Leclerc romps to dominant win in Melbourne; Perez P2, Russell P3; Verstappen, Sainz DNF

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc absolutely dominated Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix, winning the race handily after starting from pole and leaving even his closest pursuers far, far behind. The Monegasque’s pace in his Prancing Horse here at Albert Park was somewhat of a a surprise, because even after qualifying in the top spot on Saturday the savvy take around the paddock was that Red Bull would have the true race pace. But the famed Scuderia’s return to championship contending form after several years mired in mediocrity was confirmed in this first Aussie GP in two years, as neither the Red Bull of Max Verstappen or Sergio Perez could touch Leclerc on this day. In fact, Verstappen was forced to retire the car on Lap 39 of this 58-lap contest when his engine or hydraulic lines developed a leak leading to a small conflagration in the engine bay. The Dutch reigning world champion, who had been sitting comfortably in second during the race despite not being able to truly challenge Leclerc for victory, instead was forced to resign himself to his second DNF in three races to start the 2022 campaign. The Red Bull is certainly fast but reliability could well be its Achilles heal in what is shaping up to be a season long battle against Ferrari. That left it to Verstappen’s teammate Sergio Perez to fly the Red Bull team’s flag, which the Mexican did with aplomb by taking an easy P2 on the day, albeit over 20.5-seconds in arrears of Leclerc. To put the exclamation point on his performance, the Ferrari man also took the bonus point by setting race’s fastest lap, reaping the full 26 on a day when his key rival Verstappen scored a big fat zero.

Pics courtesy GrandPrix247.com

All was not totally sunshine and roses at the fabled Scuderia from Maranello, however. Their number two Carlos Sainz had a disastrous weekend, following his somewhat unlucky P9 qualifying when he and the team were caught out but a late Red Flag in Q3 with an early DNF on Sunday when the veteran Spaniard misjudged his braking going into Turn 10 on Lap 2, overshot and then beached himself in the gravel. So like Verstappen, Sainz failed to score for his team in Melbourne, as well, only in his case he barely notched any laps at all and it appeared to be entirely his fault. Sainz will probably not be happy that the next race is two week’s away, since he’ll have all that time to stew on what he freely admitted was a “disaster” of a GP weekend.

On the other hand, once mighty Mercedes found a bit of form Down Under, which, aided by those key retirements by two top contenders, saw George Russell take the last podium position in P3 and Lewis Hamilton capture a valuable P4. To be fair, Hamilton was bit hard done by the timing of a Safety Car (once again!) when he pitted for fresh Pirellis on Lap 22 and then Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel, returning for his first race of the season after being out with Covid, promptly binned it into the wall. This enabled his teammate Russell to dive in for the cheap stop under the SC a lap later and gifted the younger Englishman the valuable track position to leapfrog Hamilton in the process, leading directly to that podium finish. Regardless, Mercedes has got to be encouraged by the development of their chassis after there were a lot of furrowed brows to start the season. It remains doubtful that the Silver Arrows can elevate themselves up to the level of Ferrari and Red Bull in this new formula after having started so far behind those two now-elite teams but the season is certainly still in its infancy so anything is possible.

Further back in the field, it was much needed double-points scoring day for McLaren, with Lando Norris taking P5 and native son Daniel Ricciardo P6 at his home Grand Prix, the best result for the team so far after a rather rocky start. Alpine’s Esteban Ocon battled overheating issues to nurse his car home to a quality P7 finish, while Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas rallied to take P8 after his long streak of Q3 qualifying came to an end on Saturday and the Finn had started from P12 on the grid. AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly came home P9 in what has been a disappointing start for his team. But Williams’ Alex Albon pulled the neatest trick of the race by taking the last point in P10 after running his Hard Pirellis all the way from the start of the race until the penultimate lap when he made the mandatory change to prevent exclusion, a crazily impressive feat when you think about it, especially after such relatively more experienced drivers as Fernando Alonso and Kevin Magnussen tried to pull of the long first stint without success.

Top 10 finishers of the Australian GP:

Complete race results available via Formula1.com.

The next race is a fortnight away — the Emigila-Romagna Grand Prix from Imola, aka Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari. That makes it a decent amount of time for Ferrari to savor Leclerc’s win and attend to Sainz’s battered confidence, as well as ample time for Red Bull to try and determine the source of and fix their reliability woes. Hope to see you then to find out how it all shakes out!