We felt the excitement building up gradually towards the season start in Melbourne and we all know the event never disappoints – it certanly didn’t in 2019! Valtteri’s SISU surge, Hamilton’s broken floor, Ferrari’s mysterious loss of speed, magnificent rookies, Kubica’s return among Williams team drama, HAAS wheel nut problems driving the swearing Gunther nuts AGAIN…

Taken out straight from IndyCar type of street circuit book, the Albert Park’s 5.303km of bumps, twists, turns and elevations have seen it all: from flying cars, to first race wins or bitter teams orders.

The crowd is super enthusiastic about the Grand Prix, one would expect that given the Aussie contingent’s achievements in F1. My only low point of the weekend came courtesy of Ricciardo’s rallying attempts gone horribly wrong: it was the reason I wanted to watch the race live in the first place, to see how the Australian fair would fare on his first outing in Renault colours. Anyway, we’ll talk about that later. We gonna have to leave it there as far as this post is concerned.

Please now enjoy these beautiful photos sent to us by George Darwent and do check out his website, it’s amazing, mate.

We’ll carry on with Friday-Sunday photo galleries tomorrow for your viewing pleasure.