The answers we're still waiting for from F1 2012

After the weeks of uncertainty, analysis and sometimes futile guesswork, it was fantastic to be sitting down on the Sunday night after Melbourne chewing the fat over exactly what we had learned from the first race of the Formula 1 season.

Yet for however much we could say with certainty that McLaren has a mighty quick car, Red Bull has a fight on its hands, Ferrari's got some struggles and Lotus and Mercedes could be dark horses, we've actually been left with more questions than definitive answers about just what we can expect from 2012.

At the front, there are as many reasons to suggest that things are mighty close between Red Bull and McLaren as there are to suggest that it is McLaren which may be about to unleash a year of dominance on F1.

For those in the RBR camp, the team was clearly on the back foot in Melbourne trying to get on top of the update package it unveiled for the final two days of the Barcelona test.

The lack of decent dry running on Friday in Australia, plus Sebastian Vettel's mistake in P3, further hampered its chances of unleashing the full speed of the RB8 in qualifying.

In the race, Vettel was sensational: picking off Nico Rosberg with that audacious move around the outside of Turn 9; then hounding the cars ahead of him, before the stroke of luck with the safety car just before his final stop allowed him to sneak between the McLarens and bring home the runner-up trophy.

But there is a far more overwhelming argument that suggests Australia did not deliver the true picture of where McLaren stacks up against Red Bull, and it does not make for good viewing for the boys in Milton Keynes.

Throughout winter testing - and especially at the Barcelona test where the lap features three distinct sectors that play to both high speed and low speed characteristics - McLaren's analysis suggested that the performance of its car and the Red Bull was markedly different.

It reckoned that on the high-speed stuff - and in contrast to the situation 12 months ago - it's now McLaren that's ahead; and in the low-speed areas it's Red Bull that holds the advantage.

If that really is the true situation - for we don't have proper data to prove the argument one way or the other - then the tight, short corners and braking/traction demands of Albert Park should have been the perfect stomping ground for Red Bull, and that it's the high-speed swoops of Sepang this weekend that are going to deliver even more of an advantage for McLaren.

The other factor that must not be ignored if you want to judge the relative pace of the two front-running teams is that McLaren was in a heap of trouble with its fuel in Australia, with team boss Martin Whitmarsh going as far as suggesting that they were actually 'more than marginal' in the race.

From the early laps, McLaren quickly realised that the pace of the event was much quicker than they had expected, so therefore their drivers were burning more fuel than had been predicted.

From lap eight, Button and Hamilton were asked to go into fuel conservation mode, which meant they were unable to show the true speed of their car.

So Vettel was only able to keep in touch with the leaders - and deliver the impression that he had the car to take the fight to McLaren - because Button and Hamilton were driving with one arm tied behind their backs.

In fact, the most convincing argument for suggesting that McLaren is well ahead of Red Bull came immediately after the safety car period, where both Button and Vettel would have been racing with everything wound up to the maximum.

And it appeared to be a pretty one-sided fight - just as we had seen so many times last year when Vettel was so assured at the front of the field - as Button simply disappeared.

At the end of the first lap in clear air, Button was a whopping 2.5 seconds clear, adding nearly another second the following tour.

We all remember that the foundation of Vettel's 2011 campaign was in qualifying on pole position, opening up a three-second margin in the two laps before the DRS kicked in and then controlling the pace at the front. Has McLaren used that lesson to deliver Red Bull a taste of its own medicine?

Yet the situation between McLaren and Red Bull appears far more complicated than simply the strengths and weaknesses of the two cars. For, in terms of their hopes of having a clean head-to-head fight for title glory, there are two elephants in the room: Mercedes and Lotus.

We still haven't seen the full potential of the Mercedes © XPB

Mercedes in particular delivered the most baffling of outings in Australia. Its W03 appears a good step forward over its predecessor, and there were parts of the Australian weekend where you would not have been surprised if Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher had run away with a 1-2 finish.

Qualifying didn't quite go right for the pair, though, and in the race we never got to see their potential, as Schumacher was out with a gearbox problem and Rosberg suffered tyre degradation problems.

Yet maybe Mercedes has taken on the old Red Bull philosophy - qualify on pole at all costs and then see what you can do from there - because its DRS-activated f-duct is really only a massive benefit on Saturday afternoons.

Let's see how useful it is on the straights of Malaysia, for there is every chance a quick car and good straightline speed advantage could outstrip even McLaren on single-lap form.

And then there is Lotus, whose E20 appears to be not only quick over a single lap (witness Romain Grosjean's stunning performance in Australia on Saturday), but also mega-consistent over a race stint.

In Australia we did not see its potential: Grosjean was out early on after the collision with Pastor Maldonado, while Kimi Raikkonen's Q1 blunder ensured he spent much of Sunday afternoon stuck in traffic, so we only witnessed the occasional flashes of brilliant speed.

Add to that mix a Williams team that appears to have made a dramatic step forward, and a Ferrari that could well cause serious trouble later this year, and it's all boiling up to be an absolute thriller.

It is no bad thing that we don't have all our answers yet - or, indeed, that we've been left with as many questions as we had all winter.

As Vettel said before the weekend: "You never know what's going to happen. But, to be honest, it would be pretty boring if we did. I think not even half the people would be here, to make the effort to fly out and see what's going happen if we already knew before."

Don't you just love F1?