The 2018 Formula One season is up and running after the opening round in Melbourne. But the Australian Grand Prix created numerous talking points. Or F1 team -- Laurence Edmondson (F1 editor), Nate Saunders (F1 deputy editor), Jake Michaels (assistant editor) and columnists Kate Walker and Maurice Hamilton -- have weighed in on each of them below.
Did Ferrari win the Australian Grand Prix or did Mercedes lose it?
Laurence Edmondson: Mercedes lost it. Ferrari got its part of the strategy right, but Hamilton still could have won if Mercedes' maths had tallied up and shown the true threat from Vettel. So much of modern F1 racing is dictated by data, and while it usually wins races for teams this time it lost one.
Nate Saunders: This was a race lost by a computer, but the defect in Mercedes' data was only exposed due to Ferrari's strategy placing them under pressure. By pitting the team's sacrificial lamb Kimi Raikkonen earlier than anticipated, Ferrari forced Hamilton to cover the Finn with a stop of his own. Leaving Vettel out meant he was perfectly placed to capitalise on the drama which followed. It was a massively fortunate win, but sometimes fortune favours the brave.
Kate Walker: Mercedes lost it. Ferrari was incredibly clever with pit strategy, and was helped by the lack of Valtteri Bottas up front, but if the Silver Arrows had both got its algorithm right and anticipated Ferrari waiting for a VSC or Safety Car (at least one of which is inevitable at Albert Park, a notorious race of attrition), then we'd be moaning about a boring 2018 walkover dominated by Mercedes. The W09 is a beast, and Hamilton was on stunning form in Melbourne.
Jake Michaels: Mercedes was in a commanding position and really should have won in Melbourne so you have to look at the weekend as one they let slip. Sebastian Vettel was in the right place at the right time but even he couldn't believe his fortune of inheriting P1 before the race had hit half distance.
Maurice Hamilton: Mercedes dropped the ball and Ferrari grabbed a rare opportunity with both hands. It was an interesting reflection on how teams these days have their noses buried in computers and allow the essential minutiae to cloud a bigger picture that is sometimes driven by chance and circumstance. Saying that, you could argue Mercedes' longer pit stop (by 0.6s) also contributed to losing a certain win.
Did Daniel Ricciardo's three-place grid penalty for speeding under red flags fit the crime?
LE: It was too harsh. Ricciardo broke the rules and therefore deserved a punishment, but the stewards had the discretion to choose what level to pitch that punishment at. If he had crashed under a red flag and put a marshal in danger then he would have rightly been banned for at least one race, but given he was only marginally faster than the prescribed delta time and didn't even make it to the part of the track where the problem was, a reprimand would have been sufficient.
NS: Yes. This is a case where the rule itself, and not the enforcement of it, is flawed. The stewards risked creating a bad precedent or a grey area in its rules by just letting him get away with speeding under red flags (they already limited the penalty handed out having considered the facts). Ricciardo broke the rules as they are written in black and white.
KW: Yes. The rules exist for a reason, and while it might seem harsh to penalise D-Ric for what was a minor transgression, you can't give F1 teams an inch or they'll take a mile. Ricciardo made an honest mistake, but had he gotten away with it I could see other teams using the "right amount" of speeding under flags of any colour to gain a strategic advantage in future sessions.
JM: Copping a penalty of any kind at your home race is always going to be a bitter pill to swallow but rules are rules and Ricciardo did deserve his three-place grid drop. However, the fact this has become so contentious highlights the fact this rule needs to be revisited.
MH: It was much too harsh. Yes, on paper, a really serious offence. But given that the stewards clearly had some leeway, the drop from five to three grid places was very poor judgement. You could see Ricciardo had clearly backed off after being on the door handles at the start of the lap. He made a mistake but, given the options available and the precise circumstances, the punishment did not fit the crime.
Did the Halo impact your enjoyment of the race?
LE: The only issue was some of the onboard camera angles used in Friday practice, but they were dropped for the rest of the weekend. From trackside you barely noticed it, and the yellow camera and large numbers were enough to identify each driver when it blocked the helmet. The lack of overtaking on Sunday showed that F1 has much bigger problems to address.
NS: Not in the slightest. It has rendered the classic onboard shot slightly redundant, but F1 is looking at new solutions to work around the Halo.
KW: Not at all. It's not attractive, and I'm waiting for prettier, more effective solutions to appear in years to come. But once they'd sorted out the positioning of the on-board cameras it was easy to forget that 'the death of Formula One' was in action on the cars.
JM: As expected, the Halo wasn't really a factor once the racing got underway at Albert Park and fans will continue to get used to it as the season progresses. It's there for safety and even if it saves one life in the next ten years it has been a positive addition to Formula One.
MH: Didn't even think about it. The only reminder came from the on-board camera angle, which wasn't pretty. But it had no impact on enjoying or following the race.
Should the Virtual Safety Car (VSC) rules be tweaked to prevent a driver gaining an advantage in the pit-lane?
LE: The VSC's primary purpose is safety and in that regard it does its job. F1 has tried banning pit stops under the Safety Car and it creates other issues and disadvantages. Incidents add to the unpredictable nature of motor racing and I don't see that as a bad thing.
NS: There's no perfect solution to this. I say the rules should stay as they are -- Sunday's VSC injected an unpredictable twist into the race and it's not like teams don't understand how the system works. Teams always factor in if another driver is within their "VSC window" when considering strategy options, so this was is only an issue because Mercedes botched the situation so badly.
KW: No. Half of the fun of F1, whether as an observer or a participant, is the different approaches teams take to achieve the same desired outcome. If you can make the existing rules work to your advantage in a way your competition hasn't figured out, then you're doing a better job. F1 is all about exploiting the possibilities found within the regs, and the VSC pit-lane advantage is one we had never seen play out in this dramatic a fashion before.
JM: Yes. The idea of a VSC is to neutralize a race, not hand an advantage to another driver. The concept of a VSC is right, as a regular Safety Car can have an enormous impact on a race, but a re-look at how it works and when it should be deployed is needed. Just imagine if it decided a world championship...
MH: Meant to neutralise the race and did anything but. Either close the pit lane or have the VSC apply to the entry and exit. The argument that the rules as they stand bring a welcome variable merely indicates that the fundamentals of racing on track are in desperate need of attention. But that's another story...
On the basis of the first round, who would you tip for the title?
LE: Based on Mercedes' pace in both qualifying and the race, Hamilton is still the man to beat. However, Sunday's turn of events showed that even the fastest driver/car combination can be vulnerable and I still expect Red Bull to get a lot stronger later in the year.
NS: Before the season I said Max Verstappen and I'm going to keep my faith in Red Bull at this stage. Mercedes is clearly the benchmark and Ferrari was impressive, but Red Bull's race pace showed just how close to the front it is this year. It's a long old season and over 21 races I think Red Bull has the tools to win it.
KW: It's still got to be Mercedes. The car was on rails for most of the weekend, and watching Hamilton make the track shorter through clever cornering in practice was really exciting. None of the other drivers had the same confidence in their machine that Hamilton displayed, and that's the sort of thing that can make or break a championship.
JM: Even with Mercedes giving Ferrari a head start in 2018 it's looking as though the constructors' championship is once again in their hands. Lewis Hamilton looked in supreme form all weekend and it would almost be a bigger shock if he doesn't claim a fifth title this year.#
MH: Hamilton. If that incredible quali lap is an indication of his personal form, he's likely to become champion, even if Ferrari or Red Bull give Mercedes a hard time.