Poll: Australian Grand Prix 2019, Melbourne - Race 1/21

[Flibster]

Bottas now does a 1:26.739

 

[Flibster]

Verstappen told over the radio.
"Probably aim for 10 laps of fun at the end"

 

[Flibster]

Bottas:
"But, I want 26 points though, so I'm going to try"

 

[Flibster]

Leclerc told to hold position it seems. Dropped from 0.3s to 1.5s behind Vettel

 

[Mr Jack]

Leclerc been told to hold station?

 

[Flibster]

Leclerc been told to hold station?

Looks like it. Now 3.1s behind Vettel

 

[Flibster]

Verstappen does a 1:26.540

 

[MrKnifey]

Everyone going mental for the fastest lap point

 

[4K8KW10]

Ferrari may as well turn everything down now. Magnussen is 26s behind Leclerc

Leclerc been told to hold station?

If Bottas is going to rule them all, it doesn't really matter - better let them race.

But it seems the cars are much slower than they were last year.

 

[Flibster]

**** me...

1:25.580 for Bottas...

New fastest lap.

 

[Flibster]

Bottas's best race. By quite a distance.

Ferrari 57.5s behind.

 

[SS-89]

Well done Bottas. That was impressive. Gutted Ferrari were absolute dog this weekend. Hopefully just a bad race weekend. On to Bahrain! Melbourne is such a boring race.

 

[Irish_Tom]

Fair play Bottas — smashed it.

 

[Entai]

LeClerc catching right up at the end just to show he could have gone past Vettel

Ferrari team orders already, does not look good For rest of the season

 

[UTmaniac]

Bottas must have been having secret coaching from Nico over the winter, bossed that victory.

Bit disappointing that Ferrari told Le Clerc to back off from Vettel towards the end.

 

[Mr Jack]

Australia as dull a race as ever. Fabulous performance by Bottas, weak from Hamilton, solid from Max. Ferrari will be scratching their heads at how they ended up so slow.

Honourable mention to Stroll. Finishing in the points starting from the back. Gasly should have done better with that car under him.

The point for FL seemed to work well.

 

[4K8KW10]

LeClerc catching right up at the end just to show he could have gone past Vettel

Ferrari team orders already, does not look good For rest of the season

If Vettel switched everything off, it wouldn't have been fair to change the order. I wouldn't judge, TBH.

 

[Yaayuh!]

Yeah, got to hand it to Bottas, what a drive.

Feel sorry for leclerc, he’s going to get ****** all season like this I bet, told to stay in his place.

 

[Flibster]

Ferrari went from 0.5s a lap faster to 1.0s a lap slower.
Vettel finished 57s behind Bottas.

Ferrari screwed Leclerc over. Went 4 seconds faster than Vettel on the last lap, and they told him to hold position...

 

[alx]

Australia as dull a race as ever. Fabulous performance by Bottas, weak from Hamilton, solid from Max. Ferrari will be scratching their heads at how they ended up so slow.

Honourable mention to Stroll. Finishing in the points starting from the back. Gasly should have done better with that car under him.

The point for FL seemed to work well.

Hamilton has a very poor conversion rate at Melbourne, something like 8 poles and only 2 victories - although reliability scuppered him once and poor strategy last year.

Will be interesting to see if Bottas can keep this up, he certainly seems focused and determined!