Source: Own Work
AUSTRALIAN GRAND PRIX RESULTSThe 2019 F1 season has got off to a bang as loud as that of Carlos Sainz's engine, and it was a shot heard around the world - and quite certainly heard in Maranello. With over half of the people who entered a prediction expecting Ferrari to take victory - and 100% of them expecting a Ferrari on the podium - the membership at large of the Top Three Championship was left asking the same question as Sebastian Vettel: why
was Ferrari so slow?
But the incontrovertible fact is that they
were slow, and Mercedes wasted no time in picking up the pieces - the pieces, in this case, being a maximum haul of 44 championship points, aided by Valtteri Bottas' fastest lap on the penultimate tour. With Max Verstappen taking the final step, no red cars were featured on the podium, and the hopes of many were immediately dashed. But surely there was at least one brave soul who had selected Valtteri Bottas for the top step?
Well, actually - no. Nobody did. There were Hamilton predictions, there were Vettel predictions - there was even one for Verstappen and one for Leclerc. But not a single selection for the poor Finn. With no points for the top step, victory was then determined by who had selected Hamilton for second. Ironically, all of these people had put a Ferrari to win, meaning they had actually got the competitive picture badly wrong. But such is the way of the competition. Congratulations, therefore, to
robins13,
Herb,
Jenson's Understeer,
JN23,
cm97,
Lotus49, and
P-F1 Mod!----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Best - 3 pointsrobins13, Herb, Jenson's Understeer, JN23, cm97, Lotus49, P-F1 Mod
The Rest - - 0 pointsEveryone Else
Did Not Startjzusy, Mod Onyx
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Individual Standings - Round One
This is a pretty simple one - everyone who scored is joint leader, and everyone who didn't is joint eighth place.
Note that there is an error where jzusy and Mod Onyx are marked with 0 points instead of a DNS. I've already fixed it on the spreadsheet, but I don't want to upload another image.
Team Standings - Round One
Similar to the individual standings, team standing at this point is determined solely by which teams had one of their members score a point. Interestingly, no team had scoring from both.
New for the 2019 season, teammates marked in green are winning the intra-team battle.
CHAMPIONSHIP PICTUREIt's a little early for that, eh wot?
NEXT RACEThe next race is Bahrain, in two week's time. With the Sakhir International Circuit being a much more traditional venue than the Albert Park street course, whatever competitive order emerges in the desert is likely to be far more representative of the season to come - and potentially quite different.
And will anyone be bold enough to actually predict Bottas to win two in a row?
