First race of the season with a lot of rules changes (no fuel burning session, no TC, no braking aid, same gear box for 4 races, shorter Q3) added a lot of excitement, but sadly only six cars would finish the race. Hopefully in coming races we see less accidents and breakdowns.

Race turned out to be disaster for Ferrari, starting from qualifying when Kimi’s car had engine issue and had to start from P15; Massa could not outpace BMWs and qualified at P4. Massa had an accident on lap 1 and after that he was trying to recover throughout the race. He made a mistake and took DC out of race and in next lap he had an engine failure. Kimi was aggressive and it looked that he will get podium with one pit stop strategy and brilliant driving, but one late braking incident took him to gravel and then he was in recovery mode, his engine also developed a problem and had to retired. None of the Ferrari engines (Ferrari, STR and FIF1) could finish the race.

Everybody is praising Hamilton and McLaren for the pace and comfort with which they won the race, but I would say real heroes were Kimi and Alonso who started from the back of the grid and one by one overtook similarly competitive cars. It was fun watching champions attacking from behind and gaining positions. Hamilton has failed both times (Nurburgring and Interlagos) starting from back, so I would say if he would have started anywhere near P10 the story would be completely different. This makes me think the true champion will win under any circumstances and Patrick Head’s suggestion of reversing the F1 grid is awesome!

Another impressive performance was from Ruben who drove brilliantly but for making two mistakes (jumping pit lane stop signal both times) was disqualified. Sebastien Bourdais drove exceptionally brilliantly in this first ever GP but sadly his engine blew in penultimate lap. Williams is improving nicely and would say will compete with front runners this season, Roseburg was impressive. Other rookie Timo Glock also performed well but had a big accident.

For FIF1 it was a disaster and hopefully they will bounce back, looking at the pace of Adrian Sutil in only 8 laps he did we can say this season they will definitely be better than last year.