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Tops and flops: Melbourne’s standouts and flops amid Mercedes rout

Photo: Race Pictures

20:01, 07 Mar

byTobia Elia

The first qualifying session of the season in Melbourne delivered a mix of confirmations, disappointments and a few surprises as well.

Top: Mercedes are in a league of their own

This firmly belongs in the confirmations category. A Mercedes one-two in Melbourne had been widely anticipated, and that is exactly what unfolded - although Antonelli’s heavy crash late in FP3 briefly raised fears that only one W17 would make it out for qualifying.

The Brackley mechanics pulled off an impressive turnaround to get the car ready in time, and the Italian repaid their effort with an excellent second place.

An eight-tenths gap to the third-placed car is perhaps even larger than the most optimistic pre-weekend predictions, but Mercedes have been preparing for this sweeping regulatory overhaul for years - and just as they did in 2014, they appear to have nailed it from the outset.

Top: Hadjar channels the 2014 Ricciardo on his Red Bull qualifying debut

The Frenchman’s start to life at Red Bull has so far followed a remarkably similar script to what happened twelve years ago, when the Australian made his debut alongside a four-time world champion who, much like Verstappen today, endured a difficult weekend - albeit through little fault of his own.

Back then it was the local hero, making his first appearance for Red Bull, who carried the team’s hopes and emerged as the closest challenger to Mercedes’ dominance, a scenario not too dissimilar to what we saw in qualifying today.

Whether Hadjar can hold on to the final podium spot in the race remains to be seen, but for now it has been an outstanding debut - especially when compared to the struggles Red Bull’s second drivers have faced in recent years.

Photo: Race Pictures

Top: Lindblad hides rookie status with big qualifying performance

Long known for his raw speed - but also for the occasional mistakes in junior categories - Arvid Lindblad has delivered a near-flawless start to his Formula 1 career this weekend.

Quick and consistent throughout practice, the young Briton backed it up with another composed display in qualifying, finishing just behind his team-mate.

Reaching Q3 with Racing Bulls on his very first weekend in the sport - and with cars that have already proven extremely tricky to master, as Verstappen and Antonelli have shown - is a clear sign that Helmut Marko may once again have got his latest bet absolutely right.

Flop: Aston Martin already looking ahead to China

Alonso managed to extract the maximum from a difficult situation, dragging his Aston Martin into seventeenth place in qualifying and at least avoiding a start from the very back of the grid amid the team’s troubled start to the season.

Despite that, the Spaniard admitted after the session in conversation with GPblog that the team may have to adopt a cautious approach during the race. With Aston Martin currently short on battery components, even the smallest warning sign could prompt an early retirement in order to avoid causing more serious damage.

Matters were even more complicated on the other side of the garage, as his team-mate did not take part in qualifying and will therefore line up at the back of the grid for tomorrow’s race.

For a team that can boast the most acclaimed designer on the grid - and arguably in Formula 1 history - and that entered the season with such high expectations, the result in Melbourne can only be seen as a major disappointment.

Photo: Race Pictures

Flop: McLaren slip from dominance to playing catch-up

A shake-up in the pecking order was expected with the new regulations, yet a fifth and sixth place for the team that dominated the past two seasons - and fields the reigning world champion - still feels like a rather underwhelming way to start the year.

Both drivers ended up almost a second off pole-sitter Russell, with Norris looking the more troubled of the two before pulling out a late improvement that helped limit the damage.

For a team also running the Mercedes power unit - widely tipped as the benchmark of this new era and something even Verstappen had warned about - you would have expected at least one of the two cars to make the second row.

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