Alpine and Ferrari’s F1 success: The Australian Grand Prix we didn’t see

Alpine finds itself in a similar situation. Bahrain saw Pierre Gasly start from the back and Esteban Ocon slide back there after a series of bizarre penalties. Gasly’s ninth-place finish hinted at the Alpine’s pace, but there was little chance to show it in Saudi Arabia when the team — like Ferrari — lost ground due to the safety car.

It left Mercedes third in the championship despite less-than-enthusiastic feedback from its drivers. And with the car running at its preferred low height on the smooth Albert Park asphalt — as detailed by Mark Hughes — the podium suddenly looked within reach.

Aston Martin may have been outqualified by Mercedes in Melbourne, but the team has shown formidable race pace, delivering Alonso to the podium in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Despite Lance Stroll’s misfortune, it’s meant that the Silverstone team is Red Bull’s closest challenger, with a hefty upgrade programme to narrow the gap.

Practice sessions were cold, wet, windy or hot — something for everyone except the engineers

The sense that Albert Park might deliver the unpredictable was there from the start. Practice sessions were at times cold, wet, windy or hot — something for everyone except the engineers that were looking for representative data to correlate to qualifying or race conditions.

With little understanding of the optimal set-up, qualifying saw a scintillating Q3 where the top 10 were spread by just over a second. The pole position result may not have been a surprise, but the performance of Mercedes was. Aston Martin finished third fastest with the sense of some disappointment. But nothing compared to Ferrari’s frustration at lining up fifth and seventh.

And so the grid was set.

Safety car-skewed strategies

Chart 1 Summary of recommended and deployed tyre strategies

It was lights out and away go the Mercedes: Russell leapt ahead of Verstappen off the line and then Hamilton pulled off an opportune overtake on the Dutchman, who was driving like a man with a championship to lose.

This was unlike Leclerc who, once again, was driving his Ferrari to overcome whatever deficit seemed to be the flavour of the month. In this case it was a poor qualifying result off the back of poor team co-ordination to get optimal tyre warm up. But there was no time to recover: he was tapped into a spin that beached him in the gravel.

Another interruption wasn’t long in coming, as Alex Albon took a hit after losing his car mid-corner. It initially triggered a safety car, which brought Russell and Sainz into the pits for a cheap stop. It wasn’t cheap enough, however, as the race was halted for the clear-up operation — allowing everybody else to change tyres without any time penalty.

Chart 1 shows that Pirelli’s top strategy recommendation (shown at the top) was a one-stopper making substantial use of the hard tyre. This tyre is a harder compound compared to the one used last year when Albon took it to almost an entire race distance. As such there was little doubt on whether this compound would make it to the end of the race.

This is further affirmed by dearth in drivers rolling the dice on taking another pitstop for the gain of the medium tyre shown, as the drivers’ individual strategies in Chart 1 show. As such the race (at this stage) came down to one variable: the performance and wear on the hard tyre.

(Hard)ly Any Tyre Wear

Chart 2 Tyre degradation throughout stint

Tyre wear was unlikely to feature as a determinant in the outcome of the race as highlighted by Chart 2 above. The trend profile of the fuel-corrected pace on the hard tyre for the selected runners was fairly flat – indicative of virtually no degradation concerns with the hard tyre.

This is no surprise given Albon’s performance last year and the ambient temperatures, which were much lower for 2023 compared to the 2022 Grand Prix.

Gasly is the only runner that started to experience some drop off in performance relative to Sainz, Alonso and Hamilton.

The Australian GP race story

Chart 3 Cumulative delta plot

Chart 3 provides a one-image view of the race with a cumulative delta, charting each driver’s average lap time, updated for every lap of the race, and set against an average 1min 22sec lap time.

The aforementioned chaos and disruption are showcased by the wild swings in race traces left of lap 10. Whereas the story of the hard tyres is showcased by the calm profiles towards the right.

We see that it wasn’t long before Verstappen made quick work of Hamilton, following the first restart. It was a tall order for the Mercedes driver to hold off a Red Bull with the blow-drag DRS activated, especially after losing the benefit of DRS himself once Russell had pitted from the lead of the race.

From there Verstappen went sailing off into the sunset, disrupted only by what may have been a microsleep of boredom at Turn 13 where the Dutchman had a slight off due to a lock up before things returned to their equilibrium.

Further back, however, there was a looming and tense battle for second between Hamilton and Alonso. The Aston Martin driver’s progress was interrupted due to Russell’s retirement and the subsequent virtual safety car during laps 18/19.

The resumption of the race saw Alonso falling away before clawing his way back towards Hamilton. With both drivers focused on tyre management, it was a game of cat and mouse in seeing who would be the first to make the mistake. But it was neither of the champions. Hamilton delivered a solid and faultless drive to earn an unexpected second place followed, by Alonso who earned a triple triple for the 2023 season.

The chart also captures Gasly’s solid performance throughout the race. Despite ceding position to Sainz earlier, Gasly was able to run within a second of the Ferrari driver until lap 49 of the race. Sainz was also on course for a solid result as he maintained pace with Alonso while continuing to edge away from Stroll.

Aston Martin may have been closest to Red Bull in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, but that position seems far from secure on this basis. However, there’s a reason why this chart ends at lap 53 and not lap 58.

Alpine and Ferrari’s impressive pace

Chart 4 Average race pace

Chart 4 illustrates each driver’s average pace on the tyre compounds that they used and presents another view of the impressive pace that both Sainz and Gasly held relative to their peers.

Sainz’s pace was on par with Hamilton’s and Alonso’s and well ahead of Stroll’s. While Gasly was losing some ground to Stroll towards the end of the race, his overall average pace was enough to edge out the Canadian.