2025 Australian Grand Prix - Melbourne, March 14 - 16

[dren]

Antonelli was impressive. Perhaps he is the generational tallent Mercedes seem to think he is.

[CHT]

Antonelli was impressive. Perhaps he is the generational tallent Mercedes seem to think he is.

At least he complete the race without much incidents. Without retirement, he may not finish P5.
China will be a better place to see how he perform among other rookies.

[chrisc90]

How was there not a unsafe rejoin there for Oscar?

[Hoffman900]

How was there not a unsafe rejoin there for Oscar?

Wet grass = zero control. Ever drive on wet grass, on slicks? It might as well be ice.

Rain dumping on you mid corner while on slicks isn’t exactly something you can control as well.

Not everything in F1 needs to be a rule / action / enforced upon.

[vanburin]

Similar at imola. It's the Honda engine calibration. It almost looks and sounds like traction control, but it's how they map the engine i guess. Max always get strong launches.
Someone mentioned the race being boring. It was now that I remember. Simply no overtaking or even the impression that an overtake can happen. Cars too wide and heavy and stiff.
Very poor formula for racing. It only looked good at the start of 2022

While this all may be true (the cars are DEFINITELY too wide these days), let's not rush to a quick judgement after this race, at a track that is notorious for discouraging overtaking. It has become slightly better since the re-design from 2022 and on, but it's still a very tough track to line up overtakes. I mean, having (better yet, requiring) 4 DRS zones is a bit wonky in and of itself!

China should be a better representation of what's to come. Though maybe not as drastic as that 2016 race

[bananapeel23]

Antonelli was impressive. Perhaps he is the generational tallent Mercedes seem to think he is.

I think that should be pretty obvious.

Mercedes clearly considers him to be a Verstappen level talent with how much trust they placed in him from such a young age. They clearly did not want to risk losing him to Red Bull or Ferrari like thye did with Verstappen, so they did everything in their power to not just get him into F1 as fast as possible, but also to get him into a top seat as fast as possible. Antonelli is literally the reason that Hamilton ended up in Ferrari.

Mercedes clearly felt they needed to promise Antonelli a top seat quickly in order to keep him, especially with how badly Perez was performing and how replaceable Sainz is. The way they intended to do it was by getting him the Williams seat in 2025 and the Mercedes seat in 2026. This forced them to offer Hamilton a one year contract, which triggered the Ferrari shuffle.

I remember Mercedes hyping him up even back in 2021 when he was still in karts. It was very obvious that they were going to fast-track him to F1 even back then, as long as he didn't fall completely flat in cars, which he didn't. He completely blitzed the field in every junior formula he raced in up until F2. I'd argue his junior record is at least a match for Leclerc, who I consider to have the best junior category record of anyone on the current grid.

In F2 he was still great and beat Bearman convincingly, despite Bearman being an F1 quality driver in his own right and a year older. He was probably the best or second best driver on that F2 field, but Prema was absolutely awful last year.

Mercedes expects Antonelli to become better than Russell, and they might actually be correct given how insane his junior category record was, especially for someone so young. Personally I expect him to turn out to be at least on the level of Leclerc, perhaps even as good as Verstappen. I also expect him to get poached by Ferrari basically as soon as Hamilton decides to retire, given the fact that he's Italian.

[bananapeel23]

Similar at imola. It's the Honda engine calibration. It almost looks and sounds like traction control, but it's how they map the engine i guess. Max always get strong launches.
Someone mentioned the race being boring. It was now that I remember. Simply no overtaking or even the impression that an overtake can happen. Cars too wide and heavy and stiff.
Very poor formula for racing. It only looked good at the start of 2022

While this all may be true (the cars are DEFINITELY too wide these days), let's not rush to a quick judgement after this race, at a track that is notorious for discouraging overtaking. It has become slightly better since the re-design from 2022 and on, but it's still a very tough track to line up overtakes. I mean, having (better yet, requiring) 4 DRS zones is a bit wonky in and of itself!

China should be a better representation of what's to come. Though maybe not as drastic as that 2016 race

I don't think width really is the issue people make it out to be. Cars were even wider back in the 80s and remained at 200cm wide until 1997.

The real issue is car length, not car width. Even then I think an argument can be made that length isn't even the issue either, but rather weight. The really heavy cars aren't as nimble and skittish as they used to be, so late and heavy braking isn't as easy as it used to be, meaning it is more difficult to overtake.

Still, the 2022-2025 regs have been great and there have been so many classic races in the last few years. Yes they look a bit bulky and could really benefit from being smaller, but the small field spread we currently have is arguably better and more important than smaller cars.