Ataxia wrote:Albert Park's an absolutely garbage track, isn't it? It's entertaining when you've got variables like wet weather, but it's not wide enough for cars to race close to each other - especially post-2016 where the cars are now two metres wide.
So you're left to rely on lunges into turn three that, by and large, don't work because the line's so easy to cover off - which makes Verstappen's pass on Vettel into the first corner that little bit special.
But, first impressions are that the new ruleset's been helpful in letting the cars get a little closer to each other - just like the train from seventh to 11th in the second half of the race.
What's massively interesting is how much faster the cars are this year with the new ruleset, especially when technical directors up and down the grid were concerned that they'd lost around two seconds during the off-season following the changes to the front wing.
That's why the bargeboards are so complex this year, and that's where a lot of the time has come from. Ultimately, it's a bit of a surprise.
Incidentally, there has been some speculation over what might have been happening with Ferrari and some people wondering if there was something wrong with Ferrari's engine.
There was some onboard footage from the Ferrari's and Sauber's where there seemed to be occasional dips in the engine revs whilst the drivers were on full throttle - and, in one instance, leading to Vettel immediately getting on the radio to ask the team to check the engine (that was not long before Verstappen passed Vettel).
There also seemed to be a number of complaints over the radio from all of the Ferrari powered drivers about the energy recovery systems "clipping", and those odd dips in the engine revs might have been a sign that the car was switching into recharging mode quite early on the straights.
There were also a few comments about Vettel and Leclerc seemingly going slower in the speed traps towards the end of the race, and radio transmissions that seemed to suggest that both drivers were using quite conservative engine modes during much of that race.
If there are possible problems, it might explain why Verstappen found it comparatively easy to pass Vettel into Turn 1 - it is possible that Ferrari might have been nursing a potential issue with their power unit (there were a few rumours, which were initially dismissed at the time, that Ferrari were having a few reliability issues in testing, and in particular with losses of pressure in the oil system).
