The Red Bull struggled to get heat into its tires coming off the line. He faced a few more hurdles this time, and the three standing starts posed a serious challenge. Max Verstappen (Red Bull)Ī very different win for Verstappen from the sheer dominance of his Bahrain victory last month. To bag a confident second-place finish when the car was far from its best was a particularly striking display from Hamilton. Mercedes is still exploring new directions with its car design concept yielding impressive results in the wind tunnel, according to the team. Hamilton and Mercedes may look back on it as an early turning point in the season. Although he didn’t have the pace to keep his old rival back, Hamilton managed his tires brilliantly and soaked up the pressure from Fernando Alonso. Hamilton was in excellent form all weekend, qualifying third and moving up to second at the start with an aggressive move on Verstappen at Turn 3.
But Australia significantly built confidence for both parties heading into the ‘spring break’ before Baku. Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes)Īre Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes back? Too early to say. And if you missed it, here’s our criteria and ranking process from our explainer following the Bahrain opener. But we debated between Alex Albon and Pierre Gasly and whether Sergio Perez should be included (he had a good fightback, but his qualifying mistake was glaring).įriendly reminder: these are about the race weekend, not the season as a whole. Out of the 10 drivers we chose, we only had seven names in common, with four relatively in the same ballpark (like Lando Norris and Nico Hülkenberg). We will admit, though, that this is the farthest apart we have been on the rankings this season, so cases were made and settled while piecing this together. Some still made it into our top 10, so strong was their performance otherwise.
It was easier to determine which drivers didn’t drop the ball at one point or another when working out the power rankings.
The late restart with two laps to go offered the chance to go from hero to zero in a matter of seconds, undoing plenty of good work and blowing a shocking result.
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