Lewis Hamilton started on pole position but it was his Mercedes AMG Petronas teammate Nico Rosberg who led every lap of the 2014 Australian Grand Prix from third position. It is Rosberg's fourth career victory. Daniel Ricciardo started and finished second in front of his home Australian fans but was disqualified after it was found his car violated the regulation that stated fuel flow could not exceed 100kg/h. Red Bull is protesting the penalty.
Rookie Kevin Magnussen was promoted to second place in his first career start. He is the first Dane to podium in Formula One and first Dane to score points since his father Jan finished sixth in his final Formula One start in the 1998 Canadian Grand Prix. Magnussen's McLaren teammate Jenson Button finish third, his first podium since winning the 2012 season finale at Interlagos.
Fernando Alonso finished fourth with Valtteri Bottas finishing a career-best fifth, more than doubling the amount of career points scored and doubling amount of points Williams scored in 2013. Nico Hülkenberg finished sixth in his first career start for Force India with Kimi Räikkönen finishing seven in car #7. Toro Rosso drivers Jean-Éric Vergne and Daniil Kvyat finished eighth and ninth. Kvyat becomes the youngest driver to score in Formula One history, breaking the record set by Sebastian Vettel in the 2007 United States Grand Prix by 25 days. Sergio Pérez finished tenth in his first start for Force India.
Sebastian Vettel's nine race winning streak ended after he had an engine failure on lap three. Hamilton's day ended with an engine failure a lap earlier.
A few comments:
1. Not surprised Mercedes won.
2. Surprised the Lotus-Renaults of Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado did 43 and 29 laps respectively.
3. Surprised Kvyat scored.
4. Magnussen is going to win a race this year.
5. I feel bad for Ricciardo but rules are rules and the FIA made it known earlier in the week that they were going to be strict on the fuel flow limit.
The NASCAR race has finally got restarted from Bristol. I think we (everyone in motorsports) need to set a limit for rain delays. First off, I understand the NASCAR race didn't reach halfway, so it wasn't official. I understand waiting longer to restart the race and that Bristol has lights but there should be a limit set to let fans know what to expect and not hold them hostage waiting for answers. Take the Daytona 500 and the Nationwide Series race earlier this year at Phoenix. Long delays and uncertainty about what was going to happen.
My proposal:
If a race does not reach 50% and is not restarted in four hours, then it will be postponed to the next day.
Between 51% and 66% completion, if the race is not restarted in two, then it is declared officially over.
Between 67% and 90% completion, if the race is not restarted in an hour, then it is declared officially over.
If a race has gone over 90% completion and is red flagged for rain, then the race is declared officially over.
It gives a common courtesy to fans to know how long they will be forced to wait before the race gets restarted, if it gets restarted.
Moving on to the 12 Hours of Sebring and the massive accidents involving Prototype Challenge cars. First, their was David Ostella and Frankie Montecalvo and then Gaston Kearby and Alex Tagliani.
Let's go back in time for a second. Does everyone remember where the PC class came from? The Oreca FLM09 was created to be a car for a ladder series to prepare drivers for prototype racing in LMP1 and LMP2. In 2009, the only season of the Formula Le Mans Cup took place. However, at that time both the European Le Mans Series and American Le Mans Series were struggling for larger grids. In 2009, ALMS averaged 24.5 cars on the grid for ten races. In 2010, the PC class was introduced and the average starting grid increased to 34.1 cars.
While the PC class has gone from a class to balloon the grid size to one that can produce some really good racing (as was seen last night between Colin Braun and Bruno Junqueira) is it still needed? Sixty-seven cars took part in the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona and 64 cars started yesterday at Sebring and excluding the two years Sebring was run as a joint race between ALMS and ILMC/WEC, it was the largest starting grid at Sebring since 1997.
Is the PC class still necessary? Would ten fewer cars on track be a bad thing? It would open up space and the amount of inexperience would decrease.
If anything, maybe the PC class and Prototype Lites should be combined into one development series. The two series are coming together at Kansas and VIR and maybe that's the way it should be for. Two, one-hour races at 8-10 rounds as support events. It would give the developing drivers the chance to experience driving on track with cars at different paces and they could learn how to negotiate traffic. The PC fastest race lap from Sebring was just under 3.5 seconds faster than the fastest race lap by the Prototype Lites at Sebring. It doesn't seem like that is a difference that would cause many problems and while the Prototype Lites at Sebring had a healthy 26 entrants, adding 10 PC cars wouldn't cause overcrowding.
The only question is, would the current PC teams go along with that? Two rounds is one thing but being completely removed from the top championship, not being allowed to participate at the big races may discourage participation, reduce sponsorship for teams and drivers such as Bruno Junqueira, Colin Braun, Renger van der Zande, Sam Bird, David Heinemeier Hansson and Tom Kimber-Smith may be out of full-time jobs.
I am not an expert on the subject and who knows how PC cars and Prototype Lites will race together on track? I guess we will find out at Kansas and VIR before we will know if this idea could ever become a reality.
