F1 Australia

The 2009 Formula 1 season started this weekend. I am hoping to watch the race on Monday evening rather than wait until the following weekend like I did last year.

With all the sweeping changes to the regulations this year, it would have been anti-climatic if the same old teams still held the top positions. In qualifying the rule changes have definitely had an impact. The grid was almost turned upside down compare to 2008 and with less than .5 seconds separating the top 10 positions, it was the closest qualifying I've ever seen.

Unfortunately, the race itself was not as exciting. The aerodynamic rules are suppose to enable more passing but I didn't see much improvement in that area. F1 has always had the problem that so few teams are able to get the package right. In order to have close racing and more passing, there have to be more cars in same performance range, otherwise they become spread out around the track and are not really racing each other. The new rules have not changed this problem as far as I can tell. The only real surprise was the names of the teams who got it so badly wrong.

But it was only the first race so it will be interesting to watch the bigger teams improve over the season. Most of the big teams performed so abysmally in Australia that any improvements will be quite obvious.