Kimi Raikkonen wins 2013 Australian Grand Prix

2013 Australian Grand Prix summary

Posted on

| Written by

Kimi Raikkonen came from seventh on the grid to win the Australian Grand Prix.

It was a strategic win for the Lotus team whose driver made just two pit stops while his closest rivals came in three times.

Fernando Alonso took second after making an early second stop to jump ahead of early leader Sebastian Vettel. Alonso gave chase of Raikkonen in the closing stages of the race but was unable to catch the Lotus.

Nor could Vettel, who took pole position in emphatic fashion earlier today, do anything to catch the Ferrari at the end of the race. It was a disappointing Grand Prix for Red Bull who locked out the front row of the grid but saw their cars come home third and sixth, Mark Webber losing several places at the start.

Felipe Massa kept Alonso behind at the start but was out-fumbled by his team mate in the pits and lost time behind Adrian Sutil later.

The Force India driver led several laps after starting the race on medium tyres. But he struggled for pace on the super-softs at the end of the race and came home seventh just ahead of team mate Paul di Resta.

Lewis Hamilton tried to do a two-stop strategy but had to convert to three after locking his tyres while battling with Alonso and needing an early second stop. Team mate Nico Rosberg retired with a technical problem.

Jenson Button and Romain Grosjean rounded out the points scorers, the latter making a poor start and struggling with his tyres late in the race. Sergio Perez was just outside the points on his McLaren debut after starting 15th.

A full race review will follow later.

2013 Australian Grand Prix

    Browse all 2013 Australian Grand Prix articles

    Image © Lotus/LAT

    Author information

    Keith Collantine
    Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

    Got a potential story, tip or enquiry? Find out more about RaceFans and contact us here.

    80 comments on “Kimi Raikkonen wins 2013 Australian Grand Prix”

    1. What a race! I cannot recall the last time i didn’t wish for rain or a safety car to bring more excitement at the end of a race because there was so just much tension on every lap. I’m so happy for Kimi for such a nice win, seemed a bit unexpected until the last ~20 laps when I realized he wasn’t going to stop for a third time.
      A couple of things i didn’t like were the fact that Webber again had a very poor start (why does it seem to Me it only happens when he’s near Vettel?) and his first pit stop stationary time was 5.3s. When was the last time Vettel had a poor stop like that?
      Also it felt to me that once Massa got in front of Alonso and Massa successfully defended that he was actually faster and could have finished in front and maybe even overtake Vettel. But Alonso got ahead by performing a successful undercut. Very happy that there were no “Alonso is faster than You” messages and Ferrari gave Massa a fair chance to fight Alonso (all of Massa’s pit stops were just as fast as Alonso’s, unlike in Red Bull’s case), honestly wasn’t expecting that. Brilliant start to the season!

      1. I dont recall any races in the past where ferrari have sabotaged massa’s pit stops. Alonso needs massa to perform through out the season to take points off his rivals.

        1. Ferrari didn’t need to sabotage Massa in the pits, what they they did was keep him out on old tyres long enough to guarantee Alonso leapfrogging him.

          1. You clearly dont understand how decisions are made regarding strategy. Each side of the garage makes their own decisions and when one wants to pit, they ask if the other side is expecting to pit on the same lap. If they both want to pit on the same lap, then the lead car gets priority.

            As you would have seen, Alonoso’s side of the garage was risky in how they came in extra early, catching both Vettel and Massa off guard.

            If Massa’s side of the garage had been more on it, they could have done what Alonso had done, leaving Alonso out a lap longer. But they never.

            1. you’ve said this loads you are wrong my friend , so what if alo is p1 massa p2 its the car in front who gets first call. Back a few yrs ago it was better to stay out a lap longer but not on these tyre’s

    2. Massa out-fumbled by Alonso, nicely put @keithcollantine. Red Bull have to work on tyres, and Webber’s side needs to sort those starts first, I think.

    3. Aditya (@adityafakhri)
      17th March 2013, 8:04

      It could be more strategical season than last year.
      Shame on me, I was predicted Kimi’s win until Red Bull crush everybody on practice so I changed my mind :(

      1. ya, same with me.

        after practice time i though its vettel to loose but i expected vet-kimi-alonso podium.

        next race i expect kimi to fight again, venue of his first win and he always goes well there.

    4. A great Race….Kimi Sure Knows what he is doing…… Nice job Kimi…. again just feel short of my dream podium for the first race. Lewis instead of Alonso would have done it. Alonso drove a brilliant race. did not expect Kimi out there. I thought Alonso was going to win by a huge margin. I think if Sutil had not come into the way of Vettel in the first stint, he would have gotten close to Kimi.

      Over a great race to start with

    5. Webber… KERS problems again.

      1. At the start already @wench?

        1. Yep, in interview he said he lost KERS before the start of the race among other issues with the car.

          1. A bit much really, that, how often has he had that now?

            1. That guy just cannot have a proper start, technical issues or psychological…
              He really should have won one title, but that starts… are usually his end. Sad But True.

    6. Does anybody else think the air intake for the Lotus looks somewhat like a baboons backside?

      1. Aditya (@adityafakhri)
        17th March 2013, 8:09

        that just plain wrong, mate. LOL

      2. I didn’t – but I do now!

      3. lol I was thinking it looked odd too. :P

    7. Bianchi a lap ahead of the next car, that’s the way to show your worth in a backmarker car.

      1. Yes, Bianchi is really impressive. I’m sure he would go to top teams next year or even Force India could elect him during the season.

        1. would rather him than di Resta

          1. +1 absolutely!

      2. It was not a lap. He was about 20secs ahead of Pic.

      3. According to this, Bianchi’s fastest lap was quicker than Bottas, Sutil, di Resta and Guetierrez, not to mention his teammate and the Caterhams.

        1. You can’t take ‘too’ much from that, he was on farily fresh Super Softs when he set that time during his final stint, when most of the others around him were on part worn Mediums

          1. Surprisingly Jules Bianchi set the 11th-fastest lap of the race in the Marussia, while using super-soft tyres in his final stint – quicker than Adrian Sutil could manage on the same tyres in his Force India.
            Said by @keithcollantine

    8. My armchair expert hypothesis:

      1. Red Bull and Mercedes are both quick at getting heat into the tyres, but wear them off quicker. That’s why they were better in qualy but slower in the race.

      2. Ferrari and Lotus are slower at getting the tyres up to temperature, but are much more gentle on them. That is why they were not so good in qualy but faster than anyone in the race.

      1. But Mercedes wasn’t bad, they stopped after ferrari for the first stop – but that may have been late for good strategy as they lost time from that.

        1. I think Mercedes’ case is more about sensitive tyre operating window rather than just heating issue. as race went, temperature dropped and I think this is their weakness. Narrow operating window.

          1. That might well be true @eggry, especially since they had that problem last year too, only with hot temperatures being their bane then.

      2. @kingshark I agree with your early verdict. with smoother tyre, I think Ferrari&Lotus’ way has upper hands.

      3. this is the case exactly, but lotus has a lot more to give in stable weather conditions during qualifying

    9. Fantastic to see Kimmi leading from the get go. I think this is the first time Ferrari are championship leaders in what feels like a generation. Early days yet.

      1. 2010 at least, after winning Bahrain?

        1. Malaysia 2010 I believe.

    10. Great race. almost every drivers did very well except Grosjean and unlucky Hulk.

    11. Not sure what to think of Mercedes; how much of the gap was a failed attempt at a 2 stop vs a lack of pace. Rosberg stopping was a big loss for Lewis – the fight with Alonso killed what was left of his strategy.

      Interesting to get a read in more normal temperatures next week.

      1. That guy really hates tires. Always did.

    12. and if we have stable conditions in qualifying sessions, then we will see a championship contender ……….Go KImi

    13. How is it even possible to dominate the race like that when starting from 7th place? Godlike drive from Kimi, well deserved win!
      Kiitos Kimi! (=Thank you Kimi in Finnish)

    14. Well done Kimi. Now for the championship. ….again.

    15. I assume this is a vastly popular win by Kimi Raikkonen with many F1 fans around.

      Would like to see this parlayed into a 2nd world championship for him which he deserves after the near-misses he had with McLaren before.

      1. So very true. He won all the best driver awards in 05, despite Alonso taking the championship that year. If it weren’t for the McLaren’s horrible reliability that season he would have had the WDC too.

        03 was even closer, only the late season tire ruling against Michelin ended his chances. Without it he or Montoya in the Williams-BMW could have taken the title.

    16. Great race! I loved it. A bit disappointed that my fellow nationals, Perez and Gutierrez, didn’t get in the points, but I enjoyed this race so much. I didn’t know what to expect of this season, but now I’m pretty excited about it. The tyres maybe the only thing I’m no so happy about, but you can’t have it all.
      The biggest winner for me is of course Raikkonen. What a race! He was absolutely perfect.
      On the other side I think the biggest loser was Sutil. That set of super-softs wrecked his world. Feel bad for him. He was driving so well.
      Another big loser in this race was McLaren. They came from Brazil having the fastest car, and now they showed they were clearly off-pace. I think it was a mistake to make such big changes on the car. They will be playing catch-up, but they are already way behind.

    17. This might help Lotus get its big name-sponsor.

    18. Looks like ferrari made up there mind that massa wont finish ahead of alonso,when he was flying and want to stay on they just called him into the pits,I love to see the split strategy from ferrari where massa can run a 2 stopper but that didnt happen.Other thing i found strange was that blue flag being waved at sutil when he is in the mix ,a driver has every right to fight for his position no matter how big a driver is behind him

      1. @smokinjoe Yeah I found the blue flag incident strange too…although I doubt it distracted Sutil.

        1. @wsrgo offcouse it didnt distracted sutil but kinda disgraceful when driver putting in some amazin performance and being as to move on

      2. It was for the murussia ahead of them.

    19. After today, people will surely cry out that Ferrari are already helping Alonso, right from the first race of the season, by giving him a better strategy. However, I don’t think Massa would have got the same pace as Alonso to jump Vettel, and then pass Sutil. Ferrari just favoured the quicker man.
      And if someone talks about this being ‘covert team orders’ I’ll simply point to Williams, who blatantly used team orders to let Maldonado through on Bottas.

      1. I agree that Alonso’s pass on Sutil was great and that Massa might not have pulled that off. But I do think Massa was on or better than Alonso’s pace @wsrgo, so it still was dossapointing they didn’t let him prove it. Followed by Alonso calling Massa “traffic” on podium. Brundle should have asked about that imo.

        1. @bosyber Alonso was quicker than Massa, he was constantly around or within a second of Massa. So I wouldn’t say that Massa was quicker. He was holding him up..several times Alonso tried to pass Massa, but Massa was resisting, so Alonso gave up and decided to sit in his wheeltracks and go for the undercut.

          As for ‘traffic’, well Alonso did not explicitly mention Massa. And even Vettel was ‘traffic’ at that stage.

      2. Massa’s strategists could have made the undercut like Alonso did, but chose not to. Each driver has his own team in the garage and they make their own calls. Massa would have been given preference if he had wanted to pit on the same lap as Alonso, but in all likelyhood Massa’s side of the garage probably didnt expect new tyres to offer such a big undercut. Alonso’s engineers made him pit as soon as they saw Ham (I think) put on the medium’s and set purple sectors.

        It seems a lot of people think Ferrari have a central strategist team who make calls for both drivers, but that is not the case. The info is presented to both sides of the garage and they make the calls independently according to their cars specific situation. Alonso’s team was better than Massa’s team when it came to that undercut.

    20. I was surprised how low the Lotus ride height was. Even at the end of the race with all the fuel burned off, Kimi was bottoming out at several points throughout the lap, sparks flying and I didn’t notice it with other cars. Is that just a bumpy section of track or have they set it up very low or come up with a fancy ride-height system?

      1. Yeh that was very noticeable to me too

        1. I did quite enjoy the sparks, reminded me of the late 80’s or early 90’s when the cars seemed to bottom out all the time.

    21. Why is everyone assuming Ferrari somehow tricked Massa. From all I could see it was Alonso and Andrea Stella calling their pitstop early in order to jump others. Massa would have been tricked if he pitted after Alonso, only if Alonso pitted after Vettel. But both Vettel and Massa pitted before Alonso in the first round, so Alonso pitting before Vettel means that he brought his own stop early, not that Massa’s stop was delayed. Massa pitted just as Vettel, which is in line with their first round of stops.

    22. Adrian Sutil showed he is too patriot like Shumacher in Brazil, a straight pass from Vettel in turn 2, while he was able to defend Massa’s attack which was more agressive for at least 3 consecutive laps and he made it hard for Fernando on a finished tyres,what’s wrong with these Germans !!!!!!!!!!!

      1. @tifoso1989 You clearly missed the part in which Sutil defended his position really well for a lot of laps on older tyres than Vettel’s.
        Vettel’s move after the pitstop was very good, he caught Sutil by surprise with an incredible braking. No patriotism involved there.

        1. You clearly missed the part in which Sutil defended his position really well for a lot of laps on older tyres than Vettel’s.

          Vettel putted him under pressure for a while but the gap was constant ,Vettel was not able to make any attack

          he caught Sutil by surprise

          I think there is mirrors on Sutil’s car, he didn’t try to cover the inside while after that when he was under pressure from the Ferrari’s he was weaving and to hold the racing linewhich is what he was suppose to do with Vettel
          if you watch again that was an easy pass, Sutil actually made it easy ,I think that maybe he was sleeping or he was too patriot

          1. Anthony Davidson covered this move on Sky F1. Vettel braked incredibly late and shot up the inside corner. Vettel just caught Sutil out as he didn’t expect Vettel to come up the inside and brake so very late.

            I think you are completely wrong to claim that just because they’re both German there is something untoward about a genuinely brave overtaking move. This was not the same as Vettel-Schumacher in Brazil.

      2. Sour grapes?

    23. Following Raikkonen on live timing sector by sector is an experience. Talking about performance on demand.

      I can’t help of thinking he always kept 2 sec space in order to not damage the tyres and did not wreck the tyres right after pit stop as most other driver did.

      1. I’m with you on this one.
        Live timing really helps putting things into perspective. For instance; if I remember correctly Fernandos second to out lap was well under 1:31,000, meanwhile Kimi did first few laps in mid 1:31,s (after their last pitstops).

    24. Pleased with kimi’s win, he’s got to be the best shot at beating Alonso and Vettel this year. Nothing to chose between those teams in race trim, Malaysia will be interesting as its hotter, so it will be a better reflection of who’s going to have the legs this year.

      Merc; similar to last year, good qualifying pace but it’s not good enough on its tyres to be a effective race car, but at Least Hamilton can be happy he’s left McLaren at exactly the right moment as it appears they are about to descend into the doldrums. I still think Merc won’t be able to make any ground on the front running teams, their in-season development has never been up to much.

      I think Mclaren need to abandon that car, it’s so bad its untrue. Carrying on trying to sort it it out is full hardy surely? Admitting defeat, binning it and reverting to the 2012 car at least short term has got to be the best option as that will be in the top 6 at worst. I don’t buy development potential, if a car is that bad out of the box, it’s got some massive design flaws that they are not going to solve. A car that is good to start with has development potential!!!

    25. I have 3 questions:
      1. Whay did Lewis risked so much in holding back Alonso only to pit a few corners after?
      2. What’s wrong with Massa? He gets free air in front of him and the best he can do is ask Smedley what to do. And Smedley was strange too: “Show what you can do…” like it was an audition not a race.
      3. Does anyone know what did Ferrari told Alonso on the radio just after he nearly crashed into the Caterham?

      1. For 3) I don’t speak Italian, but I thought I heard “Kimi” in the message so it may have been telling him to just bring it home. Also worth noting that the timing of the radio message may have been at any time in the lap or two prior to what we saw on video, as the messages are always on some sort of delay.

      2. Yeah I think Alonso was told that there was no point pushing any longer because they were not catching Kimi.

        2: I think it was a pure misjudgment from Massa. Clearly Massa misread the tyres and told the team he could go faster than Vettel if only he had clean air. So Ferrari kept him out so Massa could do as advertised, and as soon as they realised he had no speed in his pocket, they pulled him into the pits (two laps after Alonso and 1 after Vet).

        I think Massa’s strategists were too reactive, and so they lost out to the preemptive calls made by Alonso’s side of the garage.

    26. I cant help but feel that had Sutil not held up the Vettel/Massa/Alonso train, his strategy might not have worked.

      All while those three were trying to get past Sutil, Kimi was hanging a few seconds back going at his targeted (slow on purpose) pace to look after the tyres. So when normally the 3 stoppers would dart off into the distance, they were stuck going at the same pace as Kimi, except in dirty air and pushing much hard and wasting more rubber.

      I dont think Kimi’s strategy would have worked half as well at a track where overtaking is much easier.

      1. I agree with you but I also credit Kimi and Lotus for being opportunists – had Sutil not been holding up the 3 stoppers, Kimi could have switched to a three-stop strategy himself. In that case, he may not have won but he would have secured solid points.

        While the TV coverage celebrated Sutil, I can’t help but wonder if the blue flags weren’t really an error… rather a suggestion. Had he taken his medicine and run on the SS tires like everyone else, he would have been far from the leaders.

    27. Thomas (@smashnfanatic)
      17th March 2013, 9:11

      Yaay! Iceman won! Too bad I didn’t get to see the race. :) Go Kimi! you deserve it.

    28. Great Race. What a start to the year! Kimi was brilliant today, made that two stop work. Ferrari were quick and Fernando took a solid podium and a good start to the year. Red Bull surprised most people with their performance today, no doubt they will still be quick possibly in hotter conditions. Lewis did well for his first race and Mark Webber struggled badly. But Kimi was class, how he popped the fastest lap in on lap 23 of a 24 lap stint was immense.

    29. great start for kimi…hope to see a lot more like this and then the championship!!

    30. Magnum ice cream >>>>> Chorizo sausage

    31. I was shaking my head in disbelief when
      1. Bianchi was gradually closing in on Bottas.
      2. Sutil was pulling away from Vettel, who was holding up the Ferraris..

    32. Uh-huh…is this Paul DiResta or we are reading the diary of a wimpy kid?
      Adrian Sutil rules. Too bad that the tyres let him down…..

    33. Sutil prved that he’s a top driver. When he had the same tyres with the others, nobody could overtake him. 100% value!

    34. The most stupid thing of the race: Hamilton defending his position from Alonso. Well done Hamilton, with a pilot like you Who need tyre strategies.

    35. winning is not important, but it´s humiliation … ;)

    Comments are closed.