2026 Australian Grand Prix - Melbourne, March 06 - 08

[Artur Craft]

If Russell has any shred of self-respect or credibility, he should sincerely apologise for accusing Red Bull of sandbagging , when Mercedes were obviously doing it the whole time.

Yeah, I agree but to be fair, aside from Ferrari, Haas, Williams and Alpine, everybody was sandbagging, eventhough not as much as Mercedes. Racing Bulls is a lot better than indicated at testing and so is Audi, to an extent.

[djos]

Ok, running more power than needed then.

The comments above about the same engine in the other cars. Hardware is the same but I believe calibration can be different. And is different.

Probably Ferrari was pushing way too hard on testing and FP and tricked Mercedes to show more than needed. I´m sure they will recalibrate that for the next GP

How they know in advance how much is needed before they see the pace of the others? Probably they did not expect others to be that slow.

Exactly. Ferrari appeared to be a tough competitor and that fooled Mercedes into showing more than needed.

Btw, Perez destroyed Bottas. Was there any problem with Valteri´s car ?

Bottas sounded satisfied on the radio, nothing suggests there was an issue. Not sure why people surprised, I always expected Perez to prove his superiority in that pair.

I was chatting to a couple of Cadillac staff last night during the 7pm pit-lane walk, and they said they've had a lot of technical issues this weekend. They just weren't bad enough to stop them from running the cars.

[venkyhere]

Max could still have been on pole. It's not out of place for him to be 8 tenths faster than teammate. So season is not over yet.

Dude, please. That's an unsafe amount of copium. Max probably would have gone 0.2 faster than Hadjar. Max cannot bend the laws of physics. Albert Park is a power-centric track, and any PU advantages will massively govern laptimes differences. If this is the case in Albert Park, imagine tracks like Spa/Monza etc - it will be slaughter.

[Jambier]

If Ferrari got ADUO maybe they can challenge a bit more Mercedes ?

Let’s see.

[Gillian]

This is 2014 but with Bottas instead of Rosberg. That might even be a compliment for Antonelli, what a crappy performance but yet P2. That says it all really

[inox]

There are no 20 kph power advantages or whatever these analysts are smoking. It's Merc's chassis that is making the difference here.
https://i.postimg.cc/DzsfKNCs/speed(1).png
https://i.postimg.cc/66bkY0cJ/speed(2).png

Don't you see what is happening at end of long curved backstraight and on the next straight (Russell vs Hadjar)?

Red Bull runs out of juice and speed difference is indeed exceeding 20 km/h approaching the turn 9.

[Badger]

There are no 20 kph power advantages or whatever these analysts are smoking. It's Merc's chassis that is making the difference here.
https://i.postimg.cc/DzsfKNCs/speed(1).png
https://i.postimg.cc/66bkY0cJ/speed(2).png

Don't you see what is happening at end of long curved backstraight and on the next straight (Merc vs Red Bull)?

Red Bull runs out of juice and speed difference is indeed exceeding 20 km/h approaching the turn 9.

It's nowhere near 20 kph, the trace says it's about 6 kph down to T11. At the end of the curved straight it's less than that except for that little artefact where Russell's trace goes horizontal, that's just a bug. And there are other parts of the circuit where Hadjar has a similar advantage (start and end of lap). The Merc engine may have a marginal power advantage, but the RBPT is not far behind. Most of Merc's speed comes from great aero and efficiency. If you can carry 10 kph more onto the straight you don't need as much deployment to accelerate to top speed.

[inox]

If there is a bug in a graph we don't know for sure in which direction.

[Cemzz]

Mercedes is faster in the no KERS zone by McLaren and Ferrari by 14kmh in that short straight looking at the telemetry data

[AR3-GP]

Every single active F1 champion said these regulations are bad (Verstappen, Norris, Hamilton, Alonso). the FIA cannot continue like this.

[McL-H]

This is F2.

[Hammerfist]

Max could still have been on pole. It's not out of place for him to be 8 tenths faster than teammate. So season is not over yet.

Dude, please. That's an unsafe amount of copium. Max probably would have gone 0.2 faster than Hadjar. Max cannot bend the laws of physics. Albert Park is a power-centric track, and any PU advantages will massively govern laptimes differences. If this is the case in Albert Park, imagine tracks like Spa/Monza etc - it will be slaughter.

Yeah max is not going to be heads and shoulders faster than hadjar yet. By race 5 or 6 though I expect the gap to be similar to past teammates. Montoya was talking about it. It’s only a matter of time until they give max his toys on this car and his teammate can no longer drive the car. But it’s good to know hadjar is capable of p3 before they start rigging things. Watch he won’t make q3 after the summer break.

[inox]

The major problem with these rules is that marginally better efficiency in certain area has exponential effects. The good point is that a big gap in lap time may be reduced more easily.

But as it is now, overtakes will happen while both cars are harvesting energy on the straight and has nothing to do with driver skill.

[f1isgood]

The major problem with these rules is that marginally better efficiency in certain area has exponential effects. The good point is that a big gap in lap time may be reduced more easily.

But as it is now, overtakes will happen while both cars are harvesting energy on the straight and has nothing to do with driver skill.

Driver skillset as we are used to, in the braking and cornering phases during a stint or a push lap is primarily gone with these regulations. I am not sure what they're testing anymore really.

[Madhouse]

RIP F1