Team TRTDORIC POWER RANKINGS: AusGP
WELL, wasn’t that just massive. Albert Park promised plenty for Formula One’s return to racing in Melbourne for the first time in 1,120 days and it sure delivered.
From the enormous crowd to the new-look F1 cars on the ragged edge, the dramatic Supercars racing, Carrera Cup, S5000 and sales of McLaren Merch, it was just all a remarkable display of excellence.
So, delve with us into the AGP weekend as we dissect the Hot, the Not and the What from one of the largest race meetings Australia has ever seen in this week’s Doric Power Rankings.
PS, we’re sorry we’re a bit late with these. We needed to give our resident celeb some time to come down from his high horse and grace us with his editorial presence before publishing this edition. A thousand apologies.
HOT
1. Albert Park/F1 is back
BETWEEN the events of 2020, the Drive to Survive effect and just the general desire from Melbournians to get back into things, the 2022 Australian Grand Prix was just flat-out massive. Huge. Enormous and all the other words in the thesaurus that can be used to describe it.
But perhaps the best thing about it all was the level of.. joy about it all. Sure the lines to go to the bathroom were long. Sure the Beers cost an insane amount of money. Sure, if you were in GA and not on a hill you didn’t see much. But for the most part, people didn’t care. We can’t remember an event staged with such a positive vibe and sheer goodwill from hundreds of thousands attending.
Major events often use the ‘unforgettable’ cliche’ in their marketing, but this one? It was.
2. Charles Leclerc
BASED on the first three Grands Prix of the year, young Charles is doing an SVG and is going to have this year’s WDC wrapped up by June. F1 expert and channel 10 commentator Tom Clarkson described his performance at the weekend as ‘Schumacher-like’, and he wasn’t talking about Ralf.
An event like the one we experienced deserved a popular winner and if Danny Ric couldn’t win at the weekend, it had to be a Ferrari. Carlton might’ve lost on Sunday in the footy, but a Ferrari victory assured that Lygon Street was large on Sunday night.
3. Shane Van Gisbergen
SPEAKING of ‘doing an SVG’, Shane van Gisbergen is doing a pretty good impression of himself this year. Out-races the field in Tassie, goes and podiums it in the Rally and then pretty much beats up on the field again in Melbourne – with his charge from the back to third a clear highlight.
It’s good that he’s wrapped up the title so early in the year so we can focus on all the other good stories – like the battle for Class B – for a change.
4. Chaz Mostert
SPEAKING of Class B, Chaz continues to prove that he’s the best of the rest and at the moment the only person within a shouting distance of semi-consistently giving the Kiwi a challenge week in, week out. Grabbed a W on his Birthday, which is always nice. WAU have always been strong at Albert Park (Remember Scotty Pye’s win?) but this was more promising signs from Clayton despite their blip that was Tassie. Unfortunately, also see: NOT point 7.
5. F1 Qualifying
WHAT a good shootout this was. In fact, the whole session was pretty dramatic. The Latifi-Stroll tear-up of the rich kids was one way to start things, but it built solidly through a pair of lengthy stoppages to a Red Bull-versus-Ferrari fight at the end. Ultimately, CLC’s flyer was miles better than the World Champion’s, and it was Ferrari on pole in Melbourne for the first time since 2007. Big.
6. David Reynolds
WE KINDA thought that Symmons Plains could have been a one-hit wonder for the Penrite boys and girls, but the Ford team transitioned from the bullring to the big stage of the Grand Prix in Style with some stunning results. Pole for Dave was huge, as were three podiums. And then Holdsworth got things to click and he got some silverware too. Remarkably, three rounds into their stewardship of the team, the Grove’s appear – at least for the moment – to have got their team to be one of the better Ford teams in the lane..
7. Mercedes on race day
BATTLING hard for raw speed, but Merc-AMG showed their class on Sunday and delivered George Russell a podium in his third race for the team. In qualy trim they are perhaps the fourth fastest car, and in race conditions they are almost eight-tenths behind Ferrari and Red Bull.
And yet, they’re second in the World title.. with a car that they believe is as good as anything on the grid, solving their issues permitting. Watch them develop that car.
8. McLaren on race day
McLAREN, obviously, have a lot of fans in Australia at the moment so it was good to see them get back to a point where they should have been in Round 1. Lando’s qualy lap was genuinely impressive, and while still lacking one-lap speed, Daniel’s race pace was strong.
9. Garry Jacobson
Here’s a summary of Gaz’s race results:
- P9 race one
- p6 race two
- p10 race three
If that doesn’t get you in the HOT driving an ex-Tekno car, nothing will.
10. Alex Albon
Won the coveted, prestigious R. Craill “Driver of the Day” award (wow) for his unique ‘run it to the end on one set of tyres’ strategy, yet still managed to dice with the best of them in the upper midfield. Scored points for Williams with a risky, unique strategy that paid off. Massive drive that will be lost in the Leclerc excellence, but deserves praise.
11. Aussie F1 Commentators
Our editor Richard Craill is probably too humble to let this slip in here, but we’ll give it a shot.
Outside of the fact that he is clearly our mate and we are humongously biased, listening to Rich, Mark Webber and Tom Clarkson, was an absolute breath of fresh air.
The Sky coverage we typically get fed is clearly world-leading stuff, but some of the cogs in that machine can grate and grind after a while.
If an Aussie commentary team were our standard fare, we would be quite ok with that.
BONUS HOTS
- S5000 – the category finally delivered the weekend it needed to have. Very good.
- Carrera Cup – the loudest cars at Albert Park all weekend
- Will Davison two poles, two second place results on the weekend
- Tim Slade – fourth, eight, seventh, fourth
- Macauley Jones – sixth in race one – huge result for Macca.
- Thomas Randle qualifying for race four – rookie impressing in third round.
- F1/Supercars crossovers
WHAT
What did he say?
What?
Top-notch journalism, five stars
You wouldn’t believe it…
Fa-shun
NOT
1. Sebastian Vettel
IT was a rotten weekend for an uncompetitive Aston Martin F1 team and even more so for the four-time World Champion, who had an absolute ‘mare. Late to the party after missing the first two races with the ‘Rona, Seb had a shocker in Melbourne. The sum total of his pre-GP build up was 26 laps. His race didn’t last long, either. Looked revitalised with Aston last year, but looks MIA this time around.
2. THAT crowd
The downside to having such a massive crowd are all of the usual downsides of having massive crowds.
Queues, so many queues, bad phone reception, which snowballed into no mobile EFTPOS around the precinct, and it was generally hard to get around.
It’s a ‘Not’, but kind of a good, ‘Not’, if you know what we mean.
3. Canadians in qualifying
Pretty silly incident between the two drivers bringing the most to F1.. cash, that is. That’s not to say they can’t drive, but in this instance it looked more Formula 3 than the pinnacle formula.
4. Max Verstappen
THE World Champion struggled with a recalcitrant Red Bull throughout Qualifying and was clearly having to hustle to keep up with the Red Car. It took until after the first stop for Max to look comfortable, on the Hard tyre, but then it popped a fuel leak and his race was over. Saudi was big, but the other two races have delivered zero points to the Dutchman and even though it’s only three races in – he’s a long way back already.
5. Tickford Racing
2022 just isn’t going to plan for the Campbellfield crew, is it? They had car speed in Melbourne, for the most part, but things unravelled quickly for all four of the Tickford quartet. Best of their bunch is Cam Waters – seventh in the championship and almost a full round behind Shane van Gisbergen.
6. Carlos Sainz Jr
PROBABLY because Craill tipped him to win the thing, Carlos had a shocker. Unhappy with the balance of his car on Friday, caught by the red flag in qualy on Saturday and out of the race on lap one on Sunday – this was a shocker by the Spaniard.
7. Mostert Vs Courtney
SUDDENLY having a good weekend and in a milestone weekend, James Courtney was within sight of a rare podium finish – both for him and, this season, for Tickford. And then came Chaz Mostert, who helped himself to the position by unceremoniously dumping old mate into the fence.
Was penalised, but podiums aren’t grown on trees, you know, so this was far from ideal for James.
PS, almost K’Od TRT’s Mark Walker. Instant NOT.
8. Waters Vs Davison
THIS was far from ideal for Davison, who got firmly punted by Cam Waters, who got this one badly wrong.
From our eyes, Ford not winning a race so far this season has nothing to do with parity but lots to do with Ford drivers punting each other off…
9. DJR Race One
DJR are doing a good job converting good qualifying results into mediocre race results this year, and this was another example.
10. SVG qualifying last for race one
Oh, he finished third. Nevermind…
EXTRA NOTS
- Alonso shunting on his qualifying lap.. what could have been?
- NO TWO SEATER? The wake-up call Melbourne needs has gone, and we understand for good. We’ll miss the V10 wail.
- Brown Vs Heimgartner race two biffo
- Walkinshaw Andretti United – fined for too many people on the grid. Rookie error.
- Broc Feeney’s practice prang
- Jake Kostecki’s qualifying shunt
- The Turn 5 barriers on Thursday.
TWEET
Sweet lid
A great effort
Great service
They sure did…
MEME
