TJ13 has been running rate the race polls since 2013. This year’s Australian Grand Prix was voted the worst yet. You are asked to score the race between 0-10 and we calculate the average score across all the votes that are cast.
2013 Australian GP Score 8.11
In 2013, we saw a win for Kimi Raikkonen in his second year driving for the Lotus team. This victory was the 20th in the Finnish driver’s career and tied him with the win tally of fellow countryman Mika Hakkinen.
Kimi won the race from 7th on the grid, a feat only ever completed 21 times in Formula One history. This was the third time Raikkonen had achieved this.
This was also the first time a Lotus car had won the first race of a season since 1978 when Colin Chapman was in charge..
Sebastian Vettel had started on pole, though qualifying had taken place on the day of the race due to torrential rain on Saturday afternoon. Alonso and Vettel joined Raikkonen on the podium.
The race was led by 7 different drivers, a record only surprised in Monza 1971. Jackie Setwart was the winner that day and one of 9 drivers to lead the race.
2014 Australian GP Score 7.13
Lewis Hamilton qualified on pole position, but lasted just a handful of laps in the race before a £5 piece of wiring was responsible for his retirement. Nico Rosberg went on to win comfortably.
World Champion Sebastian Vettel lasted not much longer as he too retired with an engine failure, whilst his team mate surprisingly drive to 2nd at the chequered flag.
Ricciardo was later disqualified as Red Bull refused to comply with instructions to turn down their fuel flow rate.
After losing his seat the previous season in F1, fans favourite Kamui Kobayashi returned the the fray with Caterham. He took out Felipe Massa at the first corner, ending both their races following a ‘brake-by-wire’ failure.
Jenson made clever use of the safety car to make up places and he and team mate Kevin Magnussen ended up in the podium positions – the best it got for McLaren in 2014.
2015 Australian GP Score 3.27
The highest score you awarded the race was “What race? Did I miss something?” – better known as 0.
Just 15 cars made the ‘lights out’, 13 made it to lap 2 and a mere 11 took the chequered flag.
Lewis Hamilton led from the off and controlled the race throughout. Kimi Raikkonen was the only driver running a counter tyre strategy, but Ferrari failed to secure his rear left wheel at his second pit stop.
10 of the 11 finishers stopped just once, as the Pirelli tyre compounds look to be even more durable for 2014 than last year. Most of runners completed well over 20 laps on the soft tyres for the first stint, whereas the year before, Romain Grosjean was hailed for making his soft compound tyres last a similar distance.
This was a snooze-fest of the highest quality. Things can only get better in 2014 – can’t they?
Who voted it a 10!! I think he may have slept in and accidentally watched a sky replay of a classic GP.
Me, Lewis won……haha 🙂 🙂
I voted it a 10!
I knew going in to the race that Melbourne is a great venue for fans, ambiance, etc. but is a crap track for racing, (too difficult to pass on track). I also knew beforehand that Pirelli was too conservative in their compound choices which takes away strategic creativity.
I also knew that Marussia were out, Caterham are no more, Magnussen was not fully prepped, and McHonda was slow, unreliable and only using the weekend as a test session. So I knew the grid would be short by those 6 cars already.
With those realities, where I live, in Southern California, there is usually a F1 live party someplace (because of time zones, the race is Saturday night here). This year there was a big one in downtown Los Angeles. There were 200+ F1 fans there, so it was great to drink beer, chat about stuff, and watch the race unfold together as a crowd.
Just as importantly, it was the first F1 race of the season after a long off-season. Testing was intriguing, but it has never been a strong predictor. So the first race is the first proper test of all the new cars, engines, and drivers.
Given all that, it was at least an 8!
So why a 10 instead of an 8? Easy! Look at all of this drama:
* Ferrari’s chassis now works!
* Ferrari’s power unit now works!
* McLaren’s chassis works really well, as some had predicted!
* Sauber shocked with an excellent performance!
* Nasr shocked with an excellent performance!
* Renault shocked with a horrible performance!
* Red Bull shocked with a horrible performance!
* There is always off-track drama for Melbourne, but this it was superior with the whole van der Garde vs Sauber saga!
All of that drama spawned a huge cache of articles on TJ13 alone, as well as other F1 media publications!
The best part… it’s only going to get better!
I love F1!
http://thejudge13.com/2015/03/15/how-would-you-rate-the-2015-f1-australian-grand-prix/comment-page-1/#comment-131080
Some people are easily amused
Hats off to you pal. I’ll rate your passion a 10!!
I still thought it was a poor race.
Still, the Russian gp got it worse. Look it up. Worst go ever
“The race was led by 7 different drivers, a record only surprised in Monza 1971.” SURPRISED? Perhaps, “superceded”? Or better, “exceeded”?
Try surpassed.
05 US GP, livened up by adverts
F1: where even the welded on fans say no thanks.
I stick with the Sky team and rate it slightly above six. Come on people, we’ve seen much, much, much worse races. I agree that it was far from the most exciting race ever, but this whole “F1’s boring yada yada yada” shtick grew old years ago.
I loved the 2014 season but even I think this Australian GP was a total bore fest.
I scored it “what race”, I’m a Hamilton man for my current driver support, but my team allegiance lies with McLaren. (from about 8 years old) so I had a bitter sweet race, with Lewis winning and Jensen last. I felt that the rookies were helped massively by the lack of cars and a poor RedBull performance. Not to mention Kimi dropping out.
This should have been last year’s race, not the first race of a second season of an engine formula.
The race-weekend as a whole was very entertaining, but the race itself, not so hot.
I will be getting up for Malaysia, using the hope that is can’t be a boring as the last one, as my motivation for rising early.
Oh come on, what is written in my comment that caught the filters?
Is it because I said I liked McLaren?
Or was it ‘rising early’……….
I voted a 1, but if I knew ‘what race’ was calculated as a 0 in the average, than I would have voted “what race’. So the current average is even too high.
The 2013 Aus GP was a real cracker. The 2015 Aus GP was a real crapper.