Mercedes dominate in Australia but did Ferrari mess up?

14:42George Russell:I mean, in their defense, and I will rarely do this, but in their defense, I don't think anybody was expecting the tires to last as long as they did. And that virtual safety car came out so early that I think Ferrari were probably looking at it thinking, if we can stretch these tyres longer, we can do it on a one stop and everybody else is going to have to do it on a two stop. Therefore, track position is actually beneficial for us. And in any normal race, that theory is sound. But because the tyres lasted as long as they did, Mercedes, you know, able to stop that early and make those tyres last all the way to the end.

15:19George Russell:I don't think anybody sort of foresaw that.

15:21Lewis Hamilton:As you say, the optimal strategy out there on race day was to start on the mediums and end on the hards and the pit window being somewhere around lap 20 to 26. Obviously, that first VSC came a lot earlier than that. And you're right, Will. That's why Ferrari thought when they missed that first opportunity, unlike everybody else, they decided not to pit in that moment. They decided to go longer. Then they thought to themselves, OK, why not see this to the end on a one stop? Plan A is what they said, which is usually the original best possible strategy, whereas they thought that the others were pit earlier and they didn't.

15:58Lewis Hamilton:But what they did, well, they didn't forget this. But what obviously is really important is that when you pit under a safety car or a virtual safety car, you gain roughly 10 seconds as to what you would typically. So pit loss in Albert Park is roughly 21 seconds, whereas under a virtual safety car that drops down to 11, sort of 10, 11, depending on traffic in pit lane. But it's a huge chunk. And at the end of the race, they were only 12 seconds behind the Mercedes. So maybe they would have still finished where they did, but they could have at least fought for it. I don't know.

16:30George Russell:What that does tell us is had they taken that same decision and the 12 seconds that they ultimately lost through not pitting under virtual, we may have had that race between Ferrari and Mercedes 2D8. So are Mercedes as far ahead as they look?

16:47Oscar Piastri:It's just such a shame. After everything last year, you know, and the year before, this strategy seems to be, you know, you've got Lewis calling from driving saying, why aren't you pitting one of us? And it's wild to think that that shouldn't be coming from him. That should be coming, you know, from the strategy directors. You wonder where it changes and how it changes.

17:10Lewis Hamilton:But it's good to see that they're in the fight. I mean, I don't think anyone expected them to be as quick as they were after qualifying in the race. So it's good news for them. It's great to see them both feeling optimistic. But I do have a funny feeling, given we are so early in the set of regulations, we're still seeing a lot of reliability issues across the field. And I'm sure we're still going to see a lot more of it. But the development race and the rate of development is just going to be really, really, really fast. And I think we'll see other teams entering the chat. You mentioned it earlier, Will.

17:41Lewis Hamilton:It was a bit surprising to see the other Mercedes sort of customer teams not really being a part of the conversation as much as we may have thought that they would have. But McLaren particularly have showed over the last couple of years that they have great correlation from their wind tunnel and the parts that they bring to track. And so maybe we'll see them getting a bit closer. But it was, yeah, I mean, oh, gosh, we haven't even mentioned it. Oscar Piastri crashing on the way to the grid.

18:09Oscar Piastri:heartbreak heartbreak well Naomi we're gonna get onto that make sure you're not going anywhere we are going to be discussing what happened to Oscar Piastri in his home race and we'll be switching into music mode and getting your race playlist suggestions

18:31Lewis Hamilton:well if there was one thing I didn't have on my bingo card because if you remember my predictions I had Oscar Piastri second on the podium, but he didn't even make it to lights out. I did not see that coming. And honestly, we have not had an Australian driver win the Australian Grand Prix ever. And whilst I wasn't sure that he was going to do it this time, I thought that he would at least be fighting for it. And unfortunately, I mean, heartbreak before the lights even went out.

18:59Oscar Piastri:I mean, it really is. And you saw the cameras pan to the fans and so many of them had these special OP hats on. and people were just saying it was silenced around the track. I mean, obviously, Mark Webber raced there for over a decade. Ricciardo got a podium in 2014, but then was later disqualified. I think people were really, really hoping this was the year. And I'm devastated for him, obviously. What happened last year where he didn't finish the race and to happen again, you've seen all his family at the track, it being his home race. And I mean, take away all of that, but it being the first race of the season, setting a precedent, I can't imagine how he's feeling right now.

19:34George Russell:No, and, you know, look, he's taken a portion of the blame. The majority of it obviously comes from these new systems. He suddenly got a massive boost of energy that he wasn't expecting out of the corner. Pretty similar to what happened to Sergio Perez actually earlier in the weekend, where he had a spin coming out of the same corner. You know, you look at Max Verstappen crashing and qualifying. I've never seen Max have an incident like that ever in any category, you know, but that wasn't his fault. The rear axle just locked. And this is the major issue that you have right now is so much of what they're running is ultimately untried and untested.

20:05George Russell:It's still very much in its early stages. So very, very tough for him. You know, if it was going to happen to anyone, of course it happened to him because there's this home curse.

20:17Lewis Hamilton:Well, it's so easily done. I mean, these are some of the best drivers in the world. And it's actually quite nice to see them make mistakes like that. Sorry, Oscar, to use you as an example. But I'm sure it makes the drivers in junior formulas feel a lot better when they see the best of the best making small mistakes like that. Whilst you did say, Will, correctly, that when you get a, you know, but a boost in a moment like that, you are somewhat a passenger in the car. So, but yeah, my heart just goes out to him. I mean, he grew up a stone's throw away from the circuit. He had, as you said, Jolie, his whole family there.

20:46Lewis Hamilton:He had his own Oscar Piastri grandstand full of fans waiting to cheer their home hero to the line. And yeah, it was over before it even started. I mean, it couldn't have gone worse, really.

20:57Oscar Piastri:Let's send lots of love to Oscar, but switch to something slightly more positive, or much more positive, I should say. Obviously, last year in Australia, we saw most of the rookies, DNF, not finish the race. It was a bit of a disaster. And I know Antonelli and I know Bortleto aren't rookies, so cool, this year. But I think we need to take a second to discuss the young driver masterclass we saw in this race. Linblad, who's 18 years old, he's the only rookie.

21:22George Russell:Linblad was awesome.

21:23Oscar Piastri:finished eighth. He was third at one point at the start. He overtook Norris and Hamilton. He's not even passed his driving test. We then have Bortoletto, who, you know, in the first race for Audi, first Audi race, I should say, you know, finishes in the points, finishes ninth. And obviously we have Kimmy P2. So I think, you know, a massive shout out to the rookies slash second year rookies.

21:45George Russell:I think biggest hats off here to Audi, right? Because

21:49Lewis Hamilton:Absolutely.

21:50George Russell:They are a brand new entrant to Formula One. They are not taking a customer engine. They've had to design theirs from scratch to enter the sport. And so much of what these regulations are were designed to appeal to manufacturers like Audi to get them into the sport in the first place. Testing didn't look like it was fantastic. You know, they didn't turn up to the first race looking like they were going to be, you know, getting out of Q1, if we're totally honest. And they made it all the way through, you know, into the top 10. in qualifying. I thought their qualifying performance was outstanding.

22:22George Russell:I thought the race performance for Bortoletto was outstanding. You know, going to be hugely disappointed with what happened to Nico Hülkenberg, but had that not happened, could we have had two of them in the top 10? I think we might've done. I don't think you can understate what a magnificent job Audi have done to get to where they are and to be that competitive in their first outing in Formula one that is look okay yeah it's the old Sauber team and all of that but to get that engine up to where it needed to be that's a really really impressive job just to touch on Arvid Lindblad

22:55Lewis Hamilton:because I'd love to you know agree with you guys I mean what a what a star of the future a Red Bull junior program has already produced so many young stars and it was great to see him out there I mean he didn't lack any confidence whatsoever I mean he said on a on a few occasions that Lewis is really his hero that he grew up watching at home. And he didn't take any of that into consideration when he was rubbing wheels with him on track. And that's what you want to see. I mean, you can have heroes, but when it comes to being on track, you've got to just focus on what you're doing as a driver. And he did that.

23:24Lewis Hamilton:And to finish in the points on his Formula One debut, I mean, hats off. Well done.

23:30Oscar Piastri:I think, yeah, like 100%. But when we talk about things that we weren't expecting, Aston Martin, I think it's safe to say, were a lot better than expected. I mean, before the race, Alonso said that he is in a hard mental place. Newey was very open that the drivers were concerned about nerve damage by vibrations from the Honda engine.

23:47George Russell:You can't say better than expected. It was a disaster. It was a start to finish. It's a disaster.

23:57Oscar Piastri:It is if you're reading it from the get-go. It's a disaster. But given everything we were prepared for, we were expecting them to retire after lap one, lap two, lap three. Don't care. And they didn't. Let's also not forget Alonso from 17th to P10. You have to give them, they're not just necessarily deserving of credit because they've set the bar so low. But because they've set the bar so low.

24:21George Russell:Let's not try and paint this as some sort of success that Aston Martin managed to get a car on the grid, managed to get it to overtake a few cars when lights went out and somehow completed more laps than we expected. and Fernando Alonso went back in the race, you know, however many laps down he was. It's a disaster. This is the year that was supposed to be the one, the Adrian Newey car, the Honda engine. Lawrence Stroll pinned everything on this regulation change. This year, this was the year that they came to fight and they're not. There's two really big problems that Aston Martin have right now.

25:00George Russell:One is an engine that's shaking itself to pieces. And the other that I see right now is that they have started their relationship with Honda in completely the wrong way because they've thrown Honda under the bus, rightly or wrong way. Did they do their due diligence? Did they know that Honda was in the situation that it was in when they signed the contract to bring Honda back to F1 and have their engines? If they didn't, they should have done because it wasn't a shock to anybody that Honda got rid of most of their of their program or lost them to Red Bull powertrains or wherever they went to. right but if you're going to pin all the blame on honda that's exactly what mclaren did and by the time honda found their feet which they will do honda had had enough of mclaren that had gone to red bull and red bull reaped the rewards of all the work that honda put in over that time when you start off your first weekend throwing honda under the bus and in japanese culture pride is and loyalty are so so key i just feel like they may have completely ruined that relationship before the first weekend was even over.

26:01George Russell:And that more than anything is like, it's a disaster from every conceivable perspective.

26:06Lewis Hamilton:Well, I guess the question is, what do we expect them to say though? Because it is so obviously bad. I mean, what do you do? Like, yes, you hold the fort and say we're coming together to get this situation fixed. But the reality is, as you said, Will, as you very clearly said, this is a disaster. I mean, they didn't retire that car once, they retired it twice. I mean, in the space of one race, they managed to retire Fernando's car twice. And yeah, Lance did more laps than anybody anticipated, but he didn't make it to the finish. If there's anything to sort of look at as a positive, and I know we're like really trying to find something to be positive about here.

26:47Lewis Hamilton:But Fernando, I think, was heard saying that they hadn't done a practice start throughout all of Bahrain testing. They weren't able to get to 7 p.m. where all the drivers are doing a practice start. So at least if there was anything they got this weekend done, it's a start. And so there is a lot more data for them to go through heading forward. And of course, there's going to be a lot for them to learn. I think what was positive is we expected, or at least coming out of testing, the gap to them was roughly four seconds. And I think over this weekend, it looked a little bit more like two seconds.

27:15Oscar Piastri:Oh, Will. Will's giving sarcastic thumbs up. Well, I am. I'm not sat here. And I wasn't trying to say before that, you know, Aston Martin, they've done an amazing job. they've turned things around. But as I said, they set the bar so low and we weren't expecting them to do more than one or two laps.

27:32George Russell:But they'd set their bar so high. They said we're coming to fight for the championship from 2026. This is the year where it all starts for us. If our barometer of success is that their drivers left Australia without permanent nerve damage, then...

27:49Lewis Hamilton:Just on the permanent nerve damage issue, right? Because I think there's been a lot of different versions of this issue sort of across different broadcasters in terms of the message that the drivers were sending out. And some of them were a bit mixed. I mean, Fernando, I think I saw a clip of him saying somewhere that, yes, it feels horrible in the car. However, if it was a competitive package, then he could probably hold on to the end. So I think it's all really relative, right?

28:17George Russell:And there's always politics in Formula One, okay? Honda know they need help and they are probably going to need the other teams to allow them to do something to a homologated engine that is supposed to now be static, you know, pretty much within the regulations. They're going to need some dispensation to do some major overhaul on their engine. And really the only way you can do that is under the auspices of safety. And so if you are complaining that your drivers are at medical risk, if this engine is as bad as you say it is, then perhaps, Perhaps, because we've seen it before in Formula 1 history, perhaps you overplay your hand in order to try and get what you need to get back up to where you think you should be.

29:02George Russell:But as you say, Naomi, the fact that if Fernando had a competitive car, he thought he could have hold it to the end, that does not match up with what we were hearing out of Adrian Newey, which was that Fernando could only do 25 laps without sustaining nerve damage. So it's when you start hearing different things like that, you have to start asking questions as to as to where those those protestations are coming from and why.

29:23Lewis Hamilton:There's clearly no united front across a lot of their messages. So I think they need to sort of have a comms meeting maybe.

29:30Oscar Piastri:I think I think we can all agree that Aston Martin is a disaster right now. And another thing that we aren't agreeing on is our music taste. I can speak for DC, as you guys can imagine. and we all have very different music tastes, but we have got our own playlist on Global Player. Songs that we have been adding for race weekends. We've got From New Rules by Dua Lipa to...

29:53George Russell:I chose that one because we've got New Rules in the sport this year.

29:55Oscar Piastri:Love it. Love it, love it, love it.

29:57George Russell:Thank you. Thank you.

29:57Oscar Piastri:For Aston Martin, Will, you also added in Good Vibrations, which I thought was hilarious.

30:01George Russell:It was the only song I could think of that had vibrations in the title. They're not necessarily good for the driver's nerves.

30:06Oscar Piastri:For Hamilton, we went for The Dog Days Are Over by Florence and the Machine, which is a personal favourite of mine. and Russell we went for On Top of the World by Imagine Dragons so play along with us send in your suggestions

30:18Lewis Hamilton:I have a suggestion for an additional song for George if I may I think we should go with Don't Stop Me Now by Queen because obviously they're off to a really fantastic start but you know that everybody's coming for them when it comes to the whole compression ratio debacle so there you go Don't Stop Me Now I am obviously wearing if those of you who are listening to this aren't seeing me I'm currently wearing a Mercedes sort of cardigan that I received many years ago and yeah I thought I'd get it out the closet because obviously you know Mercedes seemed to be running away with it at the moment George is leading a world championship in Formula 1 for the first time in his career but I don't know how long I'll be able to wear this hopefully for him it'll be long but maybe next time I'll turn up with something different who knows

31:03George Russell:you have to get your Ferrari jacket out the closet

31:05Lewis Hamilton:Ferrari please start sending me some merch

31:10George Russell:I think I've got my blue Ferrari shirt still from Miami. So I'll bring that onto a future show when Sharl wins.

31:15Oscar Piastri:Love it. I think we should make it a thing that we all have to wear something of a team. I'll go for it for Thursday.

31:21Lewis Hamilton:Fantastic. Well, we'll leave it up to you on Thursday, Jolie. That's all we have time for now. Of course, there is so much to get to, and we will be getting to that in our next episode. But make sure you guys are following us on socials at UpToSpeedShow. if you want to send us an email it's uptospeedatglobal.com we have new episodes coming out every Monday and every Thursday so make sure you like, subscribe, comment do all of that good stuff that's available to do to make sure you never miss an episode

31:50Oscar Piastri:I'll see you on Thursday

31:55George Russell:This has been a Global Player Original Production