The Formula One World Championship is as good as it gets in the F1 world.
And the Grand prix is the oldest motor racing competition that has been contested 83 times in Australia. The 2018 F1 competition that started with the Australia GP was full of surprises and excitement. Let's do a review of what exactly happened on the race, and who were the winners and losers of the 58-lap race that got everyone on their feet - especially the people who had bets in play.
The thrill and the suspense during that hour and a half was unreal. If we can draw conclusions from this year's Australia GP, it's that everything happening on the race is a team effort and even the favourites can make mistakes. From a betting perspective, these are the most important things to realize - other than of course, to make sure to always place f1 bets on the best legal Australian sites. But that's pretty obvious for every Aussie betting enthusiast out there, because of all the perks you get.
How Ferrari Stole the Win from Mercedes to their first 2018 Win
Let's take a step back and review the highlights of the race. Lewis Hamilton was clearly disappointed as his almost-certain victory was stolen from Vettel due to a major Mercedes error that recognized as a software malfunction by the team principal Toto Wolff. The 4-time world champion had a hard time accepting this loss, which was really about a miscalculation by his garage team under the virtual safety car regulations. These rules were imposed to limit the speed on the car when Romain Grosjean's Haas formula did a 360 degree turn-around on the track and stopped. The speed limit allowed Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel to steal the win away.
And what happened that day was pretty unusual for the Mercedes team, as they pride themselves on attention to detail and precision. And their confusion was pretty obvious when Hamilton asked Pete Bonnington - the race engineer what had happened on the team radio. The conversation was something along the lines of: "Why did you not tell me Vettel was in the pits?", and Pete responded "We thought we were safe, but there was something wrong".
This confusion in Mercedes's garage allowed Ferrari to use their two-on-one advantage in the most effective manner. They brought Kimi Raikkonen early just to make Hamilton stop one lap later so that he can counter his rivals on fresh tyres. This allowed Vettel to go into the pits for the sop while everybody else circulated at a slow pace, and turn a 9-seconds time deficit into a race lead. If only the Mercedes team were accurate with the time delta, Hamilton would have easily stayed in the lead and finish the race with a win.
In a nutshell, that's about the gist of it. After the race, Hamilton said "I did everything I was supposed to do," and added "At the last minute, I was told that Ferrari was coming out. It was disbelief from that moment until the end of the race".
F1 Grand Prix 2019 Date Announced
The Formula 1 season is scheduled to start a week earlier next year, with the Australian Grand Prix set to a date somewhere from 14 to 17th of March in 2019. This is slightly different to what fans are used to, as the season used to start in the 4th week of March for the past two years. So, why did the World Motor Sport Council decide to make this change? It's mainly because Melbourne is a pretty busy month, given that the Moomba Festival is a week before, while the Australian Football League season starts a week after. So the 16-17th of March weekend could get some fresh air on the Albert Park race, and fans won't have to choose between the country's most popular sport and the F1.
Andrew Westacott, the Australian Grand Prix Corp CEO hopes that this early date will encourage more F1 fans to come to Melbourne and watch the rase. When asked about the motives behind the date change, he said: "To announce the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix 2019 date more than eight months out from the event is fantastic news and we hope this will encourage overseas and interstate visitors to plan for a lengthy visit to Melbourne and Victoria, " and also added: "We are immensely proud of the four-day spectacle Melbourne puts on and honoured to raise the curtain on one of the world's most prestigious annual championships".
