F1 2026 - Round 1 - Australia - Melbourne 🇦🇺

First laps were fantastic, when was the last time we saw so many changes at the top without rain?

Looking forward to see the mobile phone recordings from the track of start and on track.

I turned it on just Piastri put it into the wall, a decent open couple of laps but Merc winning felt inevitable. Great opening lap from Lindblad and a good recovery drive from Verstappen but you'd expect that from him. Norris pretty anonymous through the race. Hopefully one of the teams can catch up with Merc, it looks like the season will not be too enjoyable

Better than I expected with plenty of action at the start of the race. Ferrari missed up not pitting at least one driver during the VSC.

My worry is that as we saw in the 2nd half of the race, the drivers understand the battery deployments better now and that could lead to them cancelling each other out.

good race.

More like this please.

First half of the race good, second half forgettable. Ferrari continuing their poor in race strategy by ignoring two virtual safety car opportunities to pit. With the power of Mercedes, it's possible they would have finished on those positions anyway. But by not pitting when they should have, they never gave themselves a chance.

Sky were pathetic over the last 20 laps, trying to pretend Mercedes were any way under pressure, and might need to pit. Ferrari never even remotely closed the gap, after eventually pitting.

If Merc are going to be dominant this season, at least they'll give the two drivers a fair shot at it, unlike when Redbull are top dogs.

an interesting race overall I thought, in that you never knew what was going to happen next, VSCs, mechanicals etc. lots going on until things settled down after lap 35/40 - and then it was just like any final 1/3 of a race from the last few seasons.

russel and leclerc swapping the lead throughout the first 10 laps the obvious highlight - overtaking was simple once you had a battery advantage over the car in front. That said, some of the overtakes looked like F2 v F1 cars.

The best cars filled the top spots, but there’s a potentially huge gap from the top 4 teams to the midfield.

Great to see BEA, LIN & BOR being best of the rest ….. but a lap down in 7,8,9th 😳

You need a VPN and F1TV, I haven't had to listen to Croft commentate as if he's talking to children for years now.

Not sure I'll be watching F1 anymore though, regardless of who's commentating.

Watching cars try to overtake eachother while both are slowing down is like the final insult to fans

There's apparently a meeting after China to discuss how rules have started, so there's a good chance to come up with changes (if needed) between Japan and Miami if the middle East races are cancelled.

You'd miss the glory days of the BBC coverage, before sky got involved. It was handy when there was the alternative coverage on the now long dead eir sport. Croft is brutal. I'm so used to his schtick, it doesn't even get to me that much anymore. But they're so badly informed a lot of the time, get it wrong so often and have terrible hot takes, I'd be able to follow the race easily enough, without any commentary at all, of the option was there.

I don’t notice the commentary at all. It certainly doesn’t ruin it anyway, I’m usually miles ahead of them with what’s going on, so they are pretty superfluous.
Croft is like drive to survive - he’s not there to pander to seasoned F1 fans.

btw, those initial battery deployment graphics that appeared and disappeared around lap 20-40 were awful! Impossible to understand the diff between overtake and boost - both of which mean the same thing to any normal person.

The more simple graphic that they tried later on with a battery 🪫 and % was better, but a long way to go.

F1 will be happy after today I guarantee it.

Delighted for George Russell. Not a bad race. 2nd half was boring. First half certainly better.

Mercedes seem to be the team to beat.

It doesn't feel like flat out racing because it's not. It's literally the opposite.

Formula 1 not being flat out is such a disgrace. I know it hasn't been flat out for years now with the tyre management but this is another level entirely.

Formula 3 is officially better at this stage