F1 Melbourne Australia 25th March 2018

The first race of the season for Liberty Media’s F1 - if that was the first F1 race you have ever watched, it will be your last.

BORING.

The race - if you can call it that - was 20 cars driving round and round a circuit behind each other. We had very few cars able to overtake. Even if a much faster car was behind a slower car, all that happened was the slower car held everyone up.

The tyres lasted so well, I can’t remember any mention of blistering or the usual close-up shots of dark lines on the tyres.

We had a few cars break down, which for the first race, is quite usual, but no big engine destructions.

Haas, who were in 5th and 6th, produced the only excitement of the race, which made you feel for the mechanics when both cars had to stop within one lap, due to wheels not being fitted correctly.

Why did Vettel win if you couldn’t overtake? Well, either someone at Ferrari just got a bonus for coming up with pit lane tactics under a virtual safety car, or someone at Mercedes got moved to formula 3 for not coming up with Ferrari’s tactic. It turns out, under virtual safety car, during entrance and exit of the pit lane, you can go faster than on the track. They got the jump on Lewis due to this quick thinking.

Mercedes only make cars that go fast when not behind something else, so once they were no longer in the lead, the car handled badly and overheated. All those laps at Barcelona, and they still didn’t have a plan for how to get around their problems.

Bottas started in 16th place with what should have been a car able to get up to at least 5th place, but if others had not broken down, he would have ended the race in 16th.

This might be a good circuit to try out your new F1 car, but for entertainment, it was crap. I even fast forwarded through the highlights.

Note to Liberty Media.

Scrap Melbourne and find a circuit that is entertaining. Sorry Australia, but you needed 10 cans of Fosters to enjoy that race.

Scrap virtual Safety Car so the field is closed up during an incident, to make sure we get entertaining racing.

Fix the tyre issue so they don’t last, and let them use how much fuel they need to race flat out. If green fuel use is required, shorten the race a little.

Fix the in-car camera identification so we can tell who we are looking at. You can no longer see the car number or most of the drivers’ helmets. Just put a name sticker on the inside of the Halo.

Forget the technical and sort the basics.

More than half of F1 is strategy now, not racing.

Race 1 results

Sebastian Vettel Ferrari

Lewis Hamilton Mercedes

Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari

Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull

Fernando Alonso McLaren

Max Vestappen Red Bull

Nico Hulkenberg Renault

Valtteri Bottas Mercedes

Stoffel Vandoorne McLaren

Carlos Saunz Jnr Renault

Sergio Perez Force India

Esteban Ocon Force India

Charles Leclerc Sauber

Lance Stroll Williams

Brendon Hartley Toro Rosso

Retired

Romain Grosjean Haas

Kevin Magnussen Haas

Pierre Gasley Toro Rosso

Marcus Ericsson Sauber

Sergey Sirotkin Williams

All images are copyright of the F1 teams and used with permission