[pob]

Australia Results

First of all I'd like to give a warm welcome to new entrants thefastlane and forumula1 . With grandprix not taking part this year  (their forum is down and their members have abandoned ship) that makes the number of forums in the league the same as the number of f1 teams.
There were 42 predictions across the 11 forums for this race. If you made a prediction but don't see your name in the top 10 or "also rans" please tell me!
Sardaor takes victory for 2013 champions cliptheapex, with 48 points thanks to 4 spot on and only Grosjean missing from the top 10.
Sportsbabble didn't place in the top 10 this race , but keep trying!

Code:

Pos nickname     forum     zdkf1 points  league points
1  sardaor       cliptheapex    48            25
2  kai-star      thefastlane    45            18
3  yurrita       f1technical    42            15
4  tranquilchaos ja606          42            12
5  redfrog       f1world        41            10
6  pdk           f1world        41             8
7  vfc_cipher    f1technical    41             6
8  titch         cliptheapex    39             4
9  king_arry     ja606          39             2
10 dreggsf1      f1onboard      37             1

scores for also rans from sportsbabble:
32 amelia
30 sco
29 stairs



League Table
Cliptheapex lead the league after the opening round, 8 points ahead of f1technical:

Pos_Forum__________Points
1___cliptheapex______29
2___f1technical______21
3___thefastlane______18
4___f1world__________18
5___ja606____________14
6___f1onboard_________1
7___not606____________0
=___sportsbabble______0
=___garagistasf1______0
=___v2________________0
=___forumula1_________0


Quali trophy
The pace was much faster than many of us expected, only four players scored towards the quali trophy this race, 1 point apiece for: sniffit from f1technical; sco  from sportsbabble; kai-star from thefastlane; and racecub from cliptheapex.

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Race recap:
After a farcical qualifying session where F1's new qualifying format proved to be abysmal, the race was surprisingly good. Bad starts by the Mercedes drivers meant the Ferraris of Vettel and Raikkonen led for the opening stint, chased by Rosberg with Hamilton struggling further down the order. The race was halted after this huge crash by Alonso in the McLaren with the Haas of Gutierrez, Alonso was lucky to walk away from it with only minor injuries:

thanks to Reddit user BottasWMR for the excellent gif

The Mercedes drivers went onto the Medium tyre, thought to be the worst of the three tyre types available but the only tyre that would last the remainder of the race. This proved to be decisive, as the Mediums performed much better than expected. Vettel stayed on used supersofts, and he lost the lead to Rosberg when pitting. Vettel looked at least likely to salvage second place, but his chase of Hamilton ended with a mistake at the penultimate corner, leaving him to settle for third place. Raikkonen retired with engine trouble.

Further down the order the big story was Grosjean taking a great sixth place for Haas in their first race. It was down to some good luck, effectively doing a 0-stop race thanks to being able to change his tyres when the race was redflagged, but he defended his position brilliantly.
Toro Rosso were very quick, but only managed 9th and 10th in the end, with Verstappen taking his frustration out on his team over the radio.
Ricciardo lucked into fourth place for Red Bull, while his teammate Kvyat didn't start.
Williams were anonymous, 5th for Massa and 8th for Bottas.
Force India only managed 7th for Hulkenburg and 13th for Perez, although the red flag affected them badly.
Renault (who tookover the Lotus team at the end of last year) were battling for the lower points, with Palmer 11th after failing to hold off the Toro Rossos and Magnussen placed 12th.