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Welcome back to Prime Tire. Formula 1 is back. Light the fires!

That’ll do. I’m Patrick, and Madeline Coleman will be along shortly. Let’s dive in, because I have some terrible news.

Australian GP: F1 is RUINED

Was the race any good? Who can possibly say.

George Russell won the Australian Grand Prix on Sunday. He also won the post-race news conference.

Many drivers really didn’t like the new cars. Lando Norris, reigning champion and McNuggets connoisseur, called the race start “chaos” and the racing “artificial.” Russell didn’t exactly disagree. He just pointed out that Norris finished fifth.

“If he was winning,” Russell said, “I don’t think he’d be saying the same.”

The discourse coming out of Melbourne is so hard to parse. From the couch, it looked exactly like what F1 promised when it sold us on these regulations. Seven lead changes in nine laps. Russell and Charles Leclerc swapping the lead over and over; 120 overtakes, up from 45 last year.

From the cockpit, apparently, it looked different. As we wrote Sunday, many drivers would leave negative Yelp reviews on these cars if they could.

The core problem is easy enough to explain: Two cars seem equal, but one driver presses a button. Suddenly, he’s 30 mph faster on the straight. That creates huge closing speeds, which are great for drama and terrifying/annoying for the guy who doesn’t have enough battery left.

Norris called the potential for collision “pretty horrible to think about.” Sainz said Lap 1 in a pack felt “really sketchy.” Plus, if energy management ultimately outweighs racing, it must feel less like a sport and more like gaining a power-up in Mario Kart. (Leclerc, to his credit, actually said this during the race.) (Kudos to Madeline for beating him to it!)

But I do love that both drivers now have a fighting chance on a passing attempt. And the battle doesn’t automatically end after an overtake — Leclerc and Russell swapping the lead for nine laps was great F1 entertainment.

I enjoyed the first half of that race a lot, and I expect a lot of fans did, too. But there are plenty of fans who agree with the drivers. F1 is going to have to figure out what to do about that dissonance soon. Spectacle without buy-in from the people creating it has a shelf life.

Australian GP, cont’d: One last note

I’ll just point out the drivers who were for and against the new regulations, and what they said about them. From Madeline’s story:

For:

George Russell: first (won the race, told others to “give it a chance”)
Lewis Hamilton: fourth (called it “a really fun race”)

Against:

Lando Norris: fifth (seven wins, 18 podiums and champion last year)
Max Verstappen: sixth (started P20 after a qualifying crash)
Esteban Ocon: 11th (said overtaking was “painful”)
Carlos Sainz: 15th (called Lap 1 “really sketchy” and raised safety concerns)
Sergio Pérez: 16th (said it’s “a lot less fun”)

Probably just a coincidence, though. (Always stay alert for F1 politicking, my friends.)

Mistakes: Mercedes vs. Ferrari

The final gap was 15 seconds. Forget the final gap!

Ferrari gifted Russell roughly half of it by sitting pat during the Lap 11 Virtual Safety Car while Mercedes pitted. By the time Leclerc came in 13 laps later, the race was functionally over. (Ah, Ferrari. The team that invented strategic self-sabotage.)

Strip out the blunder, and this was actually close. Leclerc had better tires in the second stint, clawed back 2.5 seconds and then Mercedes just … pulled away anyway. When it mattered, the Silver Arrows were faster.

So the question going into Shanghai isn’t if Mercedes is quicker. It’s by how much — and whether that margin shrinks on a track built around long straights and flowing corners rather than Melbourne’s punishing stop-start rhythm. Different circuit. Different energy demands. Worth watching.

Find more on the title picture here, and Kimi Antonelli’s excellent race here.

Now, let’s throw it to Madeline inside the paddock.

Inside the Paddock with Madeline Coleman: What’s going on at Aston Martin?

Aston Martin’s misery continued on Sunday as both Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll retired from the race and later rejoined. Both weren’t classified though, given Alonso eventually did not finish and Stroll crossed 15 laps behind race winner George Russell.

The F1 team’s challenges were well documented throughout the Australian GP weekend. It had an energy battery shortage and a severe vibration issue in the chassis that was still there during the race. Stroll said it wasn’t better than FP1, when we found out about the potential for nerve damage facing the drivers. Alonso said the vibrations were similar to Bahrain.

“This is not the best feeling driving with this level of vibrations,” Alonso said. “I think Honda thinks that the vibrations on the battery are reduced since Bahrain with some of the modifications, but that didn’t happen to the chassis yet, because they need to isolate the battery in a different way. So it will take a little bit more time, but we try to do our best and to do as many laps as possible to help the team.”

After qualifying 17th, Alonso had a strong start, getting up to 10th in those early laps. He did eventually start falling back, and the Spaniard said an issue arose, which is why they stopped the car. Once repairs were done, he was sent back out. Team principal Adrian Newey said in Aston Martin’s post-race report that Alonso was ultimately asked to retire from the race “to preserve components.”

The paddock is headed to China this week, kicking off the season with a doubleheader, and Alonso doesn’t expect there to be any difference next time out.

“We have the same car, the same power unit next weekend,” he said. “So yeah, I expect another tough weekend.”

Read more on the Aston Martin problems here.

Reflections: Ricciardo talks finding himself after racing

Daniel Ricciardo, 36, drove Madeline around Melbourne last week in a Ford pickup truck. It’s one of the few times I’ve read him open up about life after racing — he’s done some soul-searching.

In just a few years, Ricciardo went from the darling of F1’s popularity boom to missing from the spotlight entirely. His career ended the way many F1 careers do: with a sudden replacement and a lot of unresolved feelings he wasn’t ready to name just yet.

He told Madeline he was probably in denial for months. It took another six to figure out what came next.

What he landed on wasn’t commentary, wasn’t the paddock, wasn’t staying visible for the sake of it. It was his family’s farm. Alone time. Six hours on a roller with music on and nobody watching. Learning to trust his own instincts again after years of voices telling him what to do.

“The thought of going back into a chaotic sort of lifestyle terrifies me, to be honest,” he told Madeline.

At some point during the drive, she noticed he’d relaxed and taken one hand off the wheel.

For the full story, head here.

Outside the points

🎥 I loved this other story from Madeline on Christina Sullivan, who fell in love with F1 via “Drive to Survive” and is now an engineer at Williams.

🌅 Cadillac driver Sergio Pérez declared “the honeymoon is over” for the team after its challenging debut race, saying it was time to focus on closing the performance gap. CEO Dan Towriss agreed. That’s fine by me. The last honeymoon I went on, I fell off a kayak and stepped on a sea urchin.

📆 And, finally, we head to China this week. Here’s the schedule. Best of luck, American readers.

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