ruaraidh's blog

Some quick thoughts after the first race of the season; Australia.

Racing

Racing looked normal or slightly improved (Specifically RUS vs LEC) compared to previous years. My fondness for the racing associated with the ground-effect era waned as the cars became increasingly likely to be in a Trulli-train.

Overtaking games are excellent to watch in my opinion. It seems the drivers can choose to limit corners to advantage other corners. Merc doesn't appear to red-flash harvest as often as Ferrari.

It is good to see reliability back as a factor in F1. We've been spoilt with amazing reliability. I know this will irk many fans but it's been a staple of F1 since forever and I like its return, the cars will get more reliable with time.

Some things never change; Ferrari strategy blunder at the 1st VSC 🥴

Production

The on-board graphics, this year, are really rubbish. Somehow less reactive than in previous years (gears and rev range massively out of synch) and more cluttered with less intuitive information. It's a mess and it would not surprise me if it's slop-code.

* “Deploy” and “Recharge” are shaped vertically like they've used brackets as the alignment. They're both blue with white text. The only help is deploy is beside the green acceleration graphic and recharge is beside the red brake graphic. * Centrally speed (both in mph and kph) exist either side of “Boost” and “Overtake”, with a graphic of a battery to show state of charge 🔋 at the bottom. * The gears are to the right, disconnected to speed and connected to the “active aero” text and graphic. * On the left is the position relative to a driver and also the turn number. * Obviously every country can speak/read English and has a 4K screen to see the text with ease.

For the season

If this race is anything to go by, this year could have an excellent title fight between Ferrari and Mercedes. Probable podiums for Hamilton, which will be amazing to see (he also needs to confidence of that possibility).

I think the FIA need to increase fuel-flow or something to allow the cars to have more energy later on the straights, perhaps more fuel-flow for harvesting? With that in mind, it will be interesting to see how the teams develop over the season, I will be especially interested to compare laps at pre-season testing, race and end-season testing from Barcelona. I expect significantly less super-clipping, faster laps and more predictable laps by the end-of-season test.

As always the cars have it in F1.

My thoughts

I quite enjoyed the race. I especially enjoyed the battle early on with Russell and LeClerc. It bodes well for the season. The rest of the race felt kind of normal and the super-clipping etc doesn't negatively impact “the spectacle”, except in qualifying, that seemed less on the ragged edge than I had hoped. I love that Audi did well and that Cadillac had 1 car finish was so very good for them. Not a aprticular fan that so many cars got lapped but then, it's F1 and that's a return to how it used to be so it's kind of meh in terms of outrage. I guess it feels more like the pre-ground-effect era which is kind of fine.

Verstappen flippant thought: Of course he doesn't like the new cars, he's not winning. I expect the media to make his voice the loudest to generate clicks.

#F1 #Formula1 #FormulaOne #AustraliaGrandPrix

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