Mark Hughes: 'There's no skill in F1 overtaking - it's like passing a car on the motorway'

The George Russell/Charles Leclerc dogfight in the early laps of the Australian Grand Prix certainly got the new F1 off to an electrifying start in terms of the visuals. It’s a pity their scrap was broken up by the strategy diversion Ferrari took by not pitting their cars under a lap 12 VSC, as Mercedes brought both Russell and Kimi Antonelli in for a time-cheap tyre change. That was the turning point of the race which secured Mercedes its 1-2 finish and left Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton only third and fourth in a Ferrari which might have fought for the win.

The Russell/Leclerc dice which thrilled so many fans was however very different to how it looked. Most of the passing and re-passing was not old-fashioned Formula Ford-style contests of slipstream and late braking. When the lead car is suddenly bereft of around 450 of its 1,000 horsepower and the straight hasn’t ended yet, then of course the chasing car, still with its extra 450bhp of electrical power, is going to sail by. Especially as the total drag is not increasing with speed to anything like the same extent as before. It isn’t really an overtaking move, but just like faster traffic on a motorway passing slower vehicles.

This is where the drivers – who on the whole are not liking the new ‘50/50’ electrical/combustion style of racing at all – and many fans are diverging. Superficially, it looks fantastic. As a contest of driving skills it means nothing. It’s still controlled by the driver – but those passes into Turn 9 Leclerc was making in retaliation every time Russell had passed him early in the lap came as a result of something Leclerc was doing three-quarters of a lap earlier. Not something skilful, merely tactical; taking less speed through the slower corners at the end of the lap in order to have enough battery not to run out early before the crucial flat-out run-up to Turn 9. So the moves are planned out a long way ahead – and Leclerc was proving extremely adept at it, apparently thwarting Russell in a faster car. They were small victories of tactical thought and planning on Leclerc’s part rather than driving skill.

Russell had three times passed the Ferrari – which had surged straight into the lead from the second row – once around the outside of Turn 12 as Leclerc backed off for his battery charge, once into Turn 3. But both times Leclerc was immediately able to surge past with ridiculous ease on the straight before Turn 9.  There were a couple of failed near-overtakes from Russell as he tried to fight his way out of the stalemate Leclerc was putting him in – once under the brakes into Turn 11 (aggressively rebuffed by the Ferrari driver) and once into Turn 1 where Russell locked up under braking and Leclerc was able to instantly repass around the outside.

Like this, Leclerc was preventing Russell from expressing the Merc’s greater speed, Russell constantly compromised in his energy deployment by the repeated overtaking attempts. How long could it have continued? Russell seemed to have run out of ideas after that lock-up on lap nine. But Ferrari feared that it was only a matter of time before the faster car got ahead and pulled away. Hence its decision to play the odds at the VSC, reasoning that there were sure to be plenty of VSCs/safety cars given the expected retirement rate and if they could resist the temptation of the first one, then they’d be on newer, faster tyres than the Mercs.

But we saw similar dices last almost the whole race – notably Pierre Gasly/Esteban Ocon for 10th place. Oliver Bearman got the upper hand over impressive rookie Arvid Lindblad for seventh but it took a long time. So maybe Leclerc could have continued to thwart the faster car for the whole race – Gilles Villeneuve Jarama 1981-style – had Ferrari just done the obvious and pitted at the first VSC. That would have made the race a whole lot more exciting for the full duration.

Then there’s the question of just how much faster the Mercedes was. In qualifying it had locked out the front row and Russell’s pole time was almost 0.8sec faster than the best non-Mercedes: Isack Hadjar’s Red Bull. Its race day advantage appeared less – but then it would do once it had the 1-2 track position gifted by Ferrari. In clear air Russell and Antonelli could then get their state of battery charge balanced, give their tyres an easier time and make that long second stint work, thus avoiding the extra stop which had looked a certainty when they responded to the lap 12 VSC with 46 laps still to go. So the car wasn’t being stretched.

Russell was playing down the margin. “I think qualifying was a real surprise to us. I think the pace we saw today and the fight we had with Ferrari was more like what we were expecting and what we had predicted pre-Melbourne and after testing. About a tenth, maybe two-tenths, certainly nothing like the seven tenths we saw in qualifying.”