How These Seven Teams Can Improve in 2026 | Jolyon Palmer’s F1 TV Analysis

Welcome to Formula One in 2026. What a start for the Ferraris! And Charles Leclerc's to the inside. He's done it! Are we about to go three wide? Lindblad finds himself getting through. Lindblad to third. Amazing commitment from Lewis Hamilton. The Ferraris side by side for so much of this weekend. Russell to the inside of the chicane. Is it going to be pass and re-pass again? You bet it is! He retakes the lead. Kimi Antonelli, the second youngest driver to win a Formula One Grand Prix and leads the championship. Hello, welcome to a bonus analysis episode before we get racing again in Miami. We spent so much time looking at the Mercedes fights, the Ferrari duels, all of the action that's presented us out front. We've looked at McLaren as well, not starting in China to getting on the podium in Japan with Oscar Piastri. But there has been so much action further back that we've not been able to discuss. So let's have a look at all the rest of the teams in the first three races of this year. And we usually start with the start. It's natural. So let's kick it off with Audi. We meet to begin a new era for Formula One. New engines, new cars, new fuel and new tyres. But on the grid, the racing challenge remains unaltered. The ambition for all is to call themselves the champion. So Audi, brand new manufacturer coming in, but they've taken over the Sauber entry. So they've got a decent handle on a race team, on the equipment, on how to go about putting a race performance together. And they've taken on the personnel there. But they have got a brand new power unit in the back of their two cars. And they are the only team with the Audi power unit. So they're at a slight disadvantage there where they're not learning as much as everyone else as the races are going by. Mercedes are getting information from their customer team, so are Ferrari. You've got Red Bull at least with Red Bull and Racing Bulls. Whereas you've got Audi and you've got Honda who are left out there on their own. And in this early period of the season where gathering data to try and enhance performance is so critical, the big thing for Audi is their race starts. And it seems to be power unit related. Let's have a look at a quick montage of starts. And they've had four Grand Prix so far of a possible six. No Hulkenberg on the grid in Melbourne. No Bortoletto on the grid in China, also with power unit related issues. When this car is on the track, it's plenty fast enough for some points. But let's have a look at where things go wrong. So this is Gabriel Bortoletto in Melbourne. Lights go out. First of all, Liam Lawson ahead does not get away at all. But look at the rocket ship starts from everyone else around. So one, two, three places lost here from Bortoletto. That's Alex Albon now on the left-hand side. And we're going to get back past the Williams at least here with Gabi. But we're going to lose out coming up to Fernando Alonso as well. So this is three places lost. And then one game with Liam Lawson not getting away from the grid at all. And this is now a position where Audi can score points. So Alonso goes through on a soft shot. Aston Martin, that's always going to be temporary. And Bortoletto there with a net loss of two overall by the time he gets back past Alonso in position to score some points. And that's their best start of the season so far, which is a pretty tough state of affairs. Nico Hulkenberg then, the man that took the start in China for the team. And you can see once again the car just going straight into wheelspin as he's not able to drop the clutch. So this time Verstappen gets a bad getaway. But one, two, three, four, five with Sainz. Six with the Cadillac as well of Valtteri Bottas coming past us. Seven with Fernando Alonso once again coming through also on the hard tyre, the same as Nico Hulkenberg. So this is Hulkenberg starting from just outside of the points, waving goodbye to really any chance of coming through in a normal race. And this is clearly quite a headache for the team. We're going to get one more car coming back past. And that is Max Verstappen coming back through after his lousy start at Turn 6. That's eight places lost for Hulkenberg. When you're having these starts, so much of it is about momentum. You have a good start, like we've seen Fernando Alonso, like we've seen Carlos Sainz from the back of the field, routinely have good getaways. Alex Albon as well in the other Williams. You're then eyes forwards. You're then looking to try and get in the right positions for the first couple of turns. And make the most of that through the whole first sector. And I think what we're seeing there from Hulkenberg is the fact that you're looking in the mirrors, you're seeing cars come past you, it's then difficult to turn defence to attack straight away in those first corners. So there's a few more positions seeping away. Let's have a look at this one then in more detail with Bortoletto. This is the Japan start. So both Audis in the race. Bortoletto with a really solid starting point here. But as the lights go out, you can see, first of all, a really delayed reaction time. So let's play it back again. And I think this shows here. So you've got Bortoletto on the pre-start revs. The revs sort of going up and coming down. The car not in a perfect point. So with these starts, we've covered it off with the front of the field and Oscar Piastri in our post-Japan show. You need to have the turbo spool. So you've got boost pressure when you get away from the line and you can basically accelerate. Then you need a really steady throttle. And then you need the revs to be plateaued with that steady throttle. What we've got with the drivers here is them on a steady throttle, but the revs are not quite in sync. And as a result, I think they're worried about boost pressure and they're not able to drop the clutch fully. So what we're seeing is the worst reaction times on the grid here from the Audi drivers. But what in reality it is, is I don't think they're able to fully just drop the clutch. It looks to me like they're having to sort of do a quick getaway because otherwise they're worried about having the sort of catastrophic Liam Lawson start or the Max Verstappen start that we've just seen from Melbourne and in China. So once again, as the lights are all on, you can see the moment where on our right-hand side, the Red Bull, the Ferrari ahead, they're all getting away. But there's just an extra hesitation then for Bortoletto whose actual sort of reaction time is nearly half a second. But that's the reality of just the lights going out to the car moving. I'm sure in the cockpit, he's reacting as the lights are going out. These guys have got amazing reactions. But it's all just on a bit of a delay because he's not able to just sort of pop the clutch into the right position. So once again, all of these cars come back past us. And Bortoletto, who started up in the top 10 in Japan, is going to struggle to get back towards that as the race goes on. More places lost. But at least in Japan, you sort of cover your losses by the time you get into turn three. It's now status quo. But we've lost plenty of positions. Finally, Hulkenberg. And we get the same thing from a little bit further back. Slightly better reaction. But once again, he's not able to fully release that clutch. And then he's slithering away. We've got the Williams coming past. We've got Behrmann coming past on the right-hand side. Finally, the Cadillac coming past as well, which shows it's not been a good start here once again for Hulkenberg. And these guys have potential to score points with the pace of the car. But when you're starting like this, you might as well not make it out of Q1. Every time they're just falling back into the clutches of those at the back. And then every race becomes difficult. Gabi Bortoletto in Melbourne. So I showed you the two places net lost at the start once he cleared Alonso. A two-stop strategy as well for Audi. And we managed to get a couple of nice passes on the boost coming past, first of all, Esteban Ocon. And Bortoletto then up into 11th place at the time. And he's going to pick off another one with Pierre Gasly coming up. It's so important when you have this overtake mode enabled and the chance to use the boost, you don't use everything straight away and you have enough to defend. But I think here, Gasly and Ocon so focused on each other that you get Bortoletto sneaking past them both and getting a couple of points on debut for Audi. So that was the good. The other chance they had was Nico Hulkenberg in the race in China. He comes in for a pit stop. We've just seen him tumble pretty much to the back of the field at the start. But with everything else that went on, there's still chances of points. But you can see Nico with the revs built, ready to go. And there's a problem on the right rear. Checks and checks again. And this is a pit stop that's going to take an absolute age. Eventually, we get going. And if we have a look from the outside here, you can just see the work. The tyre doesn't come off on the right rear. The wheel guard obviously not managing to do the job properly. And then eventually, they go in with a second chance at it. And all the while, Nico is waiting. And he's going to finish up here in 11th place, just outside of the points. So that was a recovery attempt for Audi. But as yet, Nico Hulkenberg still with no points this season. They've got to get on top of the starts in the month that we've got off right now. I'm sure that'll be their big focus. And once again, without having the learnings of other teams, you've seen Lawson have a bad start. You've seen Verstappen have a bad start. That's both with the Red Bull power unit in. But they can all learn because every time they take a race start, there's four of them doing it. For Audi, there's only two. And in Melbourne, there was only one. In China, there was only one because of other issues. So they are way down on the learning curve. But hopefully, they can put that into practice in this month off and delve through the data and be more competitive in that area for Miami. Because if they do, the car's actually pretty quick. Yeah, I think the start was not great. But we knew it was something we need to work on in the team. For me and Nico, we have been struggling a lot since race one. We are working on it. The team is working hard on that. We just need time to put things in place. And then, yeah, we still need to investigate some other things. But I think the start was nothing compared to the other problems we had through the race. So yeah, just let's keep our heads down and go to the next one. OK, so sticking with that Chinese Grand Prix, and we saw a great drive from Carlos Sainz, who managed to claw a couple of points in the Williams, which is an outstanding effort because this car, we know it's heavy, it's underdeveloped, it's full of issues in both the power unit optimization, but mainly in the chassis and the aerodynamics and the mechanical setup of it. So really slow at this stage of the season, with two drivers very capable of scoring points. And we saw that when there was an opportunity provided here for Sainz. Let's have a look at one of his starts, because these have been rocketing all the way through. And you can actually just see there the slow start of the Staffan, the steady start of the Audi as well. And Sainz having to back off because he's starting from a long way, those launches are routinely spectacular for him at the start of races. So when Williams start to add a bit more performance, which hopefully will come for them in the next few Grand Prix, again, with this month off, they should have a decent chance. Once again, then we see Sainz on a soft tyre at the start in Melbourne. And once again, rocket start, all cars going slow on the inside. And he described this like a video game start, the way that he was able to just drive around everyone himself, Fernando Alonso getting up into the picture as well, and showing really that Williams have got a great handle on these race starts. And yeah, Carlos banking a couple of points in China. Sadly, they don't really have the car pace to hold on. The Chinese Grand Prix points was by virtue of pretty much everyone else in the race that was quicker having incident, which included Esteban Ocon and Franco Colopinto. It was Colopinto that was charging up behind Carlos for that ninth place late on. But some tactical driving as well from Sainz meant that when he was allowing the leaders to come through to lap him, he was just trying to tuck in and take the overtake mode as well for the last couple of laps, which allowed him to recharge a little bit more battery and defend from Franco to just keep him out of arm's length. So one point became two. And basically, Carlos was in position to just take advantage of everyone else in that race having issues. But yeah, Williams, I'm expecting some performance increases from them soon. And I think with both drivers and the race starts that they've got, they should be able to get more points in the summer races. I'm excited to see what the team can do over the next five weeks. I think it's going to determine our fate of the rest of the year, how aggressive and ambitious we are with these five weeks in terms of our recovery plan, because these three races have been, I think, a bit of a nightmare for all of us. Right, Aston Martin from one Spaniard to the other. Let's have a look at a race start from Fernando Alonso's point of view, because this is the fun for Fernando. This is the bit where he is able to be a racing driver in 2026. And much like the Williams on your left-hand side, that is Sainz that we've just seen having the start, you've got Fernando playing around on the opening laps as well. So this is on a hard tyre in the Aston Martin, trying to make some positions. And every single race so far, he's been able to do that on the race start. So we know Fernando from years gone by is able to just put the car in the right place. His race craft is still at a really, really high level. But the problem is when he then takes all the positions, Aston Martin have absolutely no chance to keep hold of them. So here we go. The positions keep gaining all the way through the first half. The problem for Aston Martin is manifold, in fact. But one of the big problems, no power. So it's between the internal combustion engine and actually the energy deployment. Once again, a little bit like Audi, Honda only powering Aston Martin, and they're not learning that much. They've got so many reliability problems as well, which I'll show you in just a little bit. But when they're not able to learn, because they've only got one team, because they're not able to do too many laps, they are struggling to find the optimization on the deployment levels. But the issues are much bigger than that anyway. So Fernando Alonso, then the montage, having made all the places, waves goodbye to Olly Fairman, waves goodbye to Nika Hülkenberg, and he's just not in a position to defend really, like we know Fernando can. Really use that skill, the race craft, that we see on the first lap as Bottas comes through. And then finally, we get Perez come through and a little wave from Fernando as well, because he just cannot do anything in this race. So all the skill set still, but we're not able to see it. And each race at the moment for Alonso and Aston Martin is basically a test session, just to go out there and learn a little bit. He's having fun at the race start, but then it is literally just everyone flooding past on the straights when they get the chance, and there is nothing that the Aston Martin can do. The big problem they've got as well as the performance is the drivability of the car and particularly the vibrations. So in China, this was Alonso, you can just see through the steering column here, the vibrations going on at the top of the wheel here, just shaking all around the Honda. So Fernando actually taking his hands off the wheel to be bearable through a long stint in the race. And once again, just stretching out the fingers because they're just shaking the whole time, hanging on to this. And it was the same case as well in Japan as we get Fernando now one hand on the wheel, where he did at least manage to complete a race distance, Honda turning down a little bit the maximum power of the power unit just to complete the race in Japan and find a little bit of reliability. But the big concern for them is these vibrations. It looks really bad from the onboard. So you can imagine when you're strapped in as one with the car, you are being shaken around a huge amount. I'm sure trips to the dentist probably needed for both Fernando and for Lance at the moment. And the problem is Honda don't really understand exactly why these are happening. As at Japan, they were still trying to understand if it was particularly on the engine side, if it was the way that it was mounted into the chassis as well. And so they are way behind on developing this car and understanding what's going on, let alone improving on it. So it's a long way back for Honda. Again, the month off gives them chances to look through, but really they need to put this car on the ground and start figuring things out. Yeah, physically I could not continue much longer. I started to lose the feeling on my hands and my feet. So it was not a nice feeling. Better news though for Racing Bulls. Arvid Lindblad, what a cracking debut. We didn't do an analysis show after Melbourne, so we can show you what was a fantastic race start from Arvid and the way that this start unfolded. So you've got a rookie driver on the grid, going straight past his teammate who didn't get away at all. And then I love the way that Arvid fights through this opening sequence of corners. You've got Kimi Antonelli, you've got Lando Norris, you've got Lewis Hamilton going just over the grass slightly. And now here, he's got a little bit more energy to use on this first lap. There were issues for plenty of drivers further up the road. And he basically has a little bit more deployment down towards turn three, but it's still aggressive on the brakes, using that space on the outside of the corner. Same thing is true with Hajar ahead. So you can see the lights blinking of the cars in front. You can see Hajar there having a D-rate in towards turn six. But look how early it comes for him up towards the high speed here, turns nine and 10. So there we go. The ramp down's coming. And now we're going to have the engine fully on ice power. But in a minute, we're going to have actually a super clip for Hajar as well. So Isaac Hajar had a great start from third on the grid in Melbourne, but had no energy to use. So they didn't optimize the formation lap, ran out of recharge allowance effectively, and had to start the race on no battery. So it stopped Hajar probably taking the race lead in Melbourne, and it stopped him being able to defend at this moment as well. But look, as we start gaining here with Lindblad on third place in his first race, Hajar suddenly has a super clip. So you can see now when the lights are consistently coming on that that is now in a full ramp down. So he's on full throttle using the MG UK to actually work against the ice and actively charge the battery. But look at the way, as soon as that happens, he starts to go to the inside. And it's quite good reactions here from Lindblad to go to the other side of Hajar. More instinctive sort of reactionary driving from various drivers as they see they're running out of juice on the straight, and they're just sort of covering off instinctively. So for Lindblad, he's now defending on Lewis Hamilton in towards the next turn. A slight bit of wheelbanging as Lewis comes back through and gets the Ferrari back into third position. There's your race leaders though. Charles Leclerc and George Russell. And Arvid Lindblad on debut is going to come through in fourth. The problem is he's used more energy from his battery and he's not recharged at this end of the first lap as well. So once again, we're looking in the mirrors. We're derating early on this straight. Hajar's been able to harvest a little bit more. We saw him super clip. He's been able to use that on the end of that first lap. And look at Arvid here as he's now checking the mirrors. So we check left. We check right. And as he does that, he sees Hajar coming. And a little bit like we saw with Colapinto and Berman more catastrophically in Japan. The drivers like Hajar on the super clip in towards turn nine. As they feel themselves slowing down and they see their rival moving out, they're instinctively steering into it. So it's just a little bit here for Lindblad. But then it's no big sweep and Hajar comes back through. Nonetheless, it's a fantastic first lap in Formula 1. I don't think they really come better than that, to be honest. And with all the complexities of the car, he dealt with it superbly. And that ended up being points on debut for Arvid Lindblad, of course. It's not been plain sailing since. We've had a couple of spins. This was in the sprint in China. Down the gears, turning it in and just catching that rear lock. And it looks to me like the Red Bull power unit, the way that they're recharging is very, very heavy on the rear axle here. And we saw the same with Max Verstappen having that spin and crash in Melbourne. It's quite snappy on the rear end. And I think Arvid found that out down on mileage through practice in China. He had a few reliability issues throughout. And once again, we got to the Grand Prix fighting to try and get some points and just having, once again, a rear lock late on in the braking zone and having a spin. So lots of potential there. A fantastic debut for Arvid Lindblad. But it's not quite been as plain sailing since. A great qualifying effort still in Japan and more points chances. Let's jump on board for one more Chinese Grand Prix start with Liam Lawson, who did have a really good weekend. And one thing I'd say for racing bulls is their execution of the races has been very, very strong. So Lawson, who's got into Q3 in Melbourne, but actually didn't score points then with a bad start, scored points ever since, not starting in the top ten, starting 13th or 14th. So the magic here for Lawson, to play this through, is actually in starting on the right tyre and pitting on the right time. Now, he has a good first lap as well. Manages to come through up to 8th position. But he's got the medium tyres on the car. So the yellow-walled medium tyre has been optimum compared to all of these cars around him that have been on both of these two as well. That is Colopinto and Ocon, as well as Lindblad, starting on the hard tyre. If we have a look at the way the races have panned out here, you can see how crucial it has been to basically start on the medium and pit under safety car. There really hasn't been too much in terms of strategy divergence. And every time someone has done that, it hasn't worked out. So first race, you've got two safety cars. These are shown at the top of the chart. So your safety car comes in here. And it's so important, we've seen it the whole way through, at the front of the race or trying to fight for points, that you manage to pit at the safety car because you just have a reduced pit stop time. So when everyone else is going around at full speed and you do a pit stop, it's circa 20, 22 seconds. For a full racing speed pit stop. Generally, you shave about 10 seconds off when everyone else is having to go at a safety car delta. A VSC, a full safety car is obviously even more than that as everyone gets bunched up behind the pace car. So if you can save that time, it's so critical. Now Russell and Antonelli straight away in Melbourne did that. And you can see really Ferrari not doing that. They cost themselves a chance to win. Now we saw that in Melbourne, that's played out. And they didn't actually get the chance, Ferrari, to pit on this second safety car because they weren't in position to do that. But the rest of the field were. And they basically all did if you wanted to get some points in the race. So you had chances for Gasly to pit early on. He actually had the chance on lap 11 because he was a little bit further back in the field. And then run a really long stint on the hard tyre. And everyone else in front that got points, all pitted at that second safety car where they had the opportunity. And unlike Ferrari who went straight past and then it was cleared up so quickly, they had the chance to pit in and fit that tyre. And what this means in terms of race strategy early on in this season is that if you start on the hard tyres, you get a little bit shafted because all races have seen safety cars at a pretty optimum pit window. And you see Verstappen here in Melbourne had a really good race, also pitted at the second chance. But because he started on the hard tyre, he was never going to make it work going long on the medium. So he manages to do 23 laps. But if he'd started on the medium switch to the hard, it would have been absolutely fine like everyone else. And he would have saved himself a second pit stop. So Max takes that and gets stuck behind Lando at the end of the race. But if you look through the rest of the races, they've worked out pretty well for everyone that started then on the medium tyre. Once again here, you get the safety car coming early. Everyone then pitting in China when that came. But if you started on the hard tyre like Franco Colapinto did, like Esteban Ocon did as well, and Arvid Lindblad, you don't get the opportunity to gain by pitting under that safety car. So that's where Lawson, like Gasly and Sainz here, managed to do that in China. So everyone's learning. And by the time we get to Japan, a lot of the field start on that medium tyre. In fact, pretty much everyone apart from Valtteri Bottas starts on the medium. All thinking, well, we'll just drive, we'll pit at a safety car, and then we'll go to the end. And that's largely what happened. Only the safety car in Japan came a little bit later. So we saw the likes of Piastri, George Russell at the front of the field pit just before it came. But once again, if you hung on for that safety car in 2026 so far, it keeps rewarding you. And that was the case for Antonelli. We saw him pit on lap 22. That was the magic for his race win. Lewis Hamilton jumped up to third place, eventually lost those positions. But it's the same thing further back for the likes of Gasly, who's executed some really strong Grand Prix. And once again for Liam Lawson, who managed to jump positions, pitted under the safety car, and came out in the points. So once Liam gets to the top 10, he's very, very good at running in the pace and staying there. He's had some decent race starts as well since Melbourne. And racing bulls have been executing that strategy perfectly so far with him. I think, to be honest, we haven't actually been that fast, but still managed to come away with three points finishes. So I think, yeah, when we get a really quick car, I think we'll obviously be in a much better place. And if we keep making the decisions we're making, I think it's quite exciting. So Lawson doing well, but we've just mentioned Pierre Gasly as well. So we'd be foolish not to look at some of his racing action so far this year. This was a move that he put on Esteban Ocon for a point in Melbourne, and it's pretty aggressive here from Pierre. So once again, you've got the solid flashing rear light of Esteban, which shows he's super clipping, so really slowing down. Pierre sees this as an opportunity and he goes to the inside. But in this year's racing, you don't want to just have the easiest pass. You want to kind of artificially make the pass hard for yourself. A little bit like we saw with Orlando Norris and Lewis Hamilton in Japan, when Orlando was just driving past Lewis, he was using too much energy from the battery to do that, and Lewis would then have a chance to just drive back past. So here Pierre has the chance to come up the inside of Esteban Ocon, but he backs off trying to make sure that he's actually just side-by-side on the way into the corner. And he's not effectively wasting energy in breezing past and being somewhere like there into this third turn and having a slam dunk pass, but then being a little bit left in the lurch because he's burnt too much of that energy on the way into turn three. So he backs off a little bit. That gives Esteban a chance. And now we're wheel-to-wheel in a kind of old-school way in towards turn three. And it's aggressive here from Gasly, who knows this is a gilt-edge chance, but we're side-by-side on the way in. So he's earned the right to space on the apex. A little bit of a rumble over the kerb. Esteban turning in. There is contact there between the two Frenchmen and it's really, really hard racing from the two of them. Gasly in a little bit from further back, but he does get there to the apex and eventually manages to make it through. So when Ocon comes back past him, this was the slam dunk pass here for Esteban. And it's kind of a little bit easier for Ocon passing Gasly here. This is later on in the lap. But he kind of could have made this a little bit harder for himself if he'd tried. Would have made the move more risky like we saw with Gasly, but it might have meant that he was able to recharge the battery or use a little bit less energy in passing. Because the problem here for Ocon when he comes back past is he's then got nothing left to offer on the next lap where Gasly gets overtake mode as well for an extra bonus, half a megajoule of energy to use around the lap and he blasts back through. And that was the two French drivers fighting out for the first point in Melbourne, the 10th place. And Gasly's been in the point solidly. We saw this one in China. This was a drive-by pass. Once again on Ocon and his teammate. But I quite like this one from Pierre as well. I think he's driving at a very high level right now. I think he's really understood how to get the most out of these cars in racing. So we saw that with the pass on Ocon making it difficult. This was an easy double pass in the end on Ocon and Franco Colopinto as well. But Pierre's driving. He's very quick. He's qualifying well. It looks like he's basically finding time through the corners compared to Franco looking through the data rather than having some magic on energy harvesting. But here I quite like it because we've now backed off. We could have tried to go sort of three wide, maybe super ambitiously try to go around the outside of both of these drivers into the first turn if we deployed a little bit more energy here. But we're nowhere near it with Pierre because he knows, just hold back at this point, let them fight it out. And as soon as we get to the exit, if you look at his thumb here, we go for the boost. There we go. And now we're just going to drill past both of them. I'm going to get back up to another good points haul in China. And in Japan, it was a more comfortable race from Gasly. A little bit of a natural understeer being dialed out by Alpine. The car's really competitive. Pierre's qualifying it fantastically well on Saturdays and on the Sunday in Japan as well. Finished just seven seconds shy of the Ferrari of Lewis Hamilton as well. So Alpine looking really good. Gasly, 100% points record so far in Grand Prix in 2026. We clearly have a good package and I'm glad we managed to get some, you know, very good potential on all three tracks, which were quite different. So I think it definitely brings some good optimism for the rest of the year. So this being the show of the lesser spotted moments in the race. Well, this one certainly wasn't lesser spotted in the end because it captured everyone's attention when it was first played in the cool down room post the Australian Grand Prix. Franco Colopinto's race start. It's worth a second look though. Let's have a look at it because this is savored the season by miles for me. We get away and all the complexities of the new rules, you've got drivers working really hard on their batteries, energy deployment, harvesting, and also just firing up the tyres, a hard set of tyres here for Franco. So we've got here Pierre Gasly starting directly ahead. You've got a slow getaway from Olly Behrman and in fact, just ahead of him, you've got Gabriel Bortoletto there going around Liam Lawson. So Lawson in 8th, Colopinto in 16th. There's four rows between them. The problem is here when you're sitting in the car, you're sitting so low you don't see anything around you. We've got a slightly high up viewpoint. Remember, everything's happening so quick as well. So as we play this through steadily, you've got Behrman getting away really sluggishly. Colopinto, we can see here, is turning into a stricken car, but there's no chance for him to see what's coming up here with Liam Lawson stuttering away until around this point. So Behrman's going to choose to go left-hand side, but because Behrman's getting away pretty slowly, he's got to look around his mirrors as well and make sure that he's not about to just drive into the side of someone who's got a much better launch. So Franco now goes to the inside, but at this point, completely panics, I think, sees the stricken car. He's picking third gear. He's got a lot of speed coming at this moment. Remember, four rows difference, 8th to 16th on the grid. So we're really building speed and it was a good start as well from Colopinto. And at this moment, so he's had the panic. You can just see it in the steering wheel. So he's turning right. We're going to go to the inside of Ollie Behrman nice and easy. And as we do that, has the moment and now we're full lock to the right-hand side. Now, if you told me, looking at this, that a Formula One car could fit in that gap there, I'd have said, seems hard to believe, but sure, let alone at this speed. So high speed and this angle for Franco Colopinto is exquisite car control. It's amazing that this wasn't a destroyed Alpine, probably a destroyed racing Bulls car as well. But he goes full lockstop, grips up and then manages to just pick it up, almost brushing the wall, but getting away with it on both sides. So an absolutely outstanding getaway there for Colopinto. Hats off to him. And I'm sure the Alpine mechanics should be buying the driver the beer on the Sunday night after that one. Let's have a look with Sergio Perez though, because I always think with every row you go further back, you've almost got a bigger chance of having an impact here because you've got more cars ahead. A little bit like Franco had Gasly and Behrmann. You've now got Perez having Colopinto there as well. But I think because Franco was so close to hitting the back of Lawson, Checo actually goes for a different line. And it's at this point, he can see what's coming up as well. So he probably is thinking that Colopinto is going to drill the back of the racing Bulls and Checo backs out of it quite early and can fit his car through the gap. Lawson starts to open it up and it's a reprieve as well for Perez. But yeah, fantastic reactions from Colopinto. And a point for him as well, we should mention in China, which was a great effort as well because he got tipped into a spin by Ocon in that race. So Colopinto off the mark and Alpine absolutely flying. Glad to have one pass at the race start after. I was just really, really close. So yeah, it's sketchy. Happy to have finished the race, to be honest, after that. Now there's a break to try and understand many things that we still don't have an answer for and try to wait for Miami. Final team to look at then is Haas, another team that are really having a great start to the year. Big hit in the end for Ollie Behrman in Japan, but until that moment, he'd been going really well. Let's have a look at him racing with Arvid Lindblad in Melbourne. I enjoyed this move and this was part of what we've seen with attack and then defense in this sort of yo-yo racing era. Behrman goes to the inside of Lindblad. He had to wait patiently for that opportunity, but makes it stick. The problem with that then is you've got the chance for the racing bull to come back through. So Lindblad then has more energy to use down at turn three and he's way down the outside of Behrman on the brakes, but Behrman knows that this is his one chance. He's set it up at turn one. You now have to commit at turn three. So he's deep on the brakes and even though he's had less deployment down towards that corner, he's able to make the move stick and comes through. So that's a nice bit of driving, attack and defense from Oli Behrman. You can see once again a little bit on the boost here, getting that chance, goes to the inside, clinical on the brakes to turn one. Had to wait patiently for that opportunity to come up because Lindblad was driving very consistently on his debut. But once again, we see now no more energy to use down towards turn three and we're quite a long way back now. Possibly Arvid could have made his job a little bit harder down towards this braking zone, but as it is, Oli then slides back down the inside and that's really good points on the first race of the season. Backed up in China as well and we've covered off in detail the incident that he had in Japan and this month there's a chance for him to dust off those bruises before coming back in Miami. Esteban Ocon also found the points though for the first time this season in Japan. A couple of passes, quite easy ones in the end for Ocon, but this one was a crucial one on Arvid Lindblad, just derating the racing bull and Ocon gets through up into the top 10 early on. Didn't get a lucky brake with the safety car, unlike Gabriel Bortoletto, but once again had more deployment and this was an area we know Haas had a bit more natural deployment. There's no boost going on here for Ocon. This is very much just the natural deployment of the Haas. Kind of probably why Berman had a better chance than otherwise might have seemed on Colopinto as well, where he got the idea to then use the boost at the next lap. Haas' deployment there was good and that's Ocon past Bortoletto up into the top 10 for some points. Isaac Hajar struggled a little bit in Japan. It's not been an easy run for him and the final thing to have a look at is why he couldn't make it up into the points and this was his big chance to pass Arvid Lindblad. You've got Red Bull power units in the back of both cars. Lindblad got a warning flag for this. So you've got Hajar looking to the inside, Lindblad coming across a little bit late, Hajar has to back out of it and waits for another lap. So whilst you've got Verstappen and Ocon easily making it past Arvid Lindblad, Hajar couldn't actually make it through at all. They both then pitted early before the safety car and lost out even more. So an unlucky race but Lindblad probably on the limit but okay and that one in my opinion, even though Hajar didn't like it. It's obviously a turvy run for him as well in the Red Bull from a great qualifying in Melbourne to a disappointing run in Japan and we know Red Bull have got their own issues, mainly on the chassis side to sort out finding a balance and finding downforce. And there we go. Everyone's head down to understand what's going on and hopefully the next car version really makes an effect. So then plenty for everyone to work on before we get racing again in Miami and of course it'll be a home race for Cadillac, the first one in their Formula 1 existence. We haven't really looked at them but they're still adding performance trying to get both Valtteri and Sergio Perez racing really in 2026. But I'm looking forward to seeing what we get out front as well of course. Kimi Antonelli, the championship leader. George Russell, can he turn the tables? You've got the Ferraris and the McLarens plugging away and we're sure to see a load of upgrades and will we see more learnings from these midfielders as well to tighten it up. Looking forward to getting away in a few weeks time.