ESPN: Amateur Hour at the Worldwide Loser in Sports. Absolutely no respect for the sport. No sound. Wrong times. Commercials breaks willy-nilly. Missing chunks with no recourse. Cut away at the end in mid sentence without saying goodbye. They paid nothing for the rights to F1 ... and it shows.

GRID WALK: What's all this we heard about how great Sky Sports coverage is? Talk about overrated. Especially the grid walk. What a massive borefest that was. And then they paid how much money to Nico Rosberg just to have Martin Brundle constantly interrupt him? Rosberg couldn't get a sentence in edgewise.

THE BIG PICTURE: Another season commences. And though it looks like another Mercedes dominated affair with some Ferrari pressure and maybe a Red Bull here and there ... just like last year ... we're holding out hope, because there is some evidence, it really will be an honest three-way battle with some McLaren mixed in.

TRACK: Albert Park has always been terrible for passing. But when the Haas duo are clearly holding up the faster Red Bulls and Bottas struggles to make an on track pass with the superior package, it's really bad. Easy to fix. Tell the FIA to start limiting the number of winglets on a car which causes all that disturbed air.

EVENT: What a massive crowd. Say what you want about the ills of Formula 1, but fans still love it.

QUALIFYING: And just like that, Hamilton puts his foot down; and just like that, Bottas puts it in the wall; and just like that Haas is the fourth best team ... say what?!

RACE: We're not criticizing Ferrari. They found a loophole in the rules and exploited it. Our beef is with the rule. It seems like such a cheap win.

START: Super, super, super clean start by the entire field, Lewis has to fend Kimi off, Kimi holds off Seb, and Magnussen catches Verstappen not paying attention.

VETTEL: If nothing else, the win is a 14-point swing from what should have been. And Sebastian is not going to give that back.

RAIKKONEN: He's got to feel just like Hamilton. Second place was rightfully his.

FERRARI: Obviously, Ferrari cannot walk away thinking they actually beat Mercedes on speed. They have a lot of work to do to match Mercedes' pace. In the meantime, they can send a gift basket to Haas.

HAMILTON: Lewis experienced the definitive definition of flabbergasted.

BOTTAS: Valtteri experienced the definitive definition of frustrated.

MERCEDES: That's right Mercedes, blame the software...

RICCIARDO: The Australian lack of podium curse continues for the home country boy.

VERSTAPPEN: Damage on the first lap resulted in a spin and a miserable race.

RED BULL: Like Ferrari, they have work to do. But, they did show encouraging signs throughout the weekend and arguably should have outqualified Ferrari.

HULKENBERG: In a make it or break it season for Nico, he gets the initial leg up on Sainz.

PEREZ: Ditto for Sergio against Ocon.

ALONSO: On the one hand, Fernando finished fifth and he didn't have engine problems and he had speed. On the other hand, he did qualify 11th and discounting the misfortunes of others, he didn't really fare all that much better than last year.

LECLERC: When you are being heralded as a star of the future and you get outqualified by a teammate nobody respects, it's not an auspices start.

SIROTKIN: His F1 debut foiled by a plastic bag.

HAAS: We can hear David Hobbs yelling, "Ohhhhh, nooooo!" Coming out of testing, everyone said Haas just may be the best of the midpack. In Australia they proved that to be true. To then throw away a massive points haul over a ridiculous pit error, squared, is devastating.

WILLIAMS: On the flip side, their new car is a disaster.

FORCE INDIA: Meanwhile the little team that could approaches a fork in the road. Will being forced to design a new chassis because of the halo cause them to lose all they gained the past few years? Or, will they quickly pick that momentum back up?

HONDA: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

SAUBER: Weren't they supposed to be using the current Ferrari engines? Didn't look like it.

HALO: We admit, they look worse than we thought they would. We still believe after a few races people will forget about it. But, we're starting to doubt that belief...

FIA: The Virtual Safety Car is supposed to neutralize the field. So, why wasn't the field neutralized? Fix the rules.

WORD OF THE WEEKEND: Cross-threaded.

STAT OF THE WEEKEND: 15 -- The amount of time in seconds for the gap Mercedes thought they needed over Vettel to cover a potential Virtual Safety Car situation.

HISTORICAL STAT OF THE WEEKEND: This was the first Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne without their founder, Ron Walker, who passed away at the end of January at 78. He won the rights to the race from Adelaide. His birthplace hosted their first race in 1996. Damon Hill won the race from pole sitter Jacques Villeneuve. Villeneuve was in his debut race and led most of the way until an oil leak caused him to lose ground. Both were in a Williams. Eddie Irvine finished third in a Ferrari.

QUOTE OF THE WEEKEND: Lewis Hamilton growing frustrated over the lack of communication from his pit wall while shockingly finding himself behind Vettel, "Can I push, yet? ... You know how much you want it, C'mon ... I'm going for it."

QUOTE OF THE WEEKEND RUNNERUP: Sebastian Vettel was prophetic in the post-qualifying press conference towards Hamilton, "He's free to have a party tonight. Hopefully we'll have a party tomorrow."

SCHEDULE: We go from a place where F1 fans exist in droves to a place where F1 fans are nonexistent.

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