COOPER: Team-By-Team Australian GP

Formula 1

COOPER: Team-By-Team Australian GP

A team-by-team breakdown of the Australian Grand Prix weekend in Melbourne...

Adam Cooper | http://www.speedtv.com | Posted March 18, 2012 Melbourne (AUS)

Mark Webber (Left) finished fourth in Australia, two spots behind teammate Sebastian Vettel (Right), who rallied from a sixth-place grid spot. (Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

We’d waited months to see just how the teams would stack up in 2012, and in Australia we finally got some answers. It’s already apparent that Red Bull won’t have things as easy as last year, and McLaren has started the season in better shape than it has for a while. Lotus and Mercedes are also close enough to be a threat, Ferrari is in recovery mode, and it’s anyone’s guess as to who will lead the chase. Here’s how the weekend unfolded for the 12 teams.

Red Bull Racing
RBR has clearly lost the huge advantage it had for most of last year. In qualifying, KERS problems restricted Mark Webber to fifth, while Sebastian Vettel spun off in FP3 and had to settle for sixth after a mistake in Q3. Webber was caught in the first corner tangle, hitting the back of Nico Hulkenberg, and dropped initially to ninth. Vettel soon moved up to fourth and gained another spot from Nico Rosberg, but the McLarens seemed to be out of his reach. He looked set for third until the safety car gave him a ‘free’ pit stop and allowed him to jump Lewis Hamilton for second as he came out to join the queue, although he was not able to challenge Jenson Button at the restart. A strong charge from Webber saw the Aussie recover to fourth by the flag.

McLaren
Jenson Button was fastest in FP1 but it was Lewis Hamilton who hit the headlines with a brilliant pole lap on his first run. Button made it a McLaren front row, missing out by just 0.150s. Button made a great start and managed to snatch the lead from his teammate. Thereafter, he opened up a handy gap on Hamilton, so much so that they were able to both pit on lap 36 as their tires went off. That turned out to be bad luck for Hamilton as the safety car came out on the next lap, which allowed Sebastian Vettel to blend into the queue in second. Button managed to get the jump on the German at the restart, and the silver cars finished first and third, respectively, although Button was much happier than his teammate.

Ferrari
Ferrari’s weekend got off to a bad start when Felipe Massa spun into the gravel on Friday and both drivers were clearly struggling. Fernando Alonso was stuck in 12th after landing in the gravel in Q2, while Massa could not better 16th. Both Ferraris made good starts and benefited from the usual first-lap chaos, Alonso jumping to up eighth and Massa to 10th. Problems for others moved Alonso up to fifth, and he gained fourth when Nico Rosberg made an early stop, although later he lost a spot to the recovering Mark Webber. Massa suffered badly with tire wear and retired after 46 laps following a clash with Bruno Senna.

Mercedes
Mercedes looked good from the start of the weekend, and after topping the tricky FP2, Michael Schumacher bounced back from an off in FP3 to qualify a promising fourth. Nico Rosberg topped Q2 but he didn’t get a good final lap, and started seventh. Schumacher passed Romain Grosjean at the start and was running in a solid third until a gearbox problem sent him across the Turn One grass and led to his retirement after 10 laps. Rosberg dropped back after an early tire stop. However, he was heading for at least seventh until he got a puncture after last-lap contact with Sergio Perez and dropped to 12th.

Kimi Raikkonen was the focus of much attention in Australia. (Photo: Getty Images)

Lotus
Inevitably, much attention was focused on Lotus due to the return of Kimi Raikkonen, but it was Romain Grosjean who stole the show with a brilliant run to third on the grid. Raikkonen struggled with power steering problems, and in qualifying a miscommunication saw him fail to get a last lap in Q1, so he was stranded in 18th. Grosjean lost a spot to Michael Schumacher at the start and then suffered broken steering when hit by Pastor Maldonado on the second lap. From 13th on lap one, Raikkonen steadily gained places, eventually jumping from 10th to seventh on the chaotic last lap as he showed that he is not lacking in motivation.

Force India
After a year away, Nico Hulkenberg was an encouraging second on a drying track in FP2 and then did a good job to make it into Q3, ultimately earning ninth spot. Paul Di Resta had traffic on his out lap and didn’t get his tires warm enough, and thus had to settle for 15th. Hulkenberg had a short race, as he was hit from behind in Turn One, suffering suspension damage and a puncture that forced him to stop later around the lap. After a quiet race, Di Resta caught the pack ahead on the last lap and gained three places, using KERS to steal 10th place from Jean-Eric Vergne.

Sauber
Kamui Kobayashi did a good job to be fastest in Q1, albeit on soft tires when many others weren’t. However, he struggled for grip in Q2, and slipped down to 13th. Sergio Perez, meanwhile, didn’t even set a time in that session due a gearbox failure. He then slipped from 17th to 22nd with a five-place penalty for changing it. The two cars touched at Turn One but thereafter Perez had a great race, starting on the medium tire and stopping only once. He was running seventh when he slowed after the Maldonado accident on the last lap, which led to a tangle with Nico Rosberg. That ultimately helped Kobayashi jump up to sixth, and left the Mexican in eighth.

Scuderia Toro Rosso
Daniel Ricciardo made an early make by being seventh in FP1 and, encouragingly, the new local star was able to continue that sort of form into qualifying, where he claimed 10th. His rookie teammate Jean-Eric Vergne just failed to make the cut, and thus started 11th. Ricciardo race got off to a bad start when he hit Bruno Senna at Turn One and had to pit for a new nose. Thereafter, he worked his way up and gained in the chaotic last-lap action in the midfield, passing Vergne to claim ninth. The Frenchman then lost 10th to Nico Hulkenberg on the very last corner.

Williams
Williams has clearly made a big jump forward since 2011 under its new technical leadership, and even the team was pleasantly surprised to get one car into Q3 in the first event back with Renault power. Pastor Maldonado lined up eighth, while, in his maiden race for the team, Bruno Senna had to settle for 14th. Maldonado hit Romain Grosjean on lap two and then drove a strong race to run sixth behind Fernando Alonso before he crashed out spectacularly on the last lap. Meanwhile, Senna tangled with Daniel Ricciardo at the first corner and dropped to the back after pitting. Later, he had more heavy contact with Felipe Massa, which led to his retirement. Not a great day for the team.

Caterham
The former Lotus team has clearly made a step over the winter and was much closer to those ahead in its first race at Caterham. Heikki Kovalainen was a cheeky eighth in the drying FP2 session, and it looked for a while like he might make Q2. In the end, he had to settle for a familiar 18th, some 0.3s ahead of new teammate Vitaly Petrov. Unfortunately, both cars were to suffer mechanical retirements. Having gotten ahead of his teammate at the stops, Petrov was running 14th when he had a steering problem on lap 34, and just four laps later Kovalainen stopped with a suspected front-suspension issue.

HRT
HRT was always going to struggle given that its new car had only enjoyed a brief shakedown in Barcelona. Indeed,Narain Karthikeyan ran very few flying laps between problems on Friday, while Pedro de la Rosa had time for just a single installation lap by the time his car was completed in the garage. Heading into qualifying, the Spaniard finally managed some laps and got within 1.2s of the 107 percent rule while his teammate was 1.4s. off. The team asked for dispensation from the FIA, but it was not granted, so neither F112 made it to the grid.

Marussia
Like HRT, Marussia had done very little running with its new car, so Australia was a big challenge, especially for rookie Charles Pic. Timo Glock was an artificial 12th in the wet/dry FP2 but the real picture was seen in qualifying when the two cars were well off the pace of anyone else, but ahead of HRT. Glock started 21st while Pic was 0.7s slower in 22nd. On his 30th birthday, Glock was as high as 13th after Turn One, before inevitably dropping back. A reliable run saw the German finish 14th, while Pic was classified 15th despite stopping due to an oil-pressure problem.

Adam Cooper notched up his 27th season as a racing journalist in 2011. He has written about F1 for SPEED.com since 2005. Follow him on Twitter.
The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED