Feature

F1i's Driver Ratings for the 2019 Australian GP

Carlos Sainz (Retired, L9): 4/10
Poor Carlos Sainz suffered the ignominy of being the first retiree of the 2019 season. His hopes of making a breakthrough début with new team McLaren went up in smoke with an MGU-K failure after just nine laps in Australia. Of course that's not the driver's fault, but unfortunately the early exit did mean that Sainz was unable to show what he could do in Melbourne, especially given that he was already starting from 18th place on the grid after being held up by Robert Kubica in qualifying on Saturday. It meant that he was shown up on the day by a strong début from his young rookie team mate Lando Norris, which - added to Sainz' early finish on Sunday - means that the Spanish driver is already rather on the back foot at McLaren, just one race into the season.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.

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