of without his mistake...
So Rosberg cruised to the chequered flag as the winner with Ricciardo 2nd and Magnussen 3rd. What a superb job from the Danish rookie! Button completed McLaren´s excellent day by finishing 4th. Alonso became 5th, Bottas finally 6th, Hulkenberg 7th, Kimi 8th, Vergne 9th and Kvyat 10th. Ricciardo´s superb performance gives me hope that Renault engine is good enough to fight for a podium finish -at least when it works! Mercedes-powered cars are strong, there´s no doubt about that. Ferrari still has a lot of homework to do. Can´t wait to see what Kimi will be capable of when there´re no issues in his car, which reduce the power. Though the F14T clearly isn´t the way Kimi would like it to be so I´m sure there´s more to come from the Iceman in the near future!
About the new regulations then. At this point I´m not a fan of this new fuel restriction. When you´re racing you should be able to take the maximum out of the car and not to slow down for a few laps to save fuel! The new engines with the new ERS system on the other hand increase the entertaining overtaking as the driver gets extra 160 horse power out of the car for 30 seconds per lap instead of last year´s 80 for some 6 seconds. These new systems, however, make the engines very complex and prone to technical problems. But I love this ERS system as it decreases the meaning of DRS, which makes overtaking so artificial.
I´ve absolutely enjoyed every second of the very first GP weekend and I´ll have hard time waiting for the Malaysian GP to roll on. It´s soooo fantastic to have F1 back! :D
P.S. Only five hours after the race had ended there was a dramatic turn in terms of the race results: Daniel Ricciardo was disqualified from the results due to illegal fuel flow! The new regulation says the fuel flow mustn´t exceed 100 kg per hour. Red Bull have had problems with the fuel sensor already earlier this weekend. What a loss for Ricciardo, who was so overwhelmingly happy standing on the podium in front of his home crowd! And just another setback for Red Bull who has been struggling the whole winter. Hopefully this problem will just be a distant memory when the team heads to Malaysia in two weeks!
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