F1 drivers line up to complain after opening high-speed procession in Melbourne

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Kevin Eason27 March 2017

Lewis Hamilton told Australian racegoers that he wants to play himself in a movie of his extraordinary life in Formula One.

If he makes it to the big screen, Britain’s three-time world champion might be backed up a bevy of bureaucrats performing more knee-jerks than the cast of Riverdance.

What should have been a formality of victory at the Australian Grand Prix yesterday at the unveiling of the brave new era of F1 turned to consternation — for Hamilton and the rulemakers, who appear to have put their collective feet in it again. They have made the cars bigger and faster but they forgot the important bit: whether drivers would be able to race wheel-to-substantially-bigger-wheel.

Hamilton, the sport’s ace overtaker, discovered what he feared most about the new season when Pete Bonnington, his race engineer, got onto the radio to warn him that he had to pass a slower but determined Max Verstappen to regain his lead after a pit stop that proved too early. Hamilton’s reply was to the point: “I don’t know how you expect me to pass.”

Lewis Hamilton (rear) found himself unable to battle it out with eventual winner Sebastian Vettel (front) Photo: William West/AFP/Getty Images
William West/AFP/Getty Images

Oh dear. That could be the season in a sentence. While Hamilton stared at the back of Verstappen’s Red Bull, Sebastian Vettel was off down the road to a first victory for Ferrari since September 2015. My, it was a long time coming for the four-time world champion and his win was greeted with ecstasy by a Formula One public longing for someone to break the Mercedes hegemony of the past three seasons.

Suddenly, Hamilton, who had to be content with second place, has a fight on his hands. He calls it a battle between the “best of the best”, champion against champion, the two men who have collected six of the past seven world titles between them.

On the evidence of this opening race in Melbourne, it could be a fight without a punch being thrown. Overtaking was almost non-existent, save for a late drama involving Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon. The drivers who universally welcomed more muscular motors and record speeds suddenly woke up to racing in which there will be, well, no racing. They lined up to complain.

Felipe Massa, the Brazilian brought back to Williams, asked: “What overtaking? For the driver it’s fun, but definitely overtaking is more difficult than how it was.”

A gloomy Verstappen, who set the record last season for overtaking moves, added: “It was hard to follow and drive close behind others. As soon as you get within two seconds you can really feel it could destroy your tyres.”

And Valtteri Bottas, Hamilton’s new Mercedes team-mate, had his say, despite finishing third: “It’s a shame. It’s going to be difficult in places to battle with similar cars.”

It turns out that the desperation of the bureaucrats and team owners who run the sport to curb Mercedes might have ended up damaging it. Again. Knee-jerk reactions to every perceived crisis set off a series of unintended consequences and now we have drivers having a blast in cars that bring PlayStation action to life for them, while the fans watch a high-speed procession.

Almost two years ago, Hamilton warned about new regulations that have promoted the importance of aerodynamics and grip levels that allowed him to set a lap record in qualifying in Melbourne at the expense of the art of racing. “It’s definitely a lot worse, as I anticipated,” he said. “I hope that doesn’t mean that for the rest of the year it is more of a train. I want to be closer to cars with more wheel-to-wheel battling. It’s through pit stops that we’re racing now.”

There will be a hand hovering over the rulebook right now after this procession Down Under and Jean Todt, the president of the sport’s governing body, the FIA, said hours before the race that the £2million F1 cars were “too sophisticated, expensive and complicated”. Er, so who made the rules, Mr Todt? Exactly.

But it would be a mistake to pass judgment after a single outing on a street track not known as a theatre of overtaking. Now China in a fortnight is a different matter: there was a record 128 overtakes on the Shanghai track last season and Hamilton claimed his own record with 18 moves as he clawed his way from the back of the grid.

Hamilton did not win that race and Vettel was outgunned into second place by a dominant Nico Rosberg, who underlined the superiority of Mercedes under the old rules. Now the rules are all new — but if there is a Shanghai train, then we will have confirmation that Formula One’s Brave New World of fatter, faster cars was just an illusion.

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