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With a record 131,000 strong crowd on Sunday, it was for many people, their first-time experiencing Formula 1 and the race was an instant classic.
Post-covid Australian Grands Prix have drawn record crowds each year, with the 2022 edition taking the crown as the largest F1 crowd ever, at the time of the event. That’s the Drive to Survive effect for you.
The link between sport and pure entertainment is extraordinarily blurry, especially when it comes to F1 and its relationship with Drive to Survive.
The Netflix documentary has done wonderful things for the sport in terms of exciting a diverse new generation of fans. F1 drivers and principals have had the role of reality tv stars thrust upon them and it’s now the role of the producer / race director to decide how the action unfolds.
It’s fair to say that Niels Wittich steered the race into chaos when the race director red-flagged the race after Kevin Magnussen crashed with 3 laps to go. The scene was set for another drama filled episode of Drive to Survive.
Following the race, Wittich has been slammed for making controversial decisions that were up there with the choices made by Michael Masi in the infamous 2021 Abu Dhabi GP. It’s a harsh criticism of the current race director because it was most likely the events of the Abu Dhabi race that influenced him to make the choices he did.
F1 faced an incredible amount of backlash over the Abu Dhabi race and it seemed to be repeating itself under Wittich’s watch on Sunday.
To do the same thing as his predecessor and leave the cars out under a safety car could have led to the same fiasco. While in retrospect red-flagging the race was the wrong decision, it’s a sign that F1 race control is trying to learn from past mistakes.
Whether you believe these outcomes were right or wrong, the red flag was dropped with the intention of upholding F1’s sporting integrity. Creating a fair sporting outcome has seemed to slip down F1 race control’s priority list in recent years and instead creating entertainment has claimed top spot.
Race control provided themselves with time to deliberate the most sporting outcome with the red flag on all three occasions they used it on Sunday.
The discussion over whether the cars should race to the finish line after the third red flag took 10 to 15 minutes, all while the crowd chanted for more. The final decision not to give in to the pressures of entertainment was a mood killer, but the right choice.
The rules of F1 are complex, nothing is black and white, everything is grey. One thing is for certain though, despite several controversial decisions at the Australian Grand Prix, race control has shown they are not willing to be reality TV producers.
Whether they were right or wrong, the current race director restores some faith that the F1 racing season is more than just the filming set of the next season of Drive to Survive.
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