In my opinion, the season is over as soon as China if this Red Bull streak continues, 2011 was a horrible year for Formula 1 and this season looks to follow suit if his dominance continues. Expect my blog to continue but there will be no enthusiasm if he does, and if you are for some season a brain dead Vettel fan beware, I will not hold back on anything. Also, for every race that the BBC does not have live, I am forced to watch Sky, my hands are unfortunately tied and there will be Brundle-bashing.
Before the session got underway, there was quite a lot of focus on F1's rookie drivers. This year features the most inexperienced grid ever for an F1 season. The focus was placed primarily on Valtteri Bottas who has the strongest car out of the five newbies. He is also the only rookie not to come from GP2, his lack of combat racing may hinder him.
Q1 - The start of Q1 was delayed by a total of 30 minutes. This is due to the lack of drainage around Albert Park. Throughout the year these are just normal roads and therefore lack the high quality drainage systems that come with race tracks.
Eventually the session got underway and it wasn't long before the first incident occurred, Giedo van der Garde lost control of his Caterham and collided in a tyre wall, as a result his front wing got trapped beneath the car, extremely dangerous in these conditions. Martin Brundle criticised him for not coming in straight away, but he failed to see the brand new front wing in front of the car! Idiot... It wasn't long before similar incidents occurred, Felipe Massa was lucky to get away with only front wing damage, his Ferrari could have lost a wheel or two. Lewis Hamilton continued his run of poor performance in his new Mercedes after he beached the car in a dangerous position. He was able to reverse out and continue on but after his rear wing collided in the impact, he came in to have it changed.
As if this wasn't enough drama, Sergio Perez, Mark Webber, Esteban Gutierrez and Pastor Maldonado all lost control of their cars resulting in running of the track and in some cases spinning. Paul di Resta suffered a similar fate not too long after.
Towards the end of the session Charles Pic also made contact with the wall meaning both Caterham drivers lost their front wings but the biggest incident came not too long after his first. Gutierrez was unable to avoid the wall this time and lost his front wing but also had to stop the car. Yellow flags were deployed meaning nobody could set any faster times.
Nico Rosberg was on top at the start of the session and after Vettel, Grosjean and others set faster times, Rosberg found his way back to the top. In the end though six of the slowest drivers had to depart and the big name to miss out was Pastor Maldonado after his team left a tyre switch too late. Williams were supposed to struggle but his inexperienced team mate Bottas managed to do just fine out-qualifying him. The usual suspects both Marussia and Caterham dropped out as is expected, the other casualty was Gutierrez who was unable to set a fast time.
Q2 - Q2 was delayed by a further 40 minutes following an increase of rain, talk already started circulating about qualifying being postponed and surely enough after plenty of speculation and debate, qualifying was cancelled. The question was do we call the grid the way it already stood as the starting grid, or will we continue tomorrow morning?
The FIA announced Q2 and Q3 will take place at 11:00 tomorrow morning meaning any support race will be cancelled. Conditions are set to improve but there is no guarantee.
My Thoughts - As I said before, I take this as a victory for F1 fans, the opening race of the season won't be dominated by the puppet boy because of the rain. Granted it's a nuisance but at least we can expect some kind of drama tomorrow.
Many commentators and Ferrari test driver Pedro de la Rosa criticised the track paint for the lack of grip. In a tweet he stated "black paint over white road markings is causing problems for drivers. Very slippery." It just wasn't pleasant driving conditions for anybody, during Massa and Gutierrez's incidents you could see the water just piling into the cockpit.
It would have been nice to continue on today in order to have a mixed grid for the race but it was getting too dark. If conditions are dry tomorrow I expect a Red Bull front row lock out followed by Grosjean, Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso in some kind of order. A wet qualifying followed by a dry race is my idea of a perfect race weekend, but a wet race could also throw us up some excitement, as usually Button and Alonso excel in wet conditions, but Vettel looks quick in the rain which is something I've never seen before. Hamilton and Mercedes isn't working out as I predicted but it is still early days yet.
He needs to get it sorted if he is to salvage anything from this season. But like any point I've made, it's early days yet.
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