Only 1 race in and the drama has already started.

Following Sebastian Vettel’s lucky win in the season opening race in Melbourne there has already been a lot of opinions and fall out from what we all saw.

Hamilton seemed to be comfortable leading the race, and he was looking destined for the win after maintaining his advantage over Raikkonen running second after both pitting. Vettel, in third at the time then inherited the lead as he was yet to stop. And then it happened. Another pit stop mistake from the Haas team resulting in Grosjean leaving his car stranded on track enforcing a Virtual Safety Car (VSC).

During the VSC period Vettel then came in for his pit stop and upon exiting the pitlane was ahead of Hamilton and took the overall lead of the race and ultimately won.

There seems to be a general consensus on social media that it was quicker to have gone through the pitlane and by doing this Vettel gained time. This is not the case at all though. It is simply down to the difference of the pace of the cars at race pace and under the VSC.

The average speed at full race pace around Albert Park is approximately 140mph and you need about a 23 second gap for a pit stop. This of course is going to totally change under VSC conditions. The average race pace is reduced and therefore the advantage you need to get back out of the pits keeping position is reduced as well. The difference between the 50mph pit lane speed limit to the pace under VSC isn’t as big as it would be to the normal 150mph average race pace. Therefore the drivers on track at the time of VSC aren’t going to be closing the gap as quickly.

Following the race there was a lot of discussion as to changing the rules of pitting under the VSC. But in my opinion this isn’t needed at all. Whilst what happened wasn’t necessarily just with Hamilton looking so strong over the weekend it was totally legal. There was nothing that was against the rules. It was just pure luck for Vettel that the VSC happened at that time.

Mercedes blamed a software glitch for not realising they would lose the lead, but even if they had realised they wouldn’t be able to close the gap under VSC.

Even with Hamilton behind Vettel he still had the chance to earn back the win as when the Safety Car came out the whole field was bunched up again – ultimately it was the difficult nature of the Albert Park circuit that cost Hamilton the win.

Personally I feel that changes to the VSC aren’t needed at all - and to be honest I wonder if this was the other way around how many people would still be complaining.