Australian GP : Preview

A brand new season of FF1M is just around the corner with a few noticeable changes to the grid, the two most notables being 13 teams necessitating the reintroduction of pre-qualifying, and the absence of Pedersen as the Danish team look to recharge their batteries. They began their hiatus on a high with Sebastian Vettel and Carlos Sainz taking 1-2 finishes in the final two races of Interlagos and Macau. The Spaniard has moved to one of the three new teams while the German has moved to Andrew Racing, who looked very impressive in pre-season testing.

The driver to beat however is Vaino Kimminen, who secured his maiden Drivers Championship in his first full season, beating teammate Romain Grosjean in a dominant season for Tornado Motorsport, who equalled Shake ‘n’ Bake Motorsport’s points record from 2009, although they were on course to beat the record before Kimminen suffered a last lap puncture at Macau. In fact, he was lucky to have still scored a point as the unlapped Daisuke Sekiya, making a one-off appearance for Willows Racing, overtook him on track before grinding to a halt yards from the finish line thanks to a seized gearbox, and because Kimminen had started his final lap before Sekiya did, poor Sekiya was classified out of the points.

How will pre-season translate to the first race?

The main takeaways from pre-season testing are that Tornado appear to have the legs on the field in terms of grip with rookie Charles Leclerc topping all three days at Jerez, while Shake ‘n’ Bake looked untouchable at the straights of Monza. Barcelona saw a more competitive playing field between Shake ‘n’ Bake, Gojira AutoSport, and Andrew Racing, but Melbourne will be the true test of how all 13 teams stack up against each other. As for the three new teams, neither showed particularly strong pace aside from Sainz and newcomer George Russell, so it will be interesting to see how they get on.

The format will see Friday Practice and Pre-qualifying split into two separate groups. Group A will consist of the seven odd-numbered teams in championship, while Group B will consist of the six even-numbered teams, and the running order for each race will depend on the championship positions. Qualifying points are distributed across the field with the team having the lowest total points from their two drivers in each group being eliminated for the rest of the weekend. Teams will therefore have to decide what to do for Friday Practice – do they develop the aerodynamics/tyres/drivers in the long term or do they set up the car specifically for the race meeting? Either way, two teams will be packing up and going home earlier than expected. For Melbourne, Friday’s running order will be:

Support Races

The first meeting of an expanded FF2M series also kicks off this weekend with 14 meetings scheduled for this season. The two drivers looking good are STV Racing’s Lando Norris and Shake ‘n’ Bake Junior’s Bram de Boer, both of whom showed good pace during FF1M’s pre-season testing, and both drivers led the way for FF2M’s sole test at Brno with Norris less than a tenth ahead of the Noordwijk native. As usual, tyre choice will be king for the season with teams having to decide whether to use the faster soft tyres for qualifying and the sprint race, or save them for the feature race where more points are on offer, but is more risky given the often chaotic nature of the main support series.

FF4M will also make a visit to Melbourne for the final meeting of the FF4M Australia championship, where Norris could take the overall glory despite being forced to miss the final meeting due to his FF2M duties. He holds a 22-point lead over Philip Woolwess with three other drivers in with a mathematical yet unrealistic shot of championship glory. As Norris is considered to be an ‘invitational’ driver, the four drivers consisting of Woolwess, Dion Slater, Bernard Brabham, and Marco Parnelli, have the opportunity to race in FF3M for 2019… if the series continues.

Coverage Details

Race highlights will be broadcast on Sunday at 4pm with FJR’s James Brickles and Shake ‘n’ Bake’s Courtney Cass in the commentary box.

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