A new season brings a new look to Formula 1, slightly new rules, one less team and a host of new drivers. The stepped noses have gone! No more ugly cars for us to look at. Double DRS made famous by Mercedes is now banned for all the teams this season. As there is one less team this year, six cars instead of seven will be eliminated in each stage of qualifying which will still leave the final 10 to battle out for the pole position. So lets take a look at the drivers and teams for this year. Red Bull 1 Sebastian Vettel, 2 Mark Webber The same team from last year are back to hopefully maintain their run of excellent results not only in the constructors championship, but for three time and current reigning world champion Vettel. Ferrari 3 Fernando Alonso, 4 Felipe Massa Ferrari stick to their same driver line up which worked wonders in the latter half of the 2012 season. However last year their car was one of the worst Ferraris ever to race but Alonso was able to come within a few points of claiming the championship. Will they do better this year? McLaren 5 Jenson Button, 6 Sergio Perez McLaren had a fluctuating season last year with a few wins, but had poor reliability issues at times. Hamilton has left for Mercedes and his been replaced by the former Sauber driver Sergio Perez. Lotus 7 Kimi Raikkonen, 8 Romain Grosjean Lotus are also sticking to their two drivers from last year, Kimi showed impressive pace last season after being in rallying whilst Grosjean had many incidents which somewhat impacted on his season. Mercedes 9 Nico Rosberg, 10 Lewis Hamilton The great Michael Schumacher has left which let Hamilton grab a seat with the team as he left McLaren. I think this partnership will do wonders pending Mercedes fixing their reliability issues from last season Sauber 11 Nico Hulkenberg, 12 Esteban Guiterrez Hulkenberg showed impressive pace and skill last year for Force India, but will his switch to Sauber pay off? Guiterrez is our first rookie for this season. He has been the teams Test Driver for two years and has previously won the title in GP3 and last year came 3rd in GP2. Force India 14 Paul Di Resta, 15 Adrian Sutil Sutil makes his return to F1 to his former team with Paul Di Resta alongside. Force India were strong during some Grand Prix last season but were not always consistent. They will both be looking for a podium finish this year. Williams 16 Pastor Maldonado, 17 Valtteri Bottas Williams had a very strange season last year. A win for Pastor Maldonado in Spain did wonders for the teams moral but he never repeated the success again. Bottas has been Williams test driver since 2010 and has shown impressive pace in testing runs. Will he be able to help Williams to some points finishes? Toro Rosso 18 Jean-Eric Vergne, 19 Daniel Ricciardo The same team as last year for Toro Rosso, the two new guys from last season return to see who is the quickest. Both have similar pace and generally finish in a strong position. Caterham 20 Charles Pic, 21 Giedo van der Garde Pic last year raced for Marussia and was snapped up before the final race of the season at Brazil. Van der Garde is another Rookie who has been a test driver for Spyker and Force India in the past and last year was Caterhams test driver. Marussia 22 Jules Bianchi, 23- Max Chilton Two new recruits for Marussia in the form of ex Ferrari and Force India test driver Bianchi and Marussias test driver from last year Max Chilton. You may recognise Maxs surname as his brother Tom Chilton is a former BTCC and now WTCC race driver. Hopefully we will see good pace from Max this season as he is the fourth Brit in the drivers line up.
The Qualifying
Qualifying was interesting as it had to be split over two days. With a massive amount of rain on the Saturday, there was only time for Q1 to be completed. Marussia out-qualified Caterham by over half a second to make 19th and 20th on the grid with Caterham locking out the back row. Sauber rookie Gutierrez made 18th on his debut behind Maldonado in 17th. Q2 saw Bottas out-qualifying his teammate Maldonado into 16th with Perez in 15th for McLaren. Not where he would have wanted to be. Toro Rosso claimed 13th and 14th with Vergne followed by Ricciardo. 11th was claimed by Saubers Nico Hulkenberg and 12th by the returning Adrian Sutil for Force India. Q3 saw Red Bull lock out the front row with Vettel taking Pole and Webber not far off his pace in 2nd. Hamilton had been quick in the practice sessions and managed 3rd for Mercedes, while his teammate Rosberg who had been fastest in Q1 & Q2 could only manage 6th. Ferrari secured 4th and 5th with Massa edging out Alonso by three 1000s of a second. The Lotuss of Raikkonen and Grosjean locked out row four with 7th and 8th respectively, and the two remaining Brits, Di Resta and Button, secured 9th and 10th. Nico Hulkenberg was unable to start the race as the Sauber team feared he had a fuel pump issue which could have been dangerous to race with. He will instead have his first race for Sauber in Malaysia next weekend.
The Race
Only 21 cars started as Hulkenberg had to sit Melbourne out because of technical problems, but yet again another poor start from Webber saw him effectively go backwards. He started 2nd on the grid and by the end of the first corner he was in 7th. He really needs to sort out his starts for Malaysia. Massa and Alonso capitalised on this and launched themselves behind Vettel who took the lead from pole as per usual. Hamilton made a good start but dropped back because of the pace from the Ferraris. Raikkonen also made an excellent start getting into 5th. Raikkonen then proceeded to overtake Hamilton who was running well despite his tyres graining. Adrian Sutil ended up leading the race for a while before his first pit stop because of the top 10 all needing an early pit stop due to the high wear on the super soft option type. Sutil used the advantage of qualifying outside the top 10 to choose which tyres he started with in his case the Prime compound. This allowed him to go significantly further into the race and still have the pace of the other teams. Tactics were the aim of the game today as it was a three way fight between Ferrari, Vettel and Raikkonen. In the second round of pit stops, Alonso pitted prior to both Vettel and Massa which allowed him to leap frog both of them. As the Lotus of Raikkonen was significantly better on tyre wear than the other cars around him, he was able to capitalise and gain the lead on lap 23. As he was on a different strategy and pitted prior to Alonso, Vettel and Massas final stops, he was able to jump them again back into the lead on lap 43 which he then held to the finish line. Sutil managed to stay in second, but with the degradation of the supersoft tyres he was caught and overtaken and finished 7th overall. Alonso finished a strong second but was unable to catch the Lotus in the final stages of the race. Vettel took 3rd place ahead of the other Ferrari of Massa. Hamilton managed a strong performance finishing in 5th; however his teammate Nico Rosberg suffered technical difficulties which forced him to retire on lap 26. McLaren didnt have a strong opening race with Button finishing 9th and Perez finishing 11th outside of the points. McLaren have a lot of work to do it would seem. Here are Melbournes top 10: 1 Kimi Raikkonen 2 Fernando Alonso 3 Sebastian Vettel 4 Felipe Massa 5 Lewis Hamilton 6 Mark Webber 7 Adrian Sutil 8 Paul Di Resta 9 Jenson Button 10 Romain Grosjean So with the first race down we see Kimi Raikkonen take an early lead, but will it continue next week in Malaysia? Ferrari currently lead the constructors which is somewhere they wouldnt have been last year, so could this be a turning point for the Italian giants? We shall have to wait and see what the remaining 18 races bring us, but this season already looks mighty close.
The Awards Yes, the awards are back! A new season brings my favourite part back from the brink of retirement. Driver Of The Day Kimi Raikkonen Cool, calm and collected as usual. The Finn showed great tactics and used the pit stops to his advantage. Most Improved Car From Last Year Ferrari Last year they would have wished for this years car. It performed well and had excellent pace Rookie Of The Day Jules Bianchi Basing this off having the 11th fastest lap time during the race only five 100s of a second slower than Vettels best lap. I think that is pretty good, considering he races for Marussia. The next Grand Prix is Sepang, Malaysia on Sunday 24th March. Watch it live on SkyF1 or the highlights on the BBC.
Full Race Results Championship Standings