An Established Order

So, last Sunday's season-opening Australian Grand Prix didn't enthral fans with a shock result or thrilling racing. But it didn't have to. For fans, starved of action during months of pre-season testing and speculation, simply seeing the cars in full competitive cry again was enough to generate excitement.

For once, testing times provided an accurate summary of what to expect from the early part of the 2007 season. Ferrari and McLaren led the pack as predicted, BMW and Renault were only slightly less competitive than expected, while Toyota and Super Aguri were pleasingly faster than even their fans had hoped.

This initial establishing of the order, more than the notoriously fickle Melbourne weather or the statistical likelihood of the safety car affecting the race outcome as seen in previous season openers, is what defined the Australian event this time around.

The implications of this race extend far beyond the 58 laps of the Melbourne circuit, and become a projection for what the other 16 races on the calendar hold in store. And after being pushed back to the third GP on the calendar in 2006, it was good to see Melbourne back in this customary role.

In this context, Kimi Raikkonen was the only driver among the championship hopefuls with reason to smile. It wasn't just that he won on his Ferrari debut - a feat that even Michael Schumacher didn't accomplish - it was rather the supremely controlled manner in which the cool Finnish driver dominated.

Every three years or so, Ferrari get it exactly right from the very start of the season, and this manifests itself in a perfect pole, win and fastest lap trifecta in Australia. Michael Schumacher did it in 2001 and again in 2004. And, after another gap of three years, it was Raikkonen's turn to continue the trend.

It is interesting to note that these trifecta years of 2001 and 2004 marked the start of the most dominant seasons of Schumacher's seven championship years. The omens for Raikkonen's 2007 campaign look equally promising.

If the Finn had been pushed to the limit in achieving the 'perfect weekend' it might have given the field hope. But his performance matched Schumacher's for dominance - right down to the momentary lapse of concentration and ensuing off-track excursion late in the race!

Raikkonen had never won or even started from the front row in Australia, yet he has always been quick in race trim around Melbourne. His three previous podium finishes in 2002, 2003 and 2006 were underpinned by fastest laps. On Sunday, he went two better, inking in the missing pole and victory gaps in his CV.

In any other sport, the opening weekend of a 17 event calendar can be dismissed as having minor influence on the end result. Football leagues are not won in the first weekend, golf's major winners rarely lead for all four rounds, and the opening round of a boxing title fight often serves as little more than a cautious 'feeling out' period for the combatants.

In Formula One, the teams don't have the luxury of dismissing early failure in the hope of longer-term success. Quite the contrary, recent history has shown that the opening three rounds of the year often produce the title-deciding difference. In 2005, Fernando Alonso was 19 points ahead of Raikkonen after three rounds. At the end of the year, they were still 19 points apart at the top of the table.

Last season, Alonso again opened up an early lead, this time of 17 points over Michael Schumacher. After the final event in Brazil, 13 points separated the two. Despite the points difference stretching and shrinking over the ebb and flow of the season, the final gap does have an uncanny habit of returning to approximately where it was after the first three races.

Fernando Alonso (McLaren MP4-22 Mercedes) 2007 Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne © LAT

Melbourne was only the first of those three critical races, but few would bet against Raikkonen extending the advantage further in Malaysia and Bahrain. The significance of this prospect won't be lost on McLaren's Fernando Alonso. If any driver understands the significance of an early championship lead, it's Alonso. His two championship titles, and indeed his entire approach to racing, have been built on this foundation.

On Sunday, Alonso did what he does best - bring the car home in second when victory is out of sight. He will have drawn mild satisfaction from his ability to outmanoeuvre rookie team-mate Lewis Hamilton so easily into second place. He will also be relieved that Nick Heidfeld's early pace in the BMW was belied later by an early first pit-stop, indicating a very light fuel load.

However, Alonso is not focused on Hamilton or Heidfeld as main championship rivals. He will also be acutely aware that he is being forced out of his comfort zone - which is loosely defined as racing conservatively to defend an early championship lead.

It does, however, raise the truly fascinating prospect of a role-swap later in the year, with Kimi Raikkonen adopting the role of conservative cruiser and Alonso having to resort to 'all or nothing' heroics to reduce a seemingly hopeless deficit.

If Alonso had reason to feel dejected about the clear performance difference between his and Raikkonen's, Felipe Massa at least has the consolation of sharing Raikkonen's mechanical advantage to take away from a disappointing opener - although the Brazilian will still be cursing the timing of the gearbox problem that demoted him to the back of the grid and out of any realistic chance of a podium finish.

Going into the season, Massa's best hope lay in bullet-proof reliability and consistency all season. There are drivers on the grid who can become unsettled if a team-mate gets the better of them early on. Kimi Raikkonen isn't one of those drivers.

Like Alonso, the Finn can shrug off being soundly beaten by his teammate and bounce back with a dominant performance the very next weekend. Massa was never going to undermine Raikkonen's confidence, even if he'd won convincingly in Melbourne, and surrendering seven points to his new teammate was a body blow for the Brazilian's chances.

The other main talking point after Melbourne was the performance of the rookies, in particular McLaren's Lewis Hamilton and Renault's Heikki Kovalainen. Arriving in F1 with equally high expectations, it was impossible to foresee that they would have such contrasting fortunes on debut.

Hamilton exuded calm, control and class; Kovalainen looked out of his depth for much of the race. However, modern F1 has proven that debut performances can be entirely misleading. The first race of the year may reflect an established order among the teams and offer a reasonable projection for the rest of the season. In terms of evaluating the rookies, though, it's little more than a one-off result that will have to be repeated regularly to establish a trend.

That said, Hamilton can be justifiably delighted with his debut F1 effort. If he can repeat the performance at Sepang in three weeks, he will have silenced the doubters. It's early days yet, but McLaren may just end off 2007 with the youngest and most dynamic driver pairing in recent history.