Ferrari on parade scores a double in the Australian GP and breaks Red Bull's hegemony. Max Verstappen retired on lap 4 due to a fire in the right rear wheel brake after 44 races and Carlos Sainz built a masterpiece victory ahead of Charles Leclerc. In Melbourne the SF-24 achieved its first victory with the extraordinary Spanish driver capable of a real feat: 16 days earlier the Madrilenian was in hospital in Jeddah for appendectomy surgery and two Sundays later he achieved his third career victory, reconnecting the thread at the Singapore GP.
The jubilee Sainz, to make room for Lewis Hamilton next year, was able to seize the opportunity as a “smooth operator”: starting in the front row alongside Verstappen he skewered the Red Bull with a Ferrari which immediately showed it had a better pace than the RB20, building on a victory that comes two years after Leclerc's in Melbourne. The 56 seconds taken by Sergio Perez, fifth, indicate that today would have been the red's day even with the three-time world champion on the track.
Carlos built the success in qualifying, staying ahead of his teammate: Fred Vasseur didn't give team orders because Sainz deserved the victory. The Spaniard arrived exhausted at the checkered flag, but he didn't make the slightest mistake even though he wasn't in the best shape (at the end of the race he began to lean on the helmet rest to limit the strain on his neck).
Ferrari has shown great consistency: after three GPs the Scuderia is second in the Constructors' World Championship, four points behind the no longer impregnable Red Bull and Charles Leclerc, thanks to the fastest lap (1'19″813) achieved on the penultimate lap, leads in second place in the drivers' championship, overtaking Sergio Perez by one point and moving to just 4 points behind Verstappen.
The Australian one seems like a new dawn of a championship that is not a photocopy of last year's: Ferrari has shown that it knows how to close the gap to Red Bull much earlier than expected. Is it an episode dictated by the southern track or is it the beginning of a season that could offer many emotions to the Cavallino fans? In Jeddah the Cavallino had played on the defensive, while in Melbourne they broke the deadlock by building an extraordinary victory which is the 244th in Maranello's history.
Behind the red cars the McLarens are arriving: Lando Norris is third ahead of his teammate Oscar Piastri. The Australian was in front, but had a slightly slower pace than the Englishman and Andrea Stella gave the team order to let Lando pass: Oscar immediately stepped aside, aware of what was happening, even though he was in front to his audience. A long run on lap 39 did not allow him to ask for the position to be returned before the end, but the Papaya single-seaters proved to be the third force of this F1 which seems to revolutionize those values that seemed carved in stone.
We said about Sergio Perez: starting sixth, he only gained one position, demonstrating the difficulty of adapting the RB20 to Albert Park. He has already lost second place in the drivers' championship. Fernando Alonso's race was positive, sixth with Aston Martin: the Spaniard preceded his teammate Lance Stroll, confirming the growth of the AMR24 with the new front wing. Starting on the hard tires (like Nico Hulkenberg) he built a very intelligent race that led him to be ahead of the Mercedes, but he will pay dearly for a bad gesture.
The Asturian ruined everything in the battle with George Russell at the end: the brake test in front of the W15 was bad, which was noticed by the race direction and which will be sanctioned if George really lost control of the black-silver arrow for that manoeuvre, crashing into the wall right in the same spot as Alexander Albon on Friday.
The Mercedes swerved to the left and with its wheels held by the retention cables it tilted on a circle which acted as a pivot and remained stuck in the middle of the track. Russell emerged unscathed from a disastrous GP for the Brackley team as Lewis Hamilton immediately left the scene due to a mechanical problem with the power unit while he was outside the top 10. Mercedes is the great disappointment of this start to the season: it is even fifth among the Constructors after the double zero. It has no performance, it broke an engine and demolished a body: it couldn't have been worse…
Yuki Tsunoda's performance was excellent, giving the first points to Racing Bulls: the Japanese took charge of the Faenza team by covering Daniel Ricciardo's crisis. The race of the two Haas teams, both in the points, was also fantastic: Nico Hulkenberg, ninth, preceded Kevin Magnussen. The American team did not hesitate to ask the Dane to give way because the German had the fastest medium tires: he is sixth in the team championship on par with the Racing Bulls with four points. Everything else is just a corollary…
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