Australian Grand Prix Preview
Formula 1 begins its 2018 Championship at the Australian Grand Prix. But what are the facts and figures behind F1’s season opener"
Tyres

The circuit is a semi-permanent street circuit so is open to resident traffic, making the track surface ‘green’ and slippery to start with at the start of the Australian Grand Prix weekend.
Pirelli are expecting relatively low wear and degradation but the softer compounds for this year could change this, leading to more pit stops compared to the one stop strategy used by most teams last year.

Medium lateral forces and total energy going through the tyres.
Pit lane time loss is 25 seconds.
No major changes to the track since 2017.
Braking

According to Brembo, the Australian Grand Prix is a high braking severity circuit,  scoring 8/10 on the difficult index (same as Monza, Baku, Sochi and Speilberg).
There are 9 braking sections with an average deceleration of 4G.
In one lap, the drivers apply a total load of 69.2tonnes on the pedal which is the same weight as 94 F1 cars, drivers included.

Turn 3: Brake zone is 113m and it takes 1.32s to apply 163kg of load, reaching 4.9G whilst decelerating for the corner.
Turn 1:  Brake zone is 96m, which is 2m less than last year because the drivers enter the corner at 166km/h rather than 164km/h last year.

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