I don't think anyone was surprised though...

Thought Bottas may have been a little closer. To be fair, it is only practice and until Qualy, we aren't going to know.

 

So the Ferrari looks fairly close to the Merc in qualifying, especially as Hamilton has always been massively quick around Albert Park.
Rosberg was no qualifying slouch, but Hamilton was consistently 0.3 - 0.5 faster than him in recent years so it's not inconceivable that the gap to Vettel could be down to the driver.
If so it's going to be a good season.

For the race I reckon the Merc is quicker than the Ferrari, however I wouldn't be surprised if Vettel gets the jump at the start.

Fingers crossed for a close race.

 

A slightly interesting race, though the season is looking grim if cars with a 3 second advantage can't overtake...

 

Agree with your summary of the race...and yes, (lots) more downforce certainly doesn't equal more / easier overtaking.

Still, nice to see a car that isn't silver win on sheer pace, it's been a while!

 

Didn't bother wasting my time watching the race or any part of the weekend activities, I now ended up just checking the results on sky f1 website........just like I find last year and the year before that.

 

I quite enjoyed the race. My impression is that although the new rules haven't fixed the problems of the cars getting close, they haven't made it worse either. But then Melbourne is an atypical track so we'll see if it makes more of a difference on tracks with more long fast corners.

But at least it looks like we have a race between two teams for the first time in 5 years.

 

I think it's worse, and it seems the drivers agree: "What overtaking?" Drivers say passing is now much harder · F1 Fanatic
You're right that time will tell...

 

Besides the downforce/turbulence thing I guess higher corner speeds mean less braking and therefore less chances to overtake with outbraking the car in front

 

I agree, it looks like overtaking is harder now. The Melbourne race was decided by pit stops and traffic/hampering. A bit random tbh. Though we may have closer matched cars based on clear air qualification (Ferrari, Merc) if the drivers can't make so much of a difference in close racing is this actually better? Hmmm. But early days and 'time will tell'.

 

Yep - because of the higher downforce levels the cars shed speed more quickly and the can also enter corners faster, so braking distances and attendant overtaking opportunities are reduced. I believe the cars are now also slower at the end of long straights than last year due to all the downforce generating addenda and particularly the increased drag cased by the larger wheels and tyres.