Formula 1 got something of a pressure release moment with Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz brilliantly winning the 2024 Australian Grand Prix and ending Max Verstappen’s latest dominant season start for Red Bull.
The world champion was undone by a rare mechanical issue aboard one of Red Bull’s cars and Sainz picked up the pieces fantastically for Ferrari, on a day where it may have won in any case, such was its treatment of the tyres on a tricky surface and layout in typically tough conditions here. That said, there was little action to speak of all race.
But Verstappen’s DNF and Sergio Perez’s latest absence from the lead fight means Red Bull’s quest to better its win rate from 2023 will likely have to wait for another year, with a 21-race winning streak required to break the team's own record breaking 95.5% success rate last term.
F1 also learned exactly how Sainz had made his brilliant recovery from missing the Jeddah round with appendicitis and his compatriot Fernando Alonso was in hot water with the stewards post-race. Elsewhere, there was controversy at Williams, a management boost for McLaren and more off-track debate over key issues facing the championship.
All that and more is included here in the pick of what we learned from F1’s 2024 visit to Melbourne.
1. Red Bull’s latest quest for perfection doesn’t even last as long as 2023
That answers that question, then. No, Red Bull can’t win every race of the 2024 F1 season. Its quest to win in Melbourne – for what would’ve been Verstappen’s 10th in a row – was under pressure immediately with Ferrari’s fine form on the C5 softs over one lap and with the softer tyres overall this year meaning a front-limited two-stop race.
Such a limitation was why Leclerc probably would’ve won in Las Vegas last year, but here Sainz never got to take Verstappen on all things being equal as the Dutchman had his “right rear brake basically stuck on from when the lights went off” at the start. That meant he couldn’t scamper clear of the lap two DRS activation, nearly went off at Turn 2 on that tour with “having one brake calliper just stuck on – it's like a handbrake”, then got jumped by Sainz. On lap three as he chased on, the climbing temperatures and brake fire forced his retirement.
But Verstappen was able to stick with Sainz immediately after being passed before his issue became really serious and was “reporting he was really quite happy with the balance of the car” on his four laps to the grid, per embattled Red Bull team boss Christian Horner.
That Perez couldn’t rise up the order after getting a visor tear off stuck in his RB20’s underfloor meant F1 never got to see what Red Bull could ultimately do here and was perhaps robbed of a thrilling victory contest. Unlike in 2023, its dominant run ended after three races, not 15.
2. How Sainz went from Jeddah operation to Melbourne masterclass
Red Bull’s issues shouldn’t take away just how good Sainz was last weekend – a situation made all the more remarkable because just 14 days on from his appendectomy in Jeddah, he returned to F1 action in practice in Melbourne. His victory on Sunday was the third of his career and first not from pole.
Those achievements are impressive in isolation, but then there is the short timescale factor in the Spaniard’s recovery – he returned to action a week earlier than Alex Albon did in September 2022 (albeit with the caveat the Williams racer was also returning from respiratory failure that meant he had to enter intensive care).
In Melbourne, Sainz detailed exactly how he’d gone from operating theatre back to his SF-24’s cockpit so fast – praising modern medical procedures such as using a hyperbaric chambers twice a day and an Indiba machine for the differences to an open operation his father had undergone a generation ago that left Sainz Sr “cut open”.
Following his keyhole surgery, Sainz famously returned to the Jeddah paddock to witness Ollie Bearman’s debut in his place for Ferrari. This, he said, was down to his doctors telling him to “go for a walk after the operation”.
After returning home to Europe, Sainz couldn’t do his usual training and simulator preparation routines, as instead he had to spend “a lot of time in bed and recovering”. What exercise he could do was tracked by the FIA to assess his chances of safely returning to driving action, where he and Ferrari had to make changes to his seatbelt arrangement using sponges, which he showed off in a post-race picture with Norris.
Driver Ratings: Australian Grand Prix
“[The] Indiba machine, that is electromagnetic thing for the wounds,” Sainz explained post-race. “I was programming my time in bed, my time to go for a walk, my time to eat, the kind of food that you have to recover. Just everything was centred around recovery to try to be ready for Australia.
“When I was about to catch the flight to come to Australia, I was still in bed. I could barely use my abdominal to move. And I was like, ‘this is not going to happen’. But I took the flight, and suddenly when I landed in Australia, the feeling was a lot better.
“Every 24 hours, I was making a lot more progress than the first seven days, which is actually what all the doctors and all the professional people told me. Even Alex Albon told me this, I remember. So, it just followed more or less what everyone told me and put together a good plan.”
3. Alonso’s racing craftiness can bite
Alonso has a deserved reputation for being F1’s canniest operator behind the wheel – think he how he altered his line so smartly to hold off and then beat Perez in Brazil last year. But his latest attempt at doing something different – in this case to hold off George Russell – massively backfired. And not only in the outcome for the Mercedes driver.
Although Alonso insists “at no point do we want to do anything wrong at these speeds” and we can take that as genuine suggestion he didn’t mean for Russell to end up in such danger, braking a touch earlier for a corner to either put a rival off or to gain a traction boost for an ensuing straight is legitimate racecraft. Russell himself said going off into the Turn 6 gravel “is on me” and that is to his credit. The unfortunate size of the shunt that followed was neither driver’s fault and couldn’t have been foreseen, further emphasising Alonso’s point above.
Before heading to the stewards he’d claimed “I had some issues for the last 15 laps or something on the battery, on the deployment” and his engine certainly wasn’t sounding brilliant after the chequered flag. But when his defence to the stewards contained the following, that “while his plan was to slow earlier, he got it slightly wrong and had to take extra steps to get back up to speed” the problem is clear.
Alonso simply messed up his tactic and in doing so, the stewards felt his driving was “in a manner that was at very least ‘potentially dangerous’”, and so enough to merit a penalty. His side is arguable, as Alonso as presented on social media, but the sanction feels right given it contained an error in what was always a risky manoeuvre.
4. Mercedes is in major trouble early in 2024
Alonso was only racing Russell because he’d been able to bank around 10s in race time by pitting under the virtual safety car activated for Hamilton retiring from the race after 15 laps with a sudden engine failure. That alone is a major drama for Mercedes - that its car can’t even be considered to be reliable right now - following after the cooling dramas in Bahrain.
“That was a very disappointing end to a tough weekend, with a significant amount of accident damage to remedy ahead of Japan in two weeks’ time,” said Mercedes’ director of trackside engineering, Andrew Shovlin.
“We went into the race hoping to make progress forward from our grid positions: with Lewis, that involved starting on the soft, which helped him gain positions on the opening lap, and George on the medium. Lewis’s race was cut short by a sudden and unexpected power unit failure; we had no warning of it and will need to investigate further when the PU returns to Brixworth.
“For George, he knew he had to complete two long stints on the hard and find the right balance between pushing the tyre and stretching out its life. It was clear that we were unable to fight with the three teams in front, and he was racing for P6 after Alonso had pitted under the VSC for Lewis’s retirement and gained track position. George had an opportunity to get the place back on the final stint and was clearly caught by surprise by the unexpected deceleration in front on the penultimate lap.”
But Mercedes again struggled for pace in finding its narrow set-up window, with the team feeling its notable loss from FP3 to qualifying being down to the temperatures going up and the wind increasing. That meant Russell and Hamilton qualified down the order, the latter not even making Q3.
But the W15’s poor potential overall meant that even when Russell was back within DRS range late on behind Alonso, he couldn’t pass what is clearly a slower car.
PLUS: Why Mercedes’ F1 struggles are different this time
How Mercedes must wish it could rewind to lap three of the Bahrain race, when Russell passed Leclerc and had a faint shot at chasing Verstappen up front there. Pretty much everything else that has followed has been massively bad for one of F1’s best squads.
5. Tsunoda is finally doing what Red Bull wants, but it still may not be enough for a 2025 promotion
Yuki Tsunoda was one of qualifying’s stars with his efforts to reach Q3 for AlphaTauri. In doing so, he became the only driver not from what might be considered the ‘Class A’ contingent to progress as Hamilton was knocked out. But Tsunoda had shone against the clock, at least compared to his under-fire team-mate Daniel Ricciardo, in both Bahrain and Jeddah so far in 2024.
Red Bull wanted him to push on and score points for its junior team at some stage. It got its way in Australia, with Tsunoda finishing eighth on the road after a close, near race-long chase with Lance Stroll’s Aston (Tsunoda finally lost touch over the final laps before the Russell crash and second VSC neutralisation). He then ended up seventh in the final results after Alonso’s penalty was applied.
But Red Bull’s motorsport advisor Helmut Marko, back in his usual driver defining role this weekend after the Jeddah speculation, still appeared a little under enthused by Tsunoda.
“Here, every lap he was competitive and didn’t do anything wrong, was calm,” Marko explained. “But as we say: one swallow does not make a summer. So, he has to improve more before he can be considered in this direction [possibly replacing Perez for 2025].”
6. Just how much Williams values Albon over Sargeant
Alex Albon’s FP1 crash showed again how fast and brutal the Albert Park track can be, where his comparatively small mistake (albeit of the type of error a driver of Albon’s calibre should never be making) effectively destroyed his car against two walls lining the start of the layout's quickest section.
But Williams’ decision to put Albon in the only remaining useable FW46 at the expense of its second-year driver Logan Sargeant for the rest of the weekend highlighted how brutal F1 can be. This was a pure business decision, where the team reflected that Albon’s points haul of 27 to Sargeant’s one (that required disqualifications ahead in the 2023 US GP) in their time as team-mates meant he had to be the one competing in the ultra-tight lower midfield in 2024.
Albon ended up qualifying 12th and finishing 11th, with Sargeant credited as being “tremendous” in supporting “the team in this regard”, per Williams team principal James Vowles.
The whole saga, however, raises questions of just why Williams bothered to continue with Sargeant after his underwhelming rookie campaign in 2023 and what this will now do for his confidence. At the same time, his poor Turn 11 spin on mediums early in FP2 deprived Williams of any long-run data on the critical harder race tyres the teams were saving at that stage.
Had he matched up better to Albon then such a choice, brutal as it was, might never have needed to have been made.
7. McLaren’s Brown era set for the long haul
Zak Brown was following in the illustrious footsteps of Bruce McLaren and Ron Dennis when he took over at the helm of the legendary McLaren team back in 2016, after the latter was ousted following a lengthy board dispute.
Brown will now continue to do so for the foreseeable future, following the announcement over the Melbourne week of his contract extension as McLaren Racing CEO (a role he took up in 2018 having joined as executive director of the McLaren Technology Group) to run until 2030.
Brown has overseen McLaren’s climb back up the F1 pecking order after its dramatic decline in the 2010s, which started before its disastrous Honda engine era. The American has also swelled McLaren’s racing activities to include IndyCar, Formula E and Extreme E.
“I am thrilled to continue leading McLaren Racing and to be a part of such a historic race team,” Brown said last Friday. “It is a privilege to work alongside the talented men and women across McLaren Racing's different race series. Together, we will continue to push the boundaries of motorsport and strive for the highest performance on and off the track.”
8. Bottas's post-Mercedes confidence gains take a lucrative new twist, but his Sauber squad still has a pitstop problem
Valtteri Bottas wasn’t exactly a shrinking violet during his time at the top of F1 as Hamilton’s team-mate at Mercedes – remembering here his “to whom it may concern, f*** you” radio jibe from this race five years ago and that sauna scene in the third season of Drive to Survive.
But as his new Australian-lifestyle themed advert gained considerable traction over the Melbourne weekend, Bottas revealed “I maybe would have struggled with my confidence to do something like that” during his time racing for Mercedes between 2017 and 2021.
“With just a bit more age, a bit more experience, I've learned not to take myself too seriously,” he added – referencing to the nude prints he produced for charity in his first year as a Sauber driver after leaving Mercedes in 2022, which was followed by a dedicated nude calendar last year.
“Obviously, I have a connection [with the country] with my better half [cycling star Tiffany Cromwell] being Australian and most of our off-seasons we spend it in Australia. I like the lifestyle; I like the people. [Filming the advert] was fun. It was actually pretty much straight off the plane when I landed in Australia. Got it done, but it was so much fun.”
In the race, Bottas’s efforts were squandered by Sauber’s latest poor pitstop, as he lost around 30s at the first services due to its new-for-2024 pit equipment again crossthreading a wheelnut, this time on this right rear. In the final round of stops, Sauber did get Bottas away on time but a wheelnut bouncing loose and into the pitlane fast lane meant it copped a €5000 fine. A final slow pitstop for Zhou Guanyu in the other C44 was actually down to a gear selection issue.
9. Lack of transparency in F1's off-track sagas under new focus
As the Melbourne event was getting under way, F1 Academy managing director Susie Wolff revealed that she has filed a criminal complaint against the FIA over allegations made against her at the end of last year. This was followed by Mercedes drivers Hamilton and Russell questioning the continued lack of transparency in F1.
Hamilton said: “In a world where often people are silenced, for her to be standing up sends such a great message. I love that she's taking it out of this world, filing it from outside, because there is a real lack of accountability here within this sport, within the FIA.
“Things that are happening behind closed doors, there is no transparency, there is clearly no accountability. How can you trust the sport and what is happening here if you didn't have that?”
“You trust that the leaders in this sport have the best interest at their heart rather than their own interests,” Russell added. “When we don't have the facts and figures, and there is no transparency, you always think there's something being hidden.
“That's why it's so important for the sport now to send the right message to everybody who's supporting Formula 1, watching Formula 1, wants to be involved in Formula 1, that things aren't just swept under the carpet.”
Wolff’s action was revealed on the same day FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem was cleared by the governing body’s Ethics Committee over whistleblower complaints he had allegedly interfered in decisions at the 2023 Jeddah and Las Vegas races.
Transparency concerns have been a part of his regime throughout, particularly given that it covered the fallout from the Abu Dhabi 2021 officiating saga and how questioning of race officials by the media in a complex and often controversial category was subsequently restricted. Then there is also the current lack of FIA action over the Horner/Red Bull behaviour scandal.
10. Verstappen ‘intends’ to see out current Red Bull contract to 2028
The F1 circus returning home from the season’s opening triple-header (including Bahrain pre-season testing a week before the race there) allowed some of the huge pressure building over Red Bull to release. Then came the development that the female employee who filed a complaint against Horner had appealed Red Bull GmbH’s decision to clear him and that the FIA had also been notified of a potential breach of motorsport’s code of conduct.
The situation had become so tense for the team in Jeddah that Verstappen’s future beyond the current campaign was suddenly in doubt when he publicly backed Marko, who had suggested he was about to be suspended. But the saga didn’t develop further over the Melbourne weekend, which made Verstappen’s media day comments last week most significant.
“I'm happy within the team and, of course, it's very important that we try to keep the key players in the team for a longer period of time, because that's of course where the performance is as well,” Verstappen stated, before refusing to name those important people.
“And at the end of the day, it's a performance business, it's the same as if I wouldn't perform, I wouldn't be sitting here. I know how that works. But with the deal in place, that is also my intention to be here till the end. Because it would be a great story, for me personally, to just see it out till the end, because it basically means that I've been part of one family and one team.”
But, as ever in sport, one party intending to do something is far from it actually happening. Such a label also still leaves Verstappen with plenty of wiggle room to adopt a different position should this saga take another twist in the coming months.
