Well, that was fun. We attended the first Grand Prix of the new era as part of an extended holiday down under. It was the second time for us. Last time we were here pre-dated the American influence so it was more comfortable in terms of the crowd size. The ego driven ‘my crowd is bigger than your crowd’ F1 is in play here too now.

The crowd is big but it still good and like a British crowd. Enthusiastic, passionate, and knowledgeable, although we beat them in the volume of the singing of the national anthem.

The on-track commentary team were excellent. So too are the V8s. Twice the horsepower of the BTCC and just as bonkers.

Geek

As an unashamed F1 geek, I really enjoyed seeing the teams wrestle with the biggest change in regulations since the 1950s. I know they had Barcelona and Bahrain to shake down and test, but the first true challenge was a race weekend.

Paraphrasing that well know motor racing saying, “when qualy starts, the sandbagging stops.”

Sound and Smell

The cars sound better than last year. Presumably the MGU-H muted the exhaust. They also smell different. Our seats were remarkably close to the track (at the final turn), so we were able to sniff the exhaust gases from the new sustainable fuels.

The Beast

It was the last five minutes of FP3 when Mercedes unleashed the beast and George put in a lap one second faster than anyone else. I really did laugh out loud. And Toto’s smirk to camera is now a meme!

Breakdowns

I was pleasantly surprised how few technical failures there were too. You will have seen a lot compared with the end of era, bullet proof cars of last year. But given the scale of the changes, it was mightily impressive.

Aston Martin made two statements before the weekend to manage expectations. One relating to the vibration from the new Honda engine which limited running to protect driver health. And one explaining (or criticising) Honda for the loss of engineers who had worked on the earlier engine project. Given they set a low bar for the first Grand Prix, they did better than expected. They were not last in qualy and they got in some race laps.

Another new feature is the yellow flashing lights on the wing mirrors which switch on wen the cars have some form of failure. They are effective and unfortunately signalled the demise of Hulkenburg.

Local Hero

Papaya was the predominant colour in Melbourne. And Oscar spent a huge amount of time in interviews, etc. Unfortunately, he binned it before the start and while we were relieved it was not Lando when we first saw it on screen, it dampened the mood in the crowd which was a real shame.

Like we have adopted Alex Albion as an honorary Brit, the Aussies have adopted Bottas. Unfortunately, he also did not finish.

Vorsprung Durch Tecknik

Well done Audi. They built a power unit from scratch, with no customer teams from which to gather data, and managed an impressive qualy. Then points at their first attempt.

I said in my preview comments they have form at doing well when they enter racing categories. This is a particularly good start.

Rookie

There is only one this year, but I will stretch it to Hadjar too because he is a rookie in the F1 ‘seat from hell’.

First though, how good was Arvid in his first Grand Prix weekend. Extremely accomplished through practice and qualy. Then drove a great race to score points. But also made it extremely hard for Max to get past mid race and was not taking any grief through the pit lane either.

And Hadjar qualified third and raced very well until his RB Ford blew up. He was impressive last year (after his difficult start at this race) and he was very impressive here. And the car looks good!

Horner

I know many are not fans of the ex-Red Bull boss, but you cannot take it way from him how good that team is. He oversaw the first half of the development of the chassis. He set up Red Bull Powertrains which has produced an amazing power unit, with tremendous deployment capability. Drive to Survive showed how much his removal hurt.

But F1 has always been the piranha club.

Crash

I mentioned poor old Oscar (but he will bounce back). Max had one too, in qualy, which is highly unusual. Must have been car related as it looked like someone yanked on the handbrake and the car turned right. But Kimi’s was probably the most spectacular. Hats off to the Merc team for putting it back together because it was in a million bits.

The Race

At the circuit, the first few laps were wild and the crowd loved it. However, I have seen conflicting views – fake overtaking, video game style, etc. Also, it was a bit weird seeing and hearing the drivers back off along the straights to harvest and avoid ‘super clipping.’ What is that? Not sure if this made the TV but it refers to running out of electrical power and losing about 40mph – which makes life interesting for those following.

But I have every confidence that engineers will improve both harvesting and deployment to the point where drivers will be on full throttle for as long as they like. In the meantime, there will be some weird racing.

It is clear now that Mercedes is top, closely followed by Ferrari, followed by Red Bull and McLaren. Then a close midfield. It looks like Williams has some work to do to join in. The tail end Charlies are Aston Martin and Cadillac. We enjoyed cheering the six Brits, assuming we include Alex. Five of them were in the top ten – that bodes well for 2026.

It is going to be great fun watching the development race and see teams leapfrog each other. I think the engineering excellence in F1 means F1 has given a particularly good account of itself at its first race.

It will also be fun to be at Silverstone in July to see, first hand, what progress has been made.