THE AUSTRALIAN GRAND PRIX MAKES A TRIUMPHANT RETURN
by Paul Marinelli
Following the abrupt shutdown of the 2020 Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne after just one day, more than two long and locked-down years slowly passed by without one of the city’s most exciting international sporting events.
Now take that season-long battle that included several major crashes, including one (at the British Grand Prix) where Verstappen’s car registered an impact of 72G and another (at the Italian Grand Prix) where Verstappen’s car drove over the top of Hamilton’s car — leaving tyre markings on the Mercedes driver’s helmet, among several other smaller skirmishes.
Both the 2020 and 2021 Formula One seasons continued in a truncated form and produced some outstanding racing, particularly last year as the season ended with seven-time World Champion Mercedes AMG team driver Lewis Hamilton and his Red Bull Honda powered rival Max Verstappen tied on points at Abu Dhabi’s final round.
Then we add to this mix the completion of the fourth incredibly successful season of the Netflix “Drive to Survive” Formula One fly-on-the-wall documentary/reality TV series, which has been a global sensation, delivering millions of new fans to the sport. So once the Australian Grand Prix returned as the third event of the 2022 World Championship, the most legendary team in the sport, Scuderia Ferrari, finally returned to race-winning competitiveness in a city with a huge first, second and third-generation Italian community.
We all know the madness that followed, with Formula One’s Australian race director, Michael Masi controversially playing an integral role in how that epic title fight was decided. 1 0 CAPRICORN IGNITION JUNE 2022
