I have no idea what the hell happened to Ferrari's pace but they sure 'Ferrarid' the hell out of the strategy call.

How - just HOW - do you see Verstappen go into the pits and think "Nah, he's only the best west weather drive since Senna - who cares if he thinks they've reached a chanegover point and its time to go to inters..."

They got SO lucky with track position and Max had 8 seconds on them. When he went in, you had PLENTY of time to go behind him and enough space to avoid a tight double-stack.

Ferrari just completely gacked that race. Shitty pace and worse strategy. They had no business not putting 2 cars in the top 5 and just completely blew it.

At some point, you have to blame Vasseur. His team looked embarrassingly unprepared out there. If it was just Lewis, you could say it was learning the new car and team.

On the other hand, Vowles is doing a great job so far. Williams is looking to be top of the midfielders right now.

Oh I ABSOLUTELY blame Vasseur.

Especially if the rumor is true that they were worried about the height of the car and the plank wear coming from the final practice so they had to essentially raise the car right before parc ferme and it just completely ****ed up the aero.

But I don't know how you have that car coming off the end of last season with no major regulation changes and it's just...slow. Not good in high speed corners, on straights or low speed corners. It didn't show pace ANYWHERE.

That's seemingly impossible.

Bottom line though is that it looks like it'll take mistakes from McLaren for anyone else to hang with them. That car was a rocket. Any time they wanted more from it, they had it. Max fans will say they had Norris in another lap or two but I don't buy it for a minute.

He was NEVER getting around Norris and even if he did, I think Lando gets right back around him in a DRS zone.

The McLaren was just on a Sunday stroll out there. Compliant and quick.

Fun race to watch. Much better than when the only drama was whether Max would win by over/under 10 seconds.

Apart from the chaos wrought by weather, I actually thought the racing kinda sucked.

One dry line meant overtakes were nearly impossible. It was mostly a procession interrupted by a few moments of chaos during the rain.

I really like Albert Park -- as much as any street circuit anyway (most of those suck). And I think the rain simply replaced the normal sort of drama we can see with those 4 DRS zones with something of a manufactured one.

I mean, unless you're one of us poor Ferrari fans who's only real intrigue came in trying to figure out just how badly they were going to **** the race up by the time it was all said and done.

i'm very new to F1 and trying to learn about it.

how much does driver skill actually come into play? it seems like whoever has the best car is pretty much unbeatable. i watched nascar as a young kid and those races had way more passing. that said, f1 definitely seems to have a cool vibe and aesthetic to it. feels like it takes a lot to really appreciate the little details of it though.

I don't know but when I play iracing these guys are like 25 seconds faster than me they are true aliens

Did you see that pass by Piasti over Hamilton at the end? That was definitely not on a dry line.

The car determines your ceiling, pretty much. A good driver can't make a slow car go fast.

Beyond that, there are a lot of variables under a driver's control. First being consistency. Take a look at https://f1pace.com/ [Not for Melbourne, wet races are too chaotic to get really good data.] How consistent are their lap times? A good driver should have a tight grouping of lap times like a marksman hitting their target. A bad driver [like Zhou last year] will have lap times scattered all over the place. You should see gradual trends as fuel load decreases or tire wear accumulates. Discounting back markers and interruptions, your time should be within a tenth or so [depending on the track] lap after lap. Inconsistent drivers are throwing time away.

Also, take a look at teammates. If one driver is consistently better in the same car, that's an indicator of a more skilled driver.

There are other considerations that aren't so obvious. How aggressive is the driver? How many risks do they take? How do they handle adversity? How do they manage their tires? Can they make tires last longer than other drivers? What kind of feedback do they give the team? A good communicator with good feedback can help the team get the settings dialed in during free practice. A good tune/setup can make a massive difference on race day. The team needs an observant driver to make these settings work.

Part of what makes team changes so interesting is that you get a better appreciation of driver skill. If a driver suddenly gets noticeably faster, maybe their last team had a car that was holding them back. And vice versa. Of course some teams can build a car around a driver's particular style. I'm specifically thinking of Verstappen and Red Bull here.

I'm also new to F1. I got into it during COVID when the CTO of my old company got me into Drive to Survive. I got the $30 F1TV subscription last year and I am watching all the old races in the archive. Unfortunately they only have every race replay since 2004. Before that 1999 is the only year with full race replays. Other than that they have only one or two a year. The earliest full replay is 1981. Before that all they have is highlights. And the highlights only go back to 1970. It's a shame. I'd love to watch footage from the Fangio/Moss/Stewart era.

I have watched every race up to 2008 now. I watch 3-4 races a week and take notes on most of them. The annoying part is avoiding spoilers. F1TV uses the season champion as the cover art for each season so that makes it really tough. I try and use autoplay instead of navigating the menu to avoid it.

Hamilton's in-car has the Gyroscopic camera.

That'll be fun. Probably spend a lot of time in the cockpit with Lewis this week. Being able to split the audio/visual feed on F1 TV is pretty slick. I can watch from someone's in-car but turn on the international audio feed from Crofty or their usual F1 TV crew (Jacques, Palmer and Coulthard, IIRC).

They had those gyro cameras last year, but only some cars had them. I believe everyone gets them this year. This year's cockpit cameras have a wider FOV, so the sensation of speed is much faster. I really like how they look. Although they still use the low-quality OTA cockpit feeds on the replays. I wish they would edit in the high quality cockpit footage after the race. It would be more work in post production, so I get why they don't do it.

Max has been a regular on the podium despite his teammate in the same car doing much worse for years. I think 2023 when Red Bull actually had the best car did his teammate finish right behind him. He also won 19/22 races that year.

This year it seems as if the Red Bull is probably the 4th best car, but Max will still be a title favorite because he’s so good.

There is a point where it doesn’t matter how good you good the driver is because the car is so shit. See Hamilton in 2022-2023. Hulk also probably would have a podium or win by now if he raced for one of the big 4 teams too.

I guess what I’m saying is that it’s required to have a good car and be a good driver.

I’m gonna stay up for the Sprint tonight and I hope I get to watch Quali spoiler free tomorrow I got spoiled about Hamilton SQ pole today.