Nine things we learned from the Australian Grand Prix

At least, that’s what some fans are beginning to think. The Australian Grand Prix was halted three times on Sunday: once apiece for Alex Albon and Kevin Magnussen’s crashes on laps seven and 53, and finally after the anarchy that was the last grid start with two laps to go.

And it’s fair to say the first two of those calls were… questionable. Not least because it was the drivers who questioned them. George Russell said the first red flag was “totally unnecessary” and Alonso exclaimed “What?!” for the second like he’d found out Lance Stroll was leading the race.

Now, you could argue the stewards had no choice given cranes were needed to clear cars off the track and Albert Park really isn’t very wide. However, a couple of years ago the teams pushed to make sure that races didn’t finish behind the safety car, and now it looks like late incidents are forcing the stewards to do what’s best for the show rather than what’s best for the drivers. Hmm.

Say what you like about the red flags, but when the green flags were out the action was superb. Lewis Hamilton’s first lap pass on Max Verstappen; Carlos Sainz’s move on Pierre Gasly in the same corner on lap 25; Lando Norris getting past Nico Hulkenberg into turn 14 late on… all were sensational and made the 6am UK start time worth waking up for.

It was Sergio Perez who owned most of the highlights reel, however, spectacularly dive-bombing his way past several cars into the high-speed turn 11-12 chicane as he charged from the back of the grid up to fifth place. Brave stuff when you’re braking from 200mph.

We know, dominant Red Bull is dominant shocker. However, it needs to be appreciated just how much faster the RB19 seems to be compared to the competition.

Case in point: once the DRS was enabled after the first restart, Max Verstappen breezed past Lewis Hamilton for the race lead like he was driving a car from another category, and in the four corners after getting the move done he built a gap of two seconds. Seriously, go and dig out the on-board from Hamilton’s car: Verstappen just vanishes from view.

It’s fuelling the theory that Red Bull has such an advantage over everyone else that it can afford to hold back its own cars’ performance and still win comfortably. Whisper it quietly, but this might be Adrian Newey’s best design yet…

Fortune is meant to favour the bold. Unless you’re George Russell, apparently. The 24-year-old qualified on the front row of the grid and then barged his way into the lead when the lights went out, teeing up the prospect of an unlikely win for Mercedes as they ran first and second in the early stages.

And when the safety car emerged on lap 7, the team decided to pit Russell for hard tyres that would’ve seen him to the end of the grand prix. Except the race was red flagged shortly after, which meant everyone got to change their tyres for free and the young Brit lost several places through no fault of his own. Ouch.

Didn’t matter though. On lap 18 Russell’s engine caught fire and that was game over.

‘Ferrari Incompetence Bingo’ hasn’t been invented yet, but it’s surely only a matter of time if the team keeps up its current form. After qualifying a disappointing P7, Charles Leclerc’s race lasted all of three corners as he squeezed into Lance Stroll on the opening lap, spinning off and beeching himself in the gravel.

Things had been going slightly better for Carlos Sainz who was running in fourth early on, but like Russell he also lost out by pitting ahead of the first red flag and spent the remainder of the afternoon playing catch up.

But having re-established himself in P4 before the half-way point, the Spaniard ran into Fernando Alonso on the final grid start, earning himself a five-second penalty that dropped him out of the points when the field finished the race behind the safety car.

Ferrari sits fourth in the constructors’ standings, 97 points behind Red Bull.

When it was announced last year that Pierre Gasly would become Esteban Ocon’s teammate at Alpine, many eyebrows were raised as the pair famously don’t get along all that well. But both drivers (and the team) insisted that they’d race fairly and that everything would be fine.

Well, three races into the season and everything is not fine. With Gasly lining up fifth for the final restart and Ocon on course for points as well, Alpine looked set for a strong haul after struggling in Bahrain and Jeddah last month. But Gasly ran onto the grass at turn 1 and with chaos unfolding everywhere, he then squeezed his teammate into the wall and both cars ended up wrecked.

Apparently Gasly apologised afterwards and Ocon was pragmatic about what happened, but two DNFs and a big, self-inflicted repair is exactly what the team didn’t want to leave Australia with.

With eight cars failing to finish, a number of the smaller teams grabbed some much-needed points: Haas’s Nico Hulkenburg (who was outstanding all weekend), Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Ganyu and AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda all grabbed their first top 10 finishes of the year, meaning all 10 teams have now scored points and only two drivers - Logan Sargeant and Nyck de Vries - are yet to score at all.

But the big winners from the carnage were McLaren: this year’s car is so slow that the team sacked its technical director recently, yet Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri battled their way to sixth and eighth respectively and the team is now fifth in the constructors’ championship. Which feels… unsustainable.

Daniel Ricciardo made his first appearance in the F1 paddock since stepping back from/being kicked off of the grid at the end of last season, and having spent a couple of races on the sidelines now it sounds as though the popular Aussie is leaning towards pushing for a comeback in 2024 rather than calling it a day good.

In various interviews over the weekend the 33-year-old made no secret of the fact that he’s still got the desire to compete in F1, but also said that he doesn’t want to start again from scratch at a smaller team. Which might be an issue given that Red Bull, Aston Martin, Mercedes and Ferrari all currently have settled line-ups.

Nothing’s confirmed yet but rumour has it F1 wants to change the format for sprint race weekends. Instead of the current format, bosses want Saturdays to feature a mini qualifying session followed by a standalone sprint race, with the grid order for the Sunday’s grand prix set by qualifying on Friday.

That would mean pole position definitely going to whoever set the fastest lap in qualifying (hooray) and we’d get a bit more action instead of a boring practice session.