Most disappointing Australian Grand prix

Hi friends, The Australian grand prix was disappointing to me. I expected many teams to perform in a better manner. I expected much from Force India Ferrari but Fisichella was out of the race in the first lap itself. Other driver Sutil was going very well in the 6th place but he too resigned in the middle of the race because of hydraulics failure.

The race was very tough because of high track temperature and recorded around 50 degrees and above. The driver’s car started breaking down with such a high temperature. The Force India team has done 8, 000 kms testing on the cold climate conditions; now the team is concentrating the testing on the hot climate conditions. The coming two races are in Malaysia & Bahrain where the climate will be very hot.

Vijay Mallya was unhappy with result but he was happy the way both the cars behaved at the start. This was the first time that cars were racing without launch control. Apart from the Ferraris & McLaren’s the other teams are all competing with each other.

Lewis Hamilton won the Australian Grand Prix in style, on hot tracks of Melbourne on March 16th 2008. Only 7 cars completed the full race and remaining cars were either crashed or break downs. Nick Heidfield of BMW was first runner up & Nico Rosberg of Williams was second runner up. Former World Champion Fernando Alonso of Renault stood fourth in the race and behind him Heikki Kovalainen of McLaren’s finished fifth at the end of race. Kovalainen recorded the fastest lap of the race with 1:27.418sec in the 43rd lap. Kazuki Nakajima of Williams finished at sixth spot and Sebastien Bourdais of STR-Ferrari finished in the seventh spot.

Ruben Barrichello was disqualified in spite of finishing the race in the sixth place. The reason is he took off the car in the pit lane when the red light is on. Mechanics did not finish in removing the fuel pipe but Ruben left from the pit lane which stunned his team.

Kimi Raikkonen of Ferrari team, the defending champion, stood at number eight and his engine failed in the 53rd lap of the race. Robert Kubica (BMW) 47 lap accident, Felipe Massa (Ferrari) 29 lap Engine fail, Timo Glock (Toyota) 43 lap accident, Takuma Sato (Super Aguri) 32 lap transmission, Nelsinho Piquet (Renault) 32 lap accident and car damage, David Coulthard (Red Bull) 25 lap accident. The list of accident is very long and it was disappointing race at the end of the day.

Finally the Force India Ferrari team did not get any points in this race and in the coming races we can expect good performances from Fisichella & Sutil. The Ferrari team & Renault team will look forward for the podium finishes. Hamilton was in good form and he sailed smoothly on the track where other top drivers struggled to drive without accidents.
By Vamsi