2023 Australian Grand Prix

And now, a month long break before the next race.

Ridiculous.
 
Quite a crazy event for the "best" drivers in the world.
The race official calls did not help matters. When you throw
a red flag with 2 to go for a tire carcass, it does look Nascar-ish.
Piastri had himself a day posting an 8th in his 3rd F1 start
at his home track. Looks like the Red Bull has left the barn.
 
Mercedes certainly kept it interesting. If they can find a little more speed they will be right there.

As far as the "final restart," I believe the order is established by the last completed lap. By the rules, they were required to do it the way they did it. Yeah, it was messy and stupid, but them's the rules.

Now matter how we feel about it, everything has to be done by the book. If they added a lap or called the race or came up with some other crazy solution, the complaining and anger would be a lot worse, and so would the protests. In the past I have been critical of the FIA for not following it's own rule book, but this time they stick to it and everyone is mad about it.

Where they really screwed up was with Sainz' penalty. Since they "restarted" in the order of the last completed lap. Alonso didn't lose a position, so there was essentially no foul, or at least the "victim" wasn't compromised. Carlos' supposed offense wasn't even that bad, and he doesn't get into that many scrapes anyway. It looked like a little understeer, which we have seen the FIA forgive in the past. Carlos goes from a solid and well-earned fourth to out of the points. At least they didn't call in Masi to straighten it all out.

Apparently the results are not official because Haas has filed a protest, so everything from third on back could possibly change depending on how the protests are handled. There's still plenty of time for them to fix it, or maybe even screw it up even worse.

In the end, at least this time there was a little suspense instead of Red Bull running away with it. I nodded off for a bit, but the biggest lead I saw was around 8 seconds, so this was no obscene blowout. We had a race on our hands, so let's hope that form carries over to next time.
 

MSN

www.msn.com

This was based on Article 57.3 of the Sporting Regulations that states the order for restarts: “will be taken at the last point at which it was possible to determine the position of all cars.”
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In the past red flag restarts were determined by the order of the last completed lap. I suppose with today's technology they can track the cars better, but apparently they didn't go far enough to get a reading.

If the Haas protest were upheld, Alpine would have room to complain, and so would have just about everyone. This was just a weird set of circumstances that all happened at once, but the rules are clear. This doesn't quite match up to Twilight Zone standards, but it was sure messy.
 
I recorded this race and watched it early this morning. I always add an hour to the recording time and glad I did. I was entertained listening to the announcers trying to make sense of the ending F1 was attempting to get right. Madness.
 
I normally give F1 credit for not going full Nacar yellow fever resets, could not do that with this race. The allowed tire changes and adjustments duing red flag suck too. They at least could make you go to the back of the line on the restart for changes at that time
 
Throw the red flag and don't allow them to touch the cars.

They were sort of trapped by their own rules. If they had done it any other way it would have been wrong and unfair, so they didn't have a choice. Max was going to win anyway, so no one except maybe Sainz got screwed.
 
In retrospect, they could have just finished under yellow, but they probably didn't want to hear a bunch of complaining that they had a yellow finish, and ran the last lap like they did. Sloppy and stupid, but they couldn't do anything else after they red flagged it with one to go.

I think they boxed themselves in and had to go by the rules. I think they should have finished under the safety car.

The Sainz thing though was brutal. How do you lose eight spots in five seconds? Completely unfair and Carlose got the hose, but then again, by the rule there was no other way to do it.

No sense in letting it ruin what was otherwise a pretty thrilling race.
 
Doc Austin said:
Throw the red flag and don't allow them to touch the cars.

They were sort of trapped by their own rules. If they had done it any other way it would have been wrong and unfair, so they didn't have a choice. Max was going to win anyway, so no one except maybe Sainz got screwed.
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I agree they have to be consistent with the rules and try to never change the enforcement methods during a race.
But I do think they should change that rule during a down time between races (like now).
 
Some of the problem at Melbourne is being attributed to the thermal sensitivity of the tires, which had a pretty narrow operating window this past weekend. Qualifying is usually just a couple of laps but the track was pretty packed at all times Saturday with drivers running multiple laps to get tires up to temperature. The F2 races saw multiple drivers head straight into the grass out of the pits with fresh tires, and Verstappen’s mid-race excursion at the penultimate corner was also supposedly because the team asked him not to push after he gained a big enough lead and lost some temperature.

The next tire tender starts in 2025 and there are reports suggesting Bridgestone may want to bid to get back into the series.

 
I only caught the first few laps on Sunday and just finished watching the rest. Apart from the NASCAR-esque GWC chaos it was a good race with lots of passing.

I don't understand the penalty against Sainz at all. The results were reversed so there basically was no damage done.
(Except to Alpine, they got screwed badly)
 
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