2012 Australian Grand Prix result
2012 Australian Grand Prix
Jenson Button won the opening race of 2012 ahead of Sebastian Vettel.
Their team mates occupied the next two positions with Fernando Alonso fifth for Ferrari.
Pastor Maldonado crashed out of sixth place on the final lap. Behind him, a frenzied exchange of positions left Kimi Raikkonen seventh ahead of Sergio Perez, Daniel Ricciardo and Paul di Resta.
2012 Australian Grand Prix
- Tales from a Melbourne marshal
- Button wins first Driver of the Weekend vote of 2012
- Rate the race result: 2012 Australian Grand Prix
- F1 fans’ video highlights from the Australian Grand Prix weekend
- Schumacher keeps Mercedes’ front wing hidden after spin
Browse all 2012 Australian Grand Prix articles
AndrewTanner (@andrewtanner) said on 18th March 2012, 8:52
A nice result. A few genuine surprises and a few disappointments with the retirements.
Things certainly look very competitive.
verstappen (@verstappen) said on 18th March 2012, 8:52
++
Marussia
Williams
Lotus
Perez
Kobayashi
Button
Vettel
Kimi
–
Ferrari
Massa
Senna
Caterham
Hamilton
Season looking good!
Grammo (@grammo) said on 19th March 2012, 1:45
I agree the season looks like it’s going to be a beauty
Force India looked to be a couple seconds off the pace for the entire race.
They were lucky to get a point. But they will have to spice the car up.
Vergne drove a good rooky race. I thought he deserved the last point.
What is going on with Massa???
Alonso is a hard worker. His boss must be happy with him. I don’t think he is very happy with anybody else though.
OOliver said on 18th March 2012, 9:06
It didn’t take Massa long to find a new play mate.
ivz (@ivz) said on 18th March 2012, 14:20
Cant help but laugh……poor Massa.
mikeycool said on 18th March 2012, 9:13
If hamilton was able to get a good start, i reckon he could have gone on and won it as his pace for most of the time was on par with Buttons. He should take solace in that and just count himself abit unfortunate during the race. I reckon this year will be much like 2010 where everyone was taking points off each other. I could be wrong, Button could simply sooth his way to a second championship, but that i believe is unlikely.
Robin Evers (@robin-evers) said on 18th March 2012, 10:48
I have a question regarding the race result, especially regarding the Marussias:
Why did Glock not cross the line in 13th position?
I expected him to relap himself in comparison to Maldonado. Honestly, I did not follow him throughout the hole race. I saw Pic turning into Pitlane moments before Button crossed the line for finishing 1st, and of course I saw both Marussias in the relapping process during SC. But considering that the SC phase was not a long time ago (~17 laps), guessing he was 4 seconds per lap slower than Maldonado, he should not have been lapped again by him (calculated time dif ~68secs). A 13th position would have been even more valuable than 14th, comparing to what HRT did in Canada last year. Furthermore, his last sector of his last lap was very poor (43.4secs) but not as bad as Rosbergs (60.4secs).
And it leads to another question:
If a car is multiple times lapped by the leader, how many times is the driver allowed to pass by the entire field during SC? Just once? I might have to look into the regulations regarding this.
Robin Evers (@robin-evers) said on 18th March 2012, 10:50
*edit: “whole race” instead of “hole race” …
Fixy (@fixy) said on 18th March 2012, 11:19
Webber finally improves his best result at his home race!
I was really astonished by Maldonado (perhaps too brave at times), but in the end I tought: “he’ll do something silly now” (thinking he’d try an overtake and crash into Alonso), then I saw his car and thought he’d done what Coulthard did to Wurz in 2007. It turned up he was very unlucky, which makes me sad.
The final lap was mad – I’m sad Perez couldn’t finish 7th with a one-stop strategy (which would have repaid him of last year) but I’m happy Raikkonen had a good result and that Ricciardo reached the top 10, although I’d have preferred Vergne ahead of di Resta as I felt he had been better.
Fixy (@fixy) said on 18th March 2012, 11:42
Pic retired? It wasn’t shown (or I missed it)!
Also, I’m disappointed FOM didn’t show us why Hulkenberg retired and an on board from Massa/Senna of their crash.
Robin Evers (@robin-evers) said on 18th March 2012, 12:29
He did not really retire, it looked liked they put him in because he was 4-5 laps behind without chance of gaining positions, so he kind of finished in the box, because they did that when Button was on his last meters…
I guess they did that to spare him the victory lap, so one lap less run-time, plus some parc fermé advantages.
Stuart said on 18th March 2012, 12:01
Looks like you need to change the teams for drivers!
Alpha said on 18th March 2012, 12:03
MISTAKE:
Kamui Kobayashi doesn’t drive for Force India-Mercedes
Alpha said on 18th March 2012, 12:04
MISTAKE:
Kamui Kobayashi and Perez aren’t driving for Force India-Mercedes
Matt (@fluxocillin7) said on 18th March 2012, 16:29
As a non Sky TV subscriber, I’d be interested in a break down of what the BBC folk missed out on getting only highlights… stuff was missing obviously but it wasn’t ‘that’ bad…
For interview priority / grid walk today the BBC seemed to be way down the pecking order rather than top, and consequently commanded much less – presumably much done in good faith from past years? – It will be interesting at the live races whether BBC give the “usual coverage”… perhaps an interesting editorial if anyone has watched both?
On a side note maybe Sky has missed the big trick here, perhaps they should have aired the first race free as an example to their self proclaimed “excellent” coverage? Obviously we can all tell it is less coverage than last year, but in no way was it bad enough to warrant buying a Sky subscription for a minimum of £363 for F1 HD. Especially considering I have no feeling for what would be better.
It’s actually cheaper to go to a couple of the races we’ll be missing, which would be much more fun! (Spa + Silverstone look like a better expense than Sky TV).
SimBri (@f1addict) said on 19th March 2012, 1:27
Just finished watching the BBC highlights after seeing it live on Sky. I don’t think you missed much to be honest. I’ll give Malaysia a go and if Sky aren’t better I’m not going to continue with the sports package. The BBC seemed to actually have more post race analysis in the half hour at the end than in more than an hour on Sky (a lot of which was adverts and pointless montages). The best thing about seeing it on Sky was being able to follow it with F1Fanatic Live at the same time. Save your money – go to Spa!!
tee19810 (@tee19810) said on 18th March 2012, 20:41
I was really really impressed with Pastor. Whilst watching i kept thinking hes going to make a mistake but he kept going and was all over the back of Alonso which was literally making me sweat ! It was awesome. He made a small mistake and it was a small one as he didnt run that wide. He was unlucky in my view. I screamed when i saw the onboard camera come up and the first thing i noticed was the number 18 ! After calming down i say well done Pastor on actually giving me some excitement for the first time in a while from a Williams Car !