Red Bull Round Up

By Red Bull Racing
March 18 2007

There was a great feeling of expectancy as the race start time approached, but at least one thing was certain: Michael Schumacher would not win the 2007 Australian Grand Prix.

Unfortunately for us, neither would DC or Mark. The Scotsman showed that you don’t need to have Quantas written on your vehicle to go flying in Australia when he had a spectacular collision with Alex Wurz, after attempting what polite people would call “an optimistic move” on the Austrian. There are no prizes for guessing who the crowd was cheering for, but through no fault of his own, Mark had a Miserable Melbourne.
 
Was it a trick of the light or was Kimi Raikkonen actually smiling after the race? Even after a win, the Finn usually looks like a man who has lost ten dollars and found five, but he looked genuinely happy after his maiden win at the wheel of a Ferrari. For over a decade, we have witnessed Jean Todt rush up to a victorious Schumi and give him a good kiss and a cuddle. The Frenchman wisely decided that the Kimster was probably not yet quite Italianised enough to accept this treatment without attempting to punch his lights out. 
 
The weekend turned out pretty much as anyone could have predicted from watching winter testing with the Ferraris and McLarens having a clear advantage over the rest. We won’t insult your intelligence by suggesting it was an exciting race to watch, but it does look good for the rest of the season, as Massa is definitely capable of hassling Raikkonen and very impressively, the young Englishman, Lewis Hamilton didn’t seem at all nervous on his F1 debut, confidently running second for part of the race, finishing third behind his McLaren team-mate, Fernando Alonso. If you want some stats, Hamilton is the first driver to get to the podium on his debut since Jacques Villeneuve in 1996 and the first Englishman to do so since Mike Parkes in 1966. Legendary British driver, Sir Stirling Moss, who was here in Melbourne, reckoned Lewis produced the best ever debut drive he had seen since the 1950s.