F1 Fanatic Live: 2017 Australian Grand Prix

Your email address will not be published. For the best experience sign in with a free F1 Fanatic account.

All comments must abide by the Comment Policy.

1,191 comments on “F1 Fanatic Live: 2017 Australian Grand Prix”

  1. Looks like Stroll will be the first driver to do a timed lap. Big pressure on him, obviously this isn’t one of the tracks he was able to test* on.

    *Williams hate it if you refer to his runs in the 2014 car as ‘testing’. It was ‘practice’, of course…

  2. Looks like sky have a new driver timing graphic in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. I can take a guess but does anyone know what the grren/white/purple blocks are. Do we now have 10 sectors every lap? I’ve had to watch without sound so the commentary may have said something so don’t shoot me

  3. I am giddy for this season. Even with the potential reduction in overtaking, these machines look like proper beasts on track. This looks to be an exciting turn for the sport and with new access and direction, we may be nearing a new golden era. One can hope, right?

      1. I dont know keith obviously im not in Hype Train but i feel there is a vast difference in them compared to last season or putting it this way ive never seen a Ferrari team like this since 2009 or 10 i believe. they haven’t done big mouth statements they are keeping them selves a very low profile , Lets see how they go

      1. Already entered. Though my prediction might be just wishful thinking… What would be cool to see is at the end of the year the cars come back to Melbourne to post times to see how much development they do over the year. Won’t happen, but it would be cool to compare.

  4. Seems the Mercedes is so long Bottas is having difficulty getting out of his garage. Hamilton can turn out more cleanly as there’s a bit more space to the side of his car but there’s a strut on one side which gets in the way for Bottas. It’s always hard to tell for sure but it appeared as though the W08 was the longest car in pre-season testing. (Height and width are fixed by the regulations of course.)

    1. I dont know but Vettel has K issues according to tweet posted here.
      But then again no one is really pushing so every one is hiding pace.
      About Ferrari pace they didn’t improve as much as we expect them to be from S to SS

    1. I dont get it what people are expecting from others Merc is still the best car in field.
      they have great Aero and Impressive PU. NO way any team can cut the PU side with a winter alone. they may cut them by Aero but in PU they are best and they will be ahead

    1. Maybe how they had to change their suspension didn’t help either. Yeah, let’s hope Vettel can at least keep up a bit of pressure on Lewis this weekend, and Bottas gets to look at Hamilton’s data and improve too :-)

          1. Schumi definitely was on the wrong side in terms of age. But Rosberg was known for his speed already since his Williams years. But yes, it was not a bad showing at all from the veteran.

  5. Had to laugh at saying it is positive Ricciardo had only 0.9 degradation, a bit less than Hamilton – only to, half a minute later calculationg their averages being 1:28.0 HAM vs. 1:29.3 RIC; that’s not going to help much then is it (and it was quite clear from the times).

    1. I think the merc shown that they are fastest as Vettel stated too many times before today.
      Lets see how the season goes but i hope we are in a good season rather than a boring one. F1 needs a competitive season like 2010 where multiple teams are in until end of year

      1. I think Ted is great – if he was a guest on Celebrity Brain Crash on Grand Tour. For me, be much happier if Ted’s hyped up drivel and fake pronouncements remained in his smarmy imagination.

        Looking forward to hearing more from Symonds this season. Refreshing to watch someone on TV who has actual technical experience in F1.

    1. I’m from the US and here NBC does not even offer commentary on FP1 and FP3, which turns out to be a good thing because when they do offer commentary (FP2, Qualy, and Race), the advertising in just unbearable. Sometimes they cut to ads as cars are closely racing side by side or when somebody is on a charge of fastest laps. I envy the Sky F1 coverage.

  6. Hello everyone and welcome to F1 Fanatic Live for the first qualifying session of 2017!

    If you weren’t here in time for practice the first thing you should know is the first driver change of 2017 happened a bit earlier than we all expected:

    Giovinazzi to make F1 debut in place of Wehrlein at Sauber

    The second thing you should know is Ferrari are leading the times at the moment:

    Vettel puts Ferrari on top as Stroll crash ends practice

    And the third thing you should know is you’ve got less than an hour to make your first Predictions Championship entry for the new season:

    Win F1 games, videos and more with your Australian GP predictions

  7. Ok, looking forward to this qualifying. While I did put a notification in my calendar, putting my phone on silent meant having a nice lie in during FP3, so I’m even more thrilled for this session!. Is the pace of the Renault real, or was it more that others did not get a chance to improve with the red flag. And are Williams in trouble with reliability?
    Also, who expects Vettel to still be ahead come Q3? And will Bottas get as close to lewis as he was last session. All those questions :-)

  8. Looking at the predictions is very interesting… seems like a vast majority vote for a Hamilton pole, with runner up being Vettel. After that it’s almost a dead heat between Kimi and Bottas with the lone (so far that I saw) Verstappen vote (1:18.000!)

    Interesting how people think of their predictions :)

          1. Nothing, but I couldn’t pick between Vettel and Hamilton. I figured Kimi over Bottas was likely, so I went with something I knew wouldn’t be correct, but would be second most likely.

          2. I think it is still more likely for Bottas to get pole than for Kimi. For the race, off course, Ferrari will again use Kimi as test bed for Vettel (pitting him 3-4 laps too early) or let him hang out to dry (pitting him 2 laps too late), so yeah he is not getting on the podium

          3. Off course a lot can happen in the race. And the points get dealed on Sunday. But starting at the front does give a very strong indication of how things will go. Especially with the gaps to further back we have and reliability what it is, it would need serious mishaps to change that.

  9. Hamilton reported his car was sliding a bit more in the second and third sectors according to Mercedes. Track temperature was up a bit in the third session compared to yesterday and there’ll be more rubber down – they’ve just had the third Supercars race of the weekend.

  10. Call me an idiot but it might be possible that Red Bull has been sandbagging all this time since pre season and they may actually have an absolutely awesome car that will storm pole and win.

    I am not a red bull fan and have still predicted ferrari to win but I think they are that slick/sneaky to do something like that, especially with Horner and Ric talking about a slim chance to challenge for the championship. Makes you think they have something hidden.

    I know this is a stretch but it could be possible that they will even wait for a couple of race to lull other teams into a false sense of security.

    I know this sounds crazy but just a theory

    1. Nooooo! Giovinazzi is running number 36?!

      That’s my lucky number gone. Heartbreaking. Despite me having a whole host of reasons preventing me from ever claiming it myself. I’m too tall. Too heavy. Too poor. Too old. And I lack natural talent.

    1. Hulkenberg thrashing Palmer.. Grosjean pounds Magnussen… Alonso crushes Vandoorne. I’m loving the fact that driver skill is having a bigger effect.

      Hats off to Giovinazzi though.. pretty impressive performance from him.

  11. Bottas made a mistake on the straights which relegated him to third by just .002s. He still has the chance to make up the position. But I would hope everything stays the same, a Merc – Ferrari front row should be great to watch!

  12. It feels more and more that RedBull was heavily impacted by the “active suspension” bann. Merc and Ferrari are there, RedBull is having such trouble. They’ve always had their car ready and dialed for the 1st race, but not this time.

      1. He is doing his BS talk on that @alesici. They have looked quite unstable ever since the second test session, where they had to drop that suspension. He also kept telling us that the changes to exhaust blowing wouldn’t change much. Only to later blame the FIA and the competition for hurting their speed by a massive amount from that.

    1. First of all, they were 1.7 seconds faster, not 1 second. And then the 5 second thing was vs. 2015 times – they were about 4.2 seconds faster than that. And let’s remember that Australia doesn’t have that many fast corners where the difference will be larger

  13. Great. Vettel manages to split the MErcedes cars. Good to have him smelling blood and pushing it. Bottas can still be happy to have at least managed to be less than 3 tenths behind Hamilton for his first mercedes qualifying. Solid effort from Massa, great lap from Grosjean. Verstappen really had to husstle that Red Bull, but well done too.

    1. Would love to see VET, RAI and VER but I think it will be HAM, VET, BOT, I think with these new cars there will be some coming together on the opening lap and the front three will get away.

  14. Aus GP might set the record for most non-starting drivers or most substitutes used. 2015 – Alonso couldn’t start. 2016 – Bottas couldn’t start 2017 – Pascal and (probably) Ricciardo also can’t start

    1. They are trying a reset, not a sensor change. Resets may not work. If I remember correctly, Kimi did one in 2015 mid-race (very long pitstop) but the problem re-occured immediately. Also, VET in 2014 Aus GP started after a reset but it didn’t work

  15. What’s the deal with old engines – didn’t they want to introduce a rule prohibiting that? Farcical imo – especially since Sauber/Toro Rosso last year surely aren’t direct competitors; if anything they provide more mileage.

  16. Hello,
    So now that’ interesting: when ROS had to pass VER for the title last year, he did it. Now with newer tyres, HAM did not do it… Of course everything’s different, but the season is going to be interesting!!

    1. Looks like Lewis is just not in the right mindset. He started with complaining about grip at the grid, then started about his tyres from lap 10 onwards and now again. His complaining got MErcedes to a wrong strategy, giving away the race win. Now he might be losing 2nd to that as well.

  17. I don’t mind this as I watch F1 way back from MSC-Mika days, but I wonder how the newer viewers think about this race. I think it’s good even though it lacks proper battle and overtaking, they pushed all the way.

  18. Verstappen close and possibly overtaking Kimi.
    Vettel 10s ahead of the closest Mercedes.
    I know Ferrari likes to play the No.1 Driver game, but if they did make a great car this season, Kimi may just put an early end to their Constructor Championship dream.

    1. I think the team made th mistake of listening to Lewis and bringing him in too soon after his complaining. Bottas clearly was a lot faster for the last stint, but seems to have been told to just hold position in 3rd. Not even convinced Ferrari was faster per se. Just Lewis talked himself into feeling miserable about the car and the tyres.

    1. I suspect that some teams/drivrs were saving the car, fuel, tyres etc far too much here. A bit like what we saw in 2010 in Bahrain where everyone expected it to be far harder to make to the finish than it turned out to be. Next race they sped up by quite a bit.

    1. Te me it looked like Lewis was talking himself into feeling bad on them more than there being a real issue with the tyes. I also think all of them could have easily done the second stint on the SSofts and been a lot faster overall.

  19. Imagine if Redbull get their act together and we could have 3(6) cars fighting for the win! That would be awesome! Even if the racing on track is not great, just this uncertainty is great for F1.