80: What happened in the Australian Grand Prix?

The first race of the 2016 Formula One season happened this morning.

A few things of note came out of it.

• A win for Nico Rosberg to open the season.
• A huge accident, thankfully with no injuries.
• Points for the debuting Haas F1 team.

Nico Rosberg took advantage of a misjudgement by Ferrari during the red flag period brought about by Fernando Alonso’s massive accident in the first third of the race. The Ferrari pair of Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen had lead the way after taking the lead at the start. Not changing Vettel’s tyres during the red flag break would lose the race for them. Rosberg did get fresh tyres negating the need for an additional pit stop later on.

Lewis Hamilton had dropped to sixth at one point but recovered to take second.

Before the red flag, the race looked to be building to a crescendo of strategic excitement as the three tyre options in use this season were being used differently throughout the field. The accident, caused by Alonso running into the back of the newcomer Haas F1 team’s Esteban Gutierrez, meant a twenty-minute break in the middle of the race so that drivers had a free choice of tyres for the next phase of the race.

This lead to my third interesting point. Romain Grosjean decided to take advantage of this and make his only change of tyres to the hardest option – the medium ones. Not stopping again put Grosjean into his points paying position – a sixth place finish no less.

Jenson Button pitted just before the red flag, and he restarted on super softs which proved to be the incorrect choice. Pace-wise, it seemed that Button was a bit slower this weekend compared to Alonso but overall McLaren pace should be enough to compete for points regularly this year.

Daniil Kyvat didn’t start the race after a break down at the formation lap and Kimi Raikkonen also parked up with a fire on his Ferrari.

Overall, the race pretty much erased the disappointment of  qualifying.