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= 2010 Australian Grand Prix =

The 2010 Australian Grand Prix was held on March 14, 2010 and took place at the Phillip Island Circuit in Ventnor, Phillip Island, Victoria. It was originally scheduled to be held at the Albert Park track in Melbourne, but track updates were found to be inconsistent with the FIA standards in December of 2009 and the event was kept at the Phillip Island venue. It marked the 12th consecutive time that Australia had hosted the inaugural race of the Formula One season.

The race was notable for being the first without the manufacturer British Automated Motorsport, likened by many as BAM, (a team that had been in Formula One without interruption since 1961) due to financial concerns. Two months before the race pieces of the team had been auctioned off and were mainly conglomerated into either the newest team Northwest or ENG (the rebranded ENGE team from 2009). The race would also be the first F1 race for five new drivers, the most since 2004.

This was also the first race to be subject to the new points model in Formula One which now assigned points to ten drivers as opposed to eight. The system also placed a heavy emphasis on wins and created wider points splits and inflated points totals as opposed to years prior.

The race was won by Memehdi Altafalah in dominating fashion, as he won by almost 20 seconds to second placed Sebastian Goncalves. This was Altafalah's first career victory as well as manufacturer Venzia's first win in eleven races. Altafalah's teammate, rookie Theo Liew-Lundqvist, posted the second fastest time, but qualified 5th as a result of a gearbox penalty. He would be unable to makeup any ground and finished 7th. Austrian Thom Cishek was the surprise of qualifying and started on the front row, but poor pit stops meant he finished 8th. Last year's champion Emilo Rafelli redeemed a poor qualifying effort with fantastic race pace that saw him challenge Emri Kivanien for the final podium position. Further down the field the debutante team scored a double points finish with Reuben Herrera and teenager Tristan Augusto in 9th and 10th. Joseph Lazio scored points at his home race for the third consecutive year by crossing the finish line in 6th place.

Background
2006's world champion and Australian Matt Webb retired before the start of the year leaving Lazio as the sole Australian on the Formula One grid. Venzia replaced Webb with Torch-Petrini driver Memehdi Altafalah two months before the season. Furthermore, Venzia decided to not renew the contract of Webb's teammate, Shawn McMillian, and instead promoted their junior driver Theo Liew-Lundqvist to the top seat. Liew was widely acknowledged as a generational talent, but this was an unexpected move because of Venzia's history of choosing experience over youth. There were five rookie drivers set to take place in their maiden races: world rally star Luca Albarcio with Torch-Petrini, Aleix Andres with Daisuke, Vincent Kohler and Alphonse Miraz with ENG, and Theo Liew-Lundqvist.

The new team Northwest entered the competition with doubts about whether they would be able to compete within their first season of Formula One. However, many believed that their association with the former BAM race team meant that they would be viewed as a contender. To lessen their overall costs, Northwest chose to use Bruno engines for the upcoming year which was a decision derided by many before the season. Northwest signed the BAM junior driver Tristan Augusto and ENGE's Reuben Herrera to race in the upcoming year. ENGE was rebranded and remanaged into ENG F1 Team and they signed two rookie drivers to complete their new look; Travis Doordt and Gonzalo Pirre were not retained and Pirre eventually signed with Torch-Petrini before the 2010 season.

This was to be the first race under the new points system in which ten drivers would receive points based on finishing position and replaced the old eight driver system which was used from 2000-2009. The system also gave the winning driver a seven point advantage over the second place driver in order to fairly represent how important wins were when determining a championship. The points system would hand out a 25-18-15-12-10-8-6-4-2-1 as opposed to the 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1. It is important to note that Sebastian Goncalves would have won the 2009 championship by 11 points under the new points system, but instead lost by 2 to his teammate Emilo Rafelli.

Qualifying
With 24 drivers on the grid, the first round would eliminate 8 drivers and then the second round would eliminate 6 before the top 10 drivers would do a one-lap shootout for position. In the first round, Altafalah and Liew set the two fastest times ahead of Rafelli and the surprisingly quick Thom Cishek. Emri Kivanien's first lap was aborted when he ran into traffic and was thus on the verge of being eliminated in round 1 for the first time in his career, but a second flying lap saw him post a time good enough for 8th. Among the three drivers at risk, only Johann Muir in the Petrini and Neel Chakravarkan in the Huntsworth failed to improve on their first times and were eliminated. Muir's performance was seen as a disappointment, especially considering his teammate Manuelo Saranmedduchi was able to outpace him by a 8 tenths of a second. The other eliminated drivers were the slower ENG cars of Miraz and Kohler (in 22nd and 24th), Cyrus Kovlovski for Daisuke, and both the Hispania's of Anders van Den Haag and Jose Luis Sanches.

In the second round of qualifying two of the Bruno engine runners, Northwest and Bruno (Hispania being the only Bruno supplied team to not make it to round 2), showed remarkable pace and managed to get three cars into the shootout with Reuben Herrera just missing out on 10th place by 9 hundredths of a second. Ian Johansson in the second Huntsworth was eliminated in 12th, rookies Aleix Andres and Luca Albarcio out in 14th and 16th, and Gonzalo Pirre was knocked out in 15th. On the final run for Emilo Rafelli, the Italian was told halfway through the lap that his time was safe and he needn't push for a qualifying time. Upon slowing down Rafelli's engine stalled and the gearbox seized leading to engine problems that could not be resolved before the shootout. Eventually Rafelli's gearbox would need to be replaced and despite his second round time being good enough for 7th he would have to take a grid penalty which promoted Saranmedduchi to 10th.

The final round consisted of several cars setting their fast lap, only to be overtaken by the following car. This format lead to concerns that the fast lap shootout favored those who left their run to the very last minute. Tristan Augusto went first and set the fastest time, only to be overtaken immediately by Joseph Lazio who was in turn dispatched by Antonio Herzberg in the Velocita and then Shawn McMillan in the second Bruno. Kivanien became the 5th driver to be on provisional pole before Cishek became the 6th. Liew and Goncalves were unable to best Cishek's time and were provisionally 2nd and 4th. Altafalah barely made the start of the qualifying lap, but had a strong middle sector in the lap which enabled him to beat Cishek to the pole by half of a second.

After the session the drivers voiced their displeasure over the system and the FIA released a statement about it considering the proposal to change qualifying at certain tracks where track temperatures played a huge role in qualifying. Among the tracks noted were the upcoming events in Malaysia and Singapore.

Race
With the grid penalties sorted, ENG's Alphonse Miraz elected to start from the pitlane after having gearbox issues on the parade lap. After a short hold, Altafalah lept away from the starting grid as Cishek was overtaken by Goncalves and Kivanien into the first turn. At turn 11, Cishek would repass Kivanien as the Finn struggled with his tire temperatures. Outside of the top ten Anders van den Haag made a stunning start by leaping from 20th all the way to 14th by the end of the first lap. In two more laps the Dutchman had passed Herrera and Johansson and looked set for points.

With the new regulations and the first race of the season, cars struggled throughout with reliability. Among the first to retire was Petrini's Johann Muir whose hydraulics failed going down the Gardner Straight and resulted in a massive spin which miraculously avoided any barriers. With Muir's car nestled into the gravel at the end of the straight, the first safety car was brought out and some runners took the opportunity to pit. In the top 10, only Cishek would come into pit, but a mistake when putting on the tires dropped the Huszar car from 3rd to 10th behind Saranmedduchi.

Emilo Rafelli failed to make up any positions on the opening two laps, but he was able to pass three cars on lap 3 by performing a double overtake on van den Haag and Johnasson and then dispatching Saranmeducchi on the exit of turn 12. In the next ten laps he rose from 10th to 6th by executing overtakes on the Gardner Straight or by passing those who came into the pits.

At lap 18, seven laps after the Safety Car period, Anders van den Haag attempted a move around the outside of Reuben Herrera to retake 11th after the Northwest had jumped him during the first round of stops. van den Haag locked up and lost several places to Aleix Andres, Gonzalo Pirre, and Ian Johansson. At the back of the grid, Kovlovski and Kohler were locked in a battle over 21st position until Kohler locked up his brakes and careened into the side of the Daisuke, ultimately retiring both cars even though Kovlovski attempted to continue for several laps. The debris from their clash also brought about the end of Gonzalo Pirre's race when he incurred a puncture after driving over bits of Kohler's front wing on the track.

In the lead of the race, Altafalah had little competition and was on pace for a grand chelem, but was unable to pass Goncalves before the end of lap 22. Goncalves had decided to stop later on in the race and had inherited the lead for that single lap because Altafalah had pitted before him. Altafalah would win the race with the fastest lap and lead all but lap 22. Goncalves opened up a large gap between himself and Kivanien who battled Liew for the opening stages and then had to defend against the hard charging Rafelli near the end. Rafelli managed to pass Liew and McMillan on laps 39 and 42 with the same double move on the outside of turn 3 and was catching Kivanien before he went off track on lap 47 and was unable to regain momentum.

On lap 53, Antonio Herzberg, Manuelo Saranmedduchi, Reuben Herrera and Tristan Augusto were all bunched up and fighting for 8th place. Augusto and Herrera had each made earlier stops than Herzberg and Saramedduchi and looked as though they would both be passed. Northwest issued team orders to put Herrera in front of Augusto, as Herrera had stopped earlier and had the fresher tires. Augusto appeared to ignore the several radio messages and Herrera was eventually passed by Herzberg. When Herzberg attempted to pass Augusto, Augusto defended with a late move to the inside of the track causing Herzberg to collide with Herrera and Saramedduchi sending Herzberg and Saranmedduchi to the back of the field. Augusto himself would be given a ten second time penalty and would lose 8th place as a result.

When the checkered flag fell, 20 cars were still running with four retirements. Saramedduchi was found to have an unsafe pit release and was assigned a five second penalty dropping him from an already disappointing 15th to 17th. Augusto was relegated from 8th to 10th, but still managed to score points. Altafalah would finish 18 seconds ahead of Goncalves who finished seven seconds ahead of Kivanien. After the race, Amerigo-Micheaux would trail by 1 the points standings to Venzia-Hall.