Grand Prix Rejects

Easy choice on this one, Valtteri Bottas. He was in a league of his own.

Second place goes to Stroll, I guess. He jumped Kvyat at the start, called the strategy correctly and bagged a solid points finish from a Q1 elimination.

I second Bottas. Based on today's drive, he's become a more underrated driver than before, I don't think I saw anyone predict him to take the win, even after he came close to taking pole off Lewis.

And although the drivers are still struggling to overtake, it looks as though
1) it is easier to follow the man in front
2) it's Albert Park, which has produced 7 overtakes in it's last two Grand Prix (pretty sure I saw more than that today)
, so a provisional shoutout to the new aero rules as well, though I might be jumping the gun as I'm prone to doing.

Since pretty much everyone will probably nominate Bottas, I'll give my nomination to Lance Stroll. Good drive to the points in a race where one would have expected Pérez to finish ahead. Honorable mention to Lando Norris for his amazing qualifying.

I am going to go for Michael Masi here. The fact that he is going totally under the radar here is why he deserves it. To fulfil Charlie Whiting's role at such short notice and to do so without drawing any attention is a positive.

Well we all know that Bottas will likely win this one so I’ll put forward Daniil Kvyat as a candidate, kept Gasly behind for the full 58 laps despite the Red Bull being clearly quicker and a good drive overall (besides overshooting the corner while trying to overtake Stroll)

Valtteri Bottas is definetelly my vote. Super strong drive, and very mature. This was Bottas best weekend in F1 in a long time (and most likelly tha not, his best weekend since joining the grid back in 2013 period), and he really deserved the victory.

Totally dominated his team-mate today, and him claiming he wanted those 26 points really made me happy. He seemed quite beat-up at the end of last year, and seeing his motivation floorish makes me happy. Let's see if he keeps it up...

Lance Stroll also gets a mention. He did a fairly solid job today, and despite getting helped by the Antonio Giovinazzi train of destiny that blocked Norris path in the mid-point of the race, Lance beated Perez today. A solid achievement overall.

Bottas, unsurprisingly, few would have expected him to win, no-one would have expected him to dominate like that.

I'm just going to throw this out there. You would think at this point after a solid decade of driving for second place and partying on his yacht Raikkonen would have lost his edge but he absolutely blazed it around that track. Giovinazzi couldn't even see him after the line up.

Just saw the "Ricciardo needs no wings" sign and I now choose to believe that was a time travelling member of the GP Rejects forum so I nominate Time Traveller Rob Dylan

Valtteri Bottas: albeit at such an early stage, Walter The Softy looks to have been banished back to the pages of the Beano.

Honourable mentions to Lance Stroll - maybe he really is better than he's given credit for - and also Lando Norris, who's given the first clear indication that he wasn't promoted too early. Remember what happened this time in 2001 with some bloke called Kimi Räikkönen...

i can imagine that if Jamie and Enoch were ever responsible for this award, they would consider this:

Lance Stroll.

Great performance.

Stroll - Great drive
Kvyat - Better times ahead for him I like to think

This is quite a tough one for this race as several drivers did better than expected

HM- Stroll Who would have thought at the end of the race that he would beat Perez on Merit? Not bad at all

HM- Kvyat- beat the Red Bull of Gasly fair and square. He knows he only got the Toro Rosso seat because they ran out of Options at Red Bull but he has to take his chances and he did today.

However... Actually no it's not that tough after all

Bottas

For someone who was eaten alive after his performances of the second half of last year (including me TBH) and having Ocon as the test driver who would be breathing down his neck, Bottas drove the best race of his career so far and beat his teammate (and Five-time world champion Hamilton) by over 20 seconds. Not bad at all. No-one is handing him the title yet but to come back like that does prove a huge point to everyone really.

dinizintheoven wrote:Remember what happened this time in 2001 with some bloke called Kimi Räikkönen...

Wasn't he a rally driver?

Faustus wrote:

dinizintheoven wrote:Remember what happened this time in 2001 with some bloke called Kimi Räikkönen...

Wasn't he a rally driver?

NASCAR, I believe...

I'd like to nominate Kvyat. Great job coming from a year out of racing. Bottom of Q2 but did well in the race.

Bottas is the obvious choice. I don’t know where he’s found this new feisty attitude (I want 26 points and the cool lap) but I love it because if this season is gonna be 2014-16 all over again then we desperately need it. He did more on Sunday than in the whole of 2018.

Stroll gets my vote though, maybe we will see some decent results like 2017 and on a consistent basis. Just needs to sort his qualifying out first. Kvyat is my second choice, i can’t imagine the satisfaction he must have had to beat Gasly to the final point

I can't get on board with the Bottas train as he had a car faster then literally every other driver. Lewis was the only one who could match him, but his car was damaged and was chewing up the rears. (Did I just defend Lewis? God help us). So it wasn't that impressive to me.

So I split my vote between Kvyat and Kimi both did way more with less (less of both car and motivation in Kimi's case) and were quite racey all day.

Here's your options for IIDOTR in Australia. Like with Reject of the Race, you have 48 hours to put your vote in for whom you think deserves it the most. Get voting

Did anybody really expect him to win this weekend? After all of last year, and the further troubles he faced with sponsorship and testing pace, Valtteri Bottas wasn't exactly expected to be leading the championship after Australia, and on merit ahead of his teammate! Good job Valtteri, but can you keep it up for the rest of the season? Australia was certainly improbable, so he gets the award at least for this week.