At the Australian Grand Prix Lewis Hamilton completed one of the most remarkable F1 debuts the sport has ever witnessed.
Facing enormous pressure as a rookie driving for one of the very best teams on the grid, and with a double reigning world champion as a team-mate, he was nip and tuck as quick as Fernando Alonso throughout the weekend, never put a wheel wrong on a very unforgiving track – and finished in third place, one behind Alonso.
It was only the favourable race strategy that McLaren gave Alonso that allowed the champion to leapfrog his way ahead of Hamilton at the final stops.
Were it not for that Hamilton would likely have beaten him, courtesy of a better start into the first corner.
Exceeding expectations
Throughout winter testing there has been very little between the two drivers in raw performance – and that was a pattern repeated in Melbourne.
Despite never having seen the Albert Park track before, and despite getting his first experience of it in the wet opening session, Hamilton’s lap times throughout the Friday and Saturday practices were, if anything, slightly better than Alonso’s.
Only in that opening session – when the best times were set in a brief frenzy of drying track laps at the end – was Alonso quicker.
On Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, as each went about trying both hard and soft tyres, Hamilton was ahead.
Practice times need not be representative of real potential performance, however.
An experienced driver may not always need to set the ultimate lap to know whether one set up is better than another, for example.
The real test
So all eyes were on the pair as qualifying began and it counted for real. In Q1, both drivers were on the harder, slower tyre, knowing their car had the pace to comfortably qualify for Q2. Both drivers completed just one flying lap.
Hamilton was quicker by a couple of hundredths of a second.
Into Q2 Alonso, still not comfortable with the balance of his car, decided he was going to try two slightly different set ups, whereas Hamilton was provisionally going to do only one run, so long as it was quick enough to comfortably get into Q3, the top-10 run-off.
Both were on new soft tyres for each run.
Hamilton recorded a 1m25.577s, easily good enough to secure a place in the run-off.
Running just a few seconds behind him, Alonso’s first run netted a 1m25.602s. Yet again, Hamilton had shaded him.
Alonso pitted, had the set-up adjustments made, and went out again on a fresh set of Bridgestone softs. This time he eclipsed Hamilton’s original lap with a 1m25.326s, though Lewis didn’t respond.
Alonso was happier with his set-up on this second run, calming the turn-in response of the car so it was more in keeping with his aggressive steering style.
By the time he made his second run, the track would have rubbered-in more too, making it grippier, so further enhancing his advantage.
Into the top-10 run-off, Alonso’s new-found confidence in his car was beginning to show.
Both did two new-tyre runs on the soft. On the first runs Alonso was quicker by 0.14s. With some more fuel burned off and the track rubbering-in further, their second runs netted their grid-position times.
Alonso’s was 0.262s quicker, though Hamilton’s was compromised by a moment on the exit of turn 12 that the team reckoned cost around 0.1s.
Hamilton was further disadvantaged by carrying an extra lap’s-worth of fuel. However, this will have accounted for only around 2.5kg - worth just 0.08s around this track. So even accounting for Hamilton’s small moment and extra fuel load, Alonso would still have been faster – but only by around 0.13s.
Fast start
A few seconds into the race Hamilton showed his race-craft with a great move that took him past Alonso into turn one.
This effectively consigned Alonso to running in Hamilton’s wheel-tracks for the next two stints of the race. At no stage were they racing each other on track.
Hamilton would occasionally get a rear wheel onto the dusty grass on the exit of turn 12, whereas Alonso looked more within himself.
Each time Hamilton opened up a small gap, Alonso was able to quickly close it back down.
Their best race laps came in this first stint – and on the very same lap, further indicating that Alonso was simply allowing Hamilton to set the pace. Alonso’s best lap was quicker by 0.037s.
In the second stint Hamilton’s best lap was 1m 26.500s. Alonso’s was 1m 26.499s!
The switch in positions came about because McLaren had opted to fuel Alonso longer at the first stops, ensuring he would have at least an extra low-fuel lap over Hamilton into the final stops.
In the event, Alonso was able to stretch this to two extra laps on account of having saved fuel by running in his team-mate’s slipstream for so long.
Furthermore, Hamilton was delayed on his in-lap by Takuma Sato.
Alonso’s actual stop, at 6.5s, was 1.7s quicker than Hamilton’s.
This was more than would be accounted for by having to pump in two-laps’ less fuel (which would account only for about 0.5s of the difference).
Alonso duly made full use of all this and emerged from his stop comfortably ahead.
Hamilton’s crew, knowing they were at a strategy disadvantage going into the final stops, had been allowed to fit new tyres rather than the scrubbed set Alonso would get.
New tyres have a ‘golden’ first lap that’s about 1s faster than a scrubbed set, potentially helping a driver gain track position around the stops.
But the penalty is that they will then grain, making them slower over a stint.
The new tyres duly allowed Hamilton to make a very fast out-lap, but his delays behind Sato and at his stop ensured it wasn’t enough.
With his tyres then graining, as expected, he fell yet further away from his team-mate in the final stint.
Conclusions
So what did we learn about the relative performances of each driver once we stripped away their slightly differing circumstances?
We learned that at Melbourne Hamilton was close enough to Alonso to have forced the team into making a decision over which of them would emerge ahead.
Coming at a track that Hamilton had never seen before the weekend, and against as great a driver as Alonso, that has to stand up as a stunning performance.
But it's one thing doing it once, quite another to maintain it through the grind of a long season.
Also, Albert Park is quite a straightforward track, one that doesn't place great demands upon the technical ability of the driver.
Going into more complex circuits, it will be interesting to monitor whether Hamilton can maintain his deeply impressive initial form.
