Kimi Raikkonen of Lotus used his smooth, controlled driving style to get the most out of his tires and his new Lotus chassis, taking the win in the Formula One season opener, the Australian Grand Prix.
While the rest of the field needed three sets of tires, the Finnish former champion made it on only two, which gave him a 12-second lead at the finish line. Despite Raikkonen being on old tires, he still managed to set fastest lap of the race one lap from the checkered flag.
It was an amazing performance, somewhat overshadowed by the drama behind him; while the focus was on the battles between Ferrari, Red Bull, and Force India, the laconic Lotus driver quietly drove away.Raikkonen was typically low-key in the post-race interview as well. No shouting for joy from The Iceman. “I knew that I had a good car, so I had a feeling that it was going to be a good race but you have to get through the first laps and then go from there,” he told NBCSN.
“It feels good but it’s only after one race. It doesn’t really change our aim and our work for this year. Definitely we are happy with the win but there is an awful lot to still do to try to win the championship. We seemed to have a good car here and hopefully it works well in the next races also.”
When asked if he ran the race’s fastest lap at the very end just to have a bit of fun, he replied, “Fernando was catching me at some point, when I was taking it a bit more easy and there was some traffic, so I just wanted to make sure that if the rain comes or something happens we have a bit more gap. I was still taking it pretty easy.
“Like I said, the car has been very good all weekend and it was a pretty nice race, not so difficult.”
Must be nice to be able to win an F1 Grand Prix while “taking it easy.” Yet there is not the slightest hint of boastfulness about the man. He is truly a unique character.
Fernando Alonso of Ferrari finished second, with Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel third. Ferrari’s Felipe Massa was fourth, after a fantastic drive, leading his team mate Alonso through much of the early laps. Lewis Hamilton probably feels justified by his switch to Mercedes; he finished fifth, four spots ahead of his old McLaren team mate Jenson Button in ninth.
Alonso didn’t find the race quite so relaxing as his Lotus rival. “It was not an easy race,” he said. “At the beginning traffic with Sebastian and Felipe and then traffic with Sutil, some tricky moments. But at the end, as I said, extremely happy.
“We had a very difficult start to the season two years ago and last year as well and this year is very different. We feel much more optimistic. The car is responding well, we are competitive so we have a very interesting season ahead of us.”
Sebastian Vettel, the youngest driver to win three consecutive world championships, was actually happy with third place.
“I think first of all we can be happy with today. Obviously we wanted more. Clearly when you start from pole you want to win,” he said. “I think we could see after a very good start, and a good first two or three laps, that the tires were falling apart and we couldn’t go as long as other people.
“Congratulations to Lotus and especially to Kimi, I think they did the best job today. I think we were third-quickest today and very happy to get third.”
Rain and Rubber
Tire wear and weather were the defining characteristics of the 2013 Australian Grand Prix.
Heavy rains hit qualifying, so teams didn’t know enough about tire life under different conditions. Would the supersofts last with the heavy fuel loads early in the race? How much grip would the mediums give on the clean-washed track/
As it turned out, the supersofts were good for only six or eight laps of the 3.3-mile Albert Park circuit, while the mediums were good for fifteen or twenty. This forced most teams onto a three-stop strategy. Lotus, however …
Adrian Sutil, back after a year without an F1 ride, proved his worth amply, leading for half the race and finishing a very respectable seventh. Forced India opted to start on the medium tires, gambling that gathering clouds would result in rain late in the race, giving Sutil an advantage as the rest of the field would have to make an extra pit stop, to swap top medium and then to swap to rain tires.
Most of the field pitted very early as the supersoft tires wore out very quickly with the heavy fuel loads, so Sutil went to the head of the pack. Once there, he showed what he and the new Force India chassis could do, holding off attacks from Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso and Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel.
In defense of the former and current world champions, it is possible they decided to sit back and wait for the Force India driver to wear out his medium tires after they couldn’t get by easily.
The rain never came, and eventually Sutil had to pit for fresh rubber. He took supersofts, but they went off with half-a-dozen laps in the race, and Sutil could not hold off his pursuers.
Meanwhile Kimi Raikkonen defended his considerable lead. He is called “The Iceman” and he was completely cool, making no mistakes, preserving his tires by driving smoothly while preserving his gap by going quickly.
Who Has the Car to Beat?
The Australian Grand Prix revealed a lot about the various chassis. Obviously Lotus got it right, and Ferrari whose 2012 car started out terrible and only got to be marginally drivable through months of development, won’t have that problem in 2013.
Red Bull seens to be following the pattern of 2012 instead of 2010 and 2011. For the first two years the chassis was by far the best on the grid all season long; in 2012 the car needed fie-tuning and didn’t hit its stride until mid-season.
McLaren still has some work to do; Button, who is usually good on tires, was forced to pit before anyone else. McLaren will not be satisfied with mid-pack.
Force India is the big surprise. The question is, can this smaller team keep up with the big boys throughout the season? Ferrari, McLaren Mercedes, Red Bull all have the budgets to do non-stop development. Can Force India keep up?
Who knows? This little team might have arrived as a serious contender.
Formula One heads to Kuala Lumpur for the Formula 1 Petronas Malaysia Grand Prix next weekend, with practice starting on Friday, March 22 and the race on Sunday, March 24. Tickets and travel packages are available through Formula1.com, and for those unable to make the race in person, NBC Sports Network provides excellent and comprehensive coverage.
The Epoch Times publishes in 35 countries and in 21 languages. Subscribe to our e-newsletter.
| 2013 Formula 1 Rolex Australian Grand Prix | |||||||
| # | driver | team | laps | time/retired | grid | pts | |
| 1 | 7 | 58 | 1:30:03.225 | 7 | 25 | ||
| 2 | 3 | 58 | +12.4 secs | 5 | 18 | ||
| 3 | 1 | 58 | +22.3 secs | 1 | 15 | ||
| 4 | 4 | 58 | +33.5 secs | 4 | 12 | ||
| 5 | 10 | 58 | +45.5 secs | 3 | 10 | ||
| 6 | 2 | 58 | +46.8 secs | 2 | 8 | ||
| 7 | 15 | 58 | +65.0 secs | 12 | 6 | ||
| 8 | 14 | 58 | +68.4 secs | 9 | 4 | ||
| 9 | 5 | 58 | +81.6 secs | 10 | 2 | ||
| 10 | 8 | 58 | +82.7 secs | 8 | 1 | ||
| 11 | 6 | 58 | +83.3 secs | 15 | |||
| 12 | 18 | 58 | +83.8 secs | 13 | |||
| 13 | 12 | 57 | +1 Lap | 18 | |||
| 14 | 17 | 57 | +1 Lap | 16 | |||
| 15 | 22 | 57 | +1 Lap | 19 | |||
| 16 | 20 | 56 | +2 Laps | 22 | |||
| 17 | 23 | 56 | +2 Laps | 20 | |||
| 18 | 21 | 56 | +2 Laps | 21 | |||
| Ret | 19 | 39 | Exhaust | 14 | |||
| Ret | 9 | 26 | Electrical | 6 | |||
| Ret | 16 | 24 | Spin | 17 | |||
| Ret | 11 | 0 | Fuel System | 11 | |||
