Rate the race: 2008 Australian Grand Prix

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What did you think of the Australian Grand Prix? Rate the race out of ten for how much you enjoyed it and leave your comments below.

This poll has closed. Results:

1/10 – 3%
2/10 – 3%
3/10 – 1%
4/10 – 1%
5/10 – 1%
6/10 – 7%
7/10 – 18%
8/10 – 33%
9/10 – 26%
10/10 – 7%

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...

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40 comments on “Rate the race: 2008 Australian Grand Prix”

  1. absolutely awesome race, lots of drama, lots of action and lots of twists.

    what a start to 2008 god bless the banning of traction control!

  2. Scott Joslin
    16th March 2008, 6:26

    Good start to the season ! Bring it on!

  3. Excellent race, full of action and drama – mostly due to errors rather than skill!

    Who on earth voted for 1/10?!  A Ferrari fan perchance?

  4. exciting race.. nice win for hamilton and good to see heidfeld and rosberg on the podium. But I was crushed when Bourdais crapped out I was screaming at the television. Between that and Button going out it was a tough start to the year for me.

  5. Excellent race…
    only 5 teams finished..

    Nelson Piquet Jr. is a joke though

  6. If this is what we’re in store for this year, we are in for a great season. A very exciting race asa result of banning Traction Control and Engine Braking.

  7. What happened to Piquet Jnr i missed that bit i did see he was successfully reversing back through the field!

  8. Stopped with a car problem halfway through, was well off pace up until then.

  9. Great race… Barrichello being called to the pits during safety car was a shame, he could have been on podium otherwise…. Bourdais didn’t deserve that engine failure… Still, I’m quite happy that Raikkonen didn’t start ahead of Massa… Like Rabi said, god bless the banning of driver aids!!!!!!!!

  10. Keith, somewhere you expressed a desire for a cracking race, but I don’t think you expected this outcome!

    At least Bourdais can claim the moral victory of scoring points for the team.

    No vehicle with Ferrari power finishes the race! Amazing!!

  11. Fantastic race, really enjoyable, even if a bit painful being a Ferrari fan. No TC has spiced things up, plenty of driver errors – at least 4 significant ones from the red cars for example. I hope this was just an aberration from them, normal winning ways next week?

  12. Nico Savidge
    16th March 2008, 7:24

    del sums it up. For a Ferrari fan, this was a hard race to watch (and I doubt my family appreciated me screaming at the TV so late…). But as a fan, it was great – I had some friends over to watch it, and one of them left an F1 convert!

  13. It was alright, lack of TC had less than nothing to do with it though.

  14. What a dramatic start to the season, non-stop action from the beginning to the end and results that few would have expected. Great race for Nico Rosberg and Williams, Kovalainen was very unlucky with the timing of the last safety car, otherwise McLaren had a perfect weekend.

    The attrition rate was very high, especially after last year when it seemed like there was just the odd retirement here and there. Both incidents between drivers and reliability issues for some teams led to a great and action packed season opener.

     Bloody awful race for Ferrari with both drivers making mistakes (I wonder if Kimi was drunk) and reliability is not looking strong. Räikkönen did perform well from his lowly starting position but better reliability and without the mistakes he would’ve definitely finished on the podium. Massa did not look good, spinning out after the first corner and then a bit of hesitation while passing Coulthard which ended in a bang. I’ve gotta say that from the tv-footage the F2008 looked like a real handful to drive at times, especially when driving in the wake of another car, and with some of the upcoming races being the hottest on the calendar and with it looking like the F2008 is held together by gaffer tape, they could face a monumental task off closing the gap to McLaren when the european races start.

    Heidfeld drove as he usually does; good, reliable driving but completely anonymous on the track, in contrast to Nakajima who was involved in "a few" incidents throughout the race. Kazuki was lucky to get all the way after breaking his front wing on Kubica’s diffuser. He did score 2 points though so it wasn’t all bad. Rosberg in the other Williams was fenomenal, taking advantage off the starting incidents and driving strong to the end, which gave him his first podium finish, one that I don’t expect to be the last.

    You’ve gotta feel bad for the tiny teams, Bourdais did some solid driving and did really well to keep Alonso behind him until his engine expired, and who knows where Vettel could have finished without the early retirement, Bourdais did score 1 point but Toro Rosso could’ve had much more. Both Force India and Super Aguri had bad weekends with their respective drivers all having early exits.

    Renault had a race of mixed fortunes, Alonso showing that he’ll be a contender for "best of the rest", but Piquet not looking good at all. He seemed really easy to overtake and to top it off had to retire. And yes, with Kubica and Heidfelds performance I now rank BMW as one of the top teams. While Kubica was fueled low he wasn’t really that low compared to Hamilton, and would’ve been well up there without Nakajima driving into the rear of his car.

    Honda is the surprise of the weekend, looking like they weren’t going anywhere through winter testing but looking to be there in the pace with Renault, Williams, Red Bull and Toyota. Still not near perfect though, Button retiring at the start and Barrichello doing a combined Albers, Nakajima and Massa, exiting the pits without the fuel hose fully released and mowing down one of the pit crew
     in the process, and then exiting the pits against red lights. It would be really surprising if he isn’t disqualified, considering Massa and Fisichella both we’re when they exited against reds in Canada 2007.

    A disappointing weekend for Red Bull, with Webber’s race ending before it really began and Coulthard getting nudged off and out by Massa. It seems like they have very good pace though, and if the Gearbox issues from last year have been solved they’ll be contenders for the positions behind the three top teams.

    Toyota looked like, well, Toyota. Trulli keeps on being Trulli and Glock doing some impressive rally-style jumps and retiring in the process. Seems like they’ve made some progress though, with both drivers qualifying in the top ten but then retiring in the race.

    Finally, what a great race and weekend for Hamilton. Great driving and good timing on the last safety car, and Hamilton did what was expected of him and won. Looks like Kovalainen is not at all far off Hamilton’s pace though, Lewis will have his hands full with keeping his teammate at bay as the season progresses.

  15. Great race to start the season, and quite interesting for a first-time viewer!! I was very happy to see Williams make the podium in the first race, and hopefully they will continue to build on that performance as the year continues.

    I can’t wait for the next round, although the time difference will make it a bit tough on those of us along the eastern seaboard of the U.S.. In any event, great first race for me.

  16. Kovalainen checkmating Raikkonen, breathtaking. And let the gods look more kindly upon Bourdais throughout the season.    

  17. Yeah I expect Barrichello to get DQ’ed it looked pretty open and shut to me. Ferrari will definitely appeal if he doesn’t because Massa got a penalty for it last year and it’s a black and white issue.

  18. correct me if I wrong but Barrichello was called for 10 seconds stop and go …

  19. I think his stop and go was for pitting when the pits were ‘closed’ – exiting under the red lights is a different thing.

  20. Finnish MTV3 are reporting Barrichello is disqualified.

  21. I apologize if this incorrect, but, didn’t Massa get the black flag after he overtook Kubica in the pitlane whilst Kubica was waiting for the red light to turn green under SC Oddly enough Kubica then had that colossal accident. But i agree, same crime same punishment.
    I guess/hope the FIA/Stewards look for cause and effect.

  22. Official: Barrichello disqualified

    That means Nakajima sixth, Bourdais seventh (although he’d stopped) and Raikkonen eighth (although he’d stopped as well).

  23. I’ve also heard Nakajima may get a grid penalty for the next race for his collision with Kubica.

  24. Not at all surprising, it was a stupid mistake and it spoiled Kubica’s good race.

    Kovalainen was removing a strip from his visor and accidentally hit the pit lane speed limiter, which is why Alonso re-passed him on the final lap.

  25. great race, but the heat was unebelievable … I went to Sepang few times but it was nothing compared to today in Melbourne …

    The sound of Kimi’s engine after that last safety car restart was very weird, no wonder the car did not make it to the line …

  26. Cheers Milos – bet you had a great time! Where were you watching from? Are you at Sepang next week as well?

  27. Hope you enjoyed yourself at the race, milos!

  28. Wow, only six cars at the final line, when was the last time that happened?? It was a great race to watch but is not easy for me to draw conclusions after such a race apart from the obvious one: no matter how fast Ferrari  are but if they don’t solve their realibility issues it would be an easy champ for both MCL and LH.  Btw, anyone knows what happened with KOV’s car right at the end??  Without SC he would have ended in d podium, bad luck.

  29. Kovalainen hit his pit lane speed limiter by mistake. I’m just writing up the review now which has more info, will be up in 30 mins or so.

  30. Ok thanks for that. 
    Massa should be paying for driving a FE and no the other way round. ROS made a great race I wonder what he could do with a top car. For me the possitive surprise was Honda, close to the podium and the negative Renault, with no pace at all (ALO’s best was more than one sec slower than KOV).

  31. I had different seat on each day, today I was facing William’s garage :-)

    I am skipping Sepang this year, staying on down under for few days holiday , and will watch Malaysian GP will watch back home from my sofa or in a bar :-)

    I must say, this was the best GP I ever been to, the organization was simply amazing, the atmosphere great, I sure will be back… It would be great shame if this race goes …

  32. It’s a funny thing to say, but it’s actually quite good to see a race almost purely of attrition. We get precious few of them nowadays, between the bulletproof reliability of the cars and th electronics bailing them out previously. Still, I think to a large extent that was a special case, I don’t neccessarily think that race sets the tone for all the GP’s this season!

  33. Can’t wait to read Max’s take on all the damage. No doubt he’ll come up with a cockamamie excuse top slow down the cars for safety reasons as well as "saving money".

    But I loved the race and all the unexpecteds, especially surprised by Kimi losing the car at least twice.

  34. I want to meet the 18 voters who think this was a 10/10 PERFECT race.  And maybe the next 146 who think it was "great’ or "fantastic", they must be NASCAR fans accustomed to crashes and safety car sessions.  Kubica, Kovalainen and Bourdais were clearly the stars of the show although none were awarded the credit they deserve. It’s good to see fresh names running at the top. 

  35. Could we possibly have the graphics slightly bigger. Many of us are elderly but very interested – the small graphics of lists of drivers positions etc – especially in qualifying are a strain for a lot of flokd to read. Please give ths some thought. Thank you Eileen Lowery

  36. Albeit it was a great race to watch, constantly eventful down to the last lap, there’s no way I could give it a high mark as the lead was practically uncontested…that was all that missing – but it’s something important, if albeit a bit rare these days, to be watching in racing.

  37. Drama from lights to flags. People who have voted it not very good are idiots. 9 or 10/10 in my opinion.

  38. "I want to meet the 18 voters who think this was a 10/10 PERFECT race.  And maybe the next 146 who think it was "great’ or "fantastic", they must be NASCAR fans accustomed to crashes and safety car sessions. "

    I voted great, and I’m not a NASCAR fan. Look, I can understand why you would say that. It was a crashfest, it did have a feeling of "first day back at school", it was full of driver and team error. But there was plenty of drama, excitement, lots of passing and close battles and it’s great to see cars that are a handful.

    When I think back to last year, the only really exciting races were the wet ones, and the dry Canadian race which people have commented on as being very similar. We could have had a 58-lap procession and talked about the pitstop strategy and how the cars couldn’t make much progress being in the dirty air of the one in front, like the almost ALL of the races last year, but we got this instead. No, it wasn’t F1 at its "purest", but I think the (dry) races you are thinking of really are vanishingly rare these days, so for today I’ll take this and like it.

    It couldn’t and shouldn’t be like that every weekend, but it won’t, so let’s just enjoy the fact that it was a bit different from the norm – we’ll probably be complaining about the drama free race in Malaysia next weekend. If you’re waiting for the perfect race you’ll be waiting for a while in this sport. 

  39. superb performance from LH, to get pole and then maximise it to dominate the race.
    The Glock incident should not be happening in modern F1. That’s a track issue. That ‘launching hump’ he hit should not be there! Thank goodness it didn’t costs lives.

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