March is an exciting month for fans of Formula One for it marks the end of a long wait of over three months of no racing. While there is little action on the race tracks, there is lots of action outside. For instance, the drivers are busy preparing for the season ahead andthis includes losing weight so that the delicate balance between man and machine is maintained. Weighty matters, indeed.
15 March 2014 arrived and I missed watching the qualifying sessions at Melbourne, Australia. I missed watching the first race of the season the next day. I did not watch Sebastian Vettel race with his new teammate Daniel Ricciardo.I did not watch Fernando Alonso and KimiRaikkonen race together for Ferrari. I did not watch the Mercedes camp celebrate its victory. In my disappointed state I realised that last week marked the 54th birthday of the great AyrtonSenna and over twelve weeks of the comatose state of the great Michael Schumacher.
2014 is expected to be a game changer, and there were plenty of surprises in the first race itself. NicoRosberg won the race for Mercedes, and finished ahead of his teammate Lewis Hamilton who actually had pole position and later had to withdraw from the race. Daniel Ricciardo finished second and far ahead of his illustrious teammate – and later was disqualified from the race. Red Bull has appealed against Ricciardo’s disqualification and we’ll soon know the verdict.
McLaren had a superb start to the season with both its drivers having podium finishes. The young Dane Kevin Magnussen finished third, got promoted to second position after Ricciardo’s disqualification and immediately drew comparisons with Lewis Hamilton.
You do remember Hamilton racing for McLaren, don’t you?
As for the prancing horse, both Alonso and Raikkonen finished among the points, and the veterans will be keen to make this relationship work. I don’t expect comments that go,“Just leave me alone, I know what I’m doing.” Or will Raikkonen spring a pleasant surprise yet again?
2014 promises to be exciting. Is it going to rain in Malayasia later when the second race starts? The coming weekend will provide the answer to that. Happy watching!
–Anuradha Sridhar [Anuradha is an avid F-1 and Tennis enthusiast. You can reach her at the gmail id: sportzcosmos]
SportzCosmos 
Many similarities b/w F-1 and my fav sport = Tennis. The best is the global touring…. covering different continents all over the world.
And the domination of German-ish based players [Schumacher/Vettel and Federer/Graf/Novak (he trained in Germany….reaching out a bit…. but you get the point… 🙂
Thanks for leading our efforts on the F-1 galaxy, Anu.
Will be my 1st keenly followed F-1 race…. So tell me, who are we rooting for? 😉
I was rooting for Vettel…. but conflicted with the Car manufacturer – I mean I find it hard to root for Red Bull over Mercedes/Ferrari as a car manufacturer 😀 It’s like rooting for a Mercedes energy drink over Red Bull 😀
🙂 It is an interesting thought.
I just checked the rankings and this year top 9 are Europeans, ahead of Massa – that European domination is another thing similar to Tennis, though US players actually play the game unlike F-1 where US has their own Nascar…
Also Force India driver ahead of Vettel…. that’s nice…. 🙂
There are only 22 racers – this is more elitist than the 128 players in tennis 🙂 2 races where Vettel did not complete the first race – there’s lots of time.
Also, here you don’t have to be ranked in the top 22 to be a driver. A ,manufacturer can pick anyone to drive for them. So there are more differences!