Austrailian Grand Prix Peview

The Albert Park Circuit:

In 1996 Melbourne began its tenure as the host of the Australian Grand Prix after Adelaide hosting the race for 11 years. The Grand Prix is run on the streets of Albert Park but is far from the typical layout associated with a street track with fast sweeping corners and numerous high speed sections.

The circuit lends itself to mechanical and driver errors though with heavy braking from high speeds occurring three times during the lap putting tremendous pressure on the reliability of the brakes, gearboxes and the longevity of the tyres. The first corner has been the scene of numerous incidents in the past, none more spectacular than Ralf Schumacher’s exit at the start of the 2002 race. Turn three is the prime overtaking spot during the race with a slow second gear right hander after a long straight. This has been the sight of daring moves in the past but also moves that went wrong such as Ralf and Villeneuve in 2001.

The middle of the lap is when the cars are at their most spectacular with the high speed left, right at turns 11 and 12 the drivers favourite section of the lap where drivers thread the eye of a needle at 140 mph. This corner can catch even the best drivers out in qualifying as drivers push as hard as possible for their grid positions. From there drivers have a relatively easy time to end the lap with not much to really challenge them until the final corner where exit speeds are crucial as it leads onto the longest straight of the lap.

Setup for the Australian Grand Prix:

By its nature as a tempory cicuit with this weekend the only running for the entire year the teams will be chasing the setup for their car for most of the weekend. As the track gets more use it will ‘rubber in’ as a racing line is developed and the surface will get grippier and faster as the weekend progresses. This posses issues for the engineers as with Park Ferme rules not allowing changes to the car once qualifying is over the drivers will not have ideal setups for either qualifying or the race. Do you set the car up to get as far up the grid as possible or do you look to have better pace during the race? If you are a front running team qualifying will take preference as Bahrain showed overtaking was all but impossible for the cars at the front of the field. But if you are a midfield team it might be prudent to take a more long term view and have the car setup for the race and force overtaking moves-the midfield had some great dices in Bahrain even if the TV producers failed to look into the middle of the pack.

To achieve fast laps in Bahrain drivers need two things-a good front end and good traction coming out of the numerous second gear corners. Understeer will kill lap time around this circuit so drivers and engineers need to find a near perfect front end balance to achieve the required lap times.

Strategy for the Australian Grand Prix:

It would be surprising if drivers at the front raced any strategy other than the one stop that were the norm in Bahrain. The safety car has been quite prevalent in the past in Melbourne (nine times in the past four races there) and its intervention could change the strategy with drivers electing for a ‘free’ pitstop when the race is under caution and running at a slower speed.

The only fly in the ointment could be tyre wear. Last year the super-soft Bridgestone tyres struggled to last for any significant length of time and drivers on the harder compound were in the ascendency. This was quite clear with the performance of Robert Kubica in the BMW as he closed right in on Vettel’s super-soft shod Red Bull. The two crashed after Kubica tried to make his move but the potential for tyre woes could lead to teams having to make an unexpected second stop and shaking up the order considerably. The teams had issues in Bahrain with tyre wear and had to coax through the race so as not to use too much of the performance, Melbourne is considerably harder on tyres than Bahrain so we could see some great excitement at the end if drivers are on different cycles of tyre compounds as the race reaches its conclusion.

Weather for the Australian Grand Prix

There is a good chance of rain disrupting either qualifying or the race with showers expected in the Melbourne area in the evening. This could really shake up the Grand Prix but while rain generally brings excitement to the fans with the potential for the unexpected it is worth remembering that if it does rain as the race reaches its conclusion visibility may become so poor that the race will be red flagged. This could happen as a result of changing the start time of the Grand Prix to late afternoon to suit European fans unwilling to watch the race in the middle of the night.