From the Pulpit

So... what are we to make of the recent Sepang test? As ever, it's very hard to know for certain, simply because it's almost impossible to be aware of who was on what at which time, tyre-wise and fuel-load-wise.

Suffice it to say, however, that Kimi Raikkonen's 1:35.258 lap on March 28 looked mighty fine - and that whatever effect the FIA's recent rule clarification regarding Ferrari's allegedly flexible floor may have had on the radical new F2007's pace, it's still a prodigiously rapid racing car.

Both Kimi and his teammate, Felipe Massa, will be very competitive around the wide and flowing curves of the Sepang International Circuit, of that you may be sure.

The McLarens will be quick, too - perhaps a tad faster, even, relative to the Ferraris, than they were at Albert Park three weeks ago.

BMW's peculiar strategy in Australia - their critics, Ron Dennis among them, called it "showboating" - prevented McLaren's Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton from adhering to a strategy that might, just might, have enabled them to take the fight to Raikkonen in Melbourne.

Lewis Hamilton testing in Sepang © LAT

Assuming that this doesn't happen again, then expect them to do just that in Kuala Lumpur; this past week, more than one McLaren engineer has been heard to whisper the odd off-the-record remark about having found a couple of tenths in the past few days or so...

If so, and if the McLaren is as quick or as-near-as-dammit as quick as the Ferrari in Malaysia, then can we expect Lewis Hamilton to carry on where he left off in Australia, and drive his MP4-22 so brilliantly as to make even his much vaunted teammate - a double world champion, lest we forget - look as good but no better than he? We can - of course we can, because Lewis is that good - but he may have to follow a complex and circuitous route to that happy destination.

Lewis was at the recent Sepang test for the last three of its four days, and was fastest of all in the wet, quick-ish in the dry on day two (best lap: 1:36.115), quickest of all in the dry on day three (best lap: 1:35.918)... but oddly off the pace in the dry on day four (best lap: 1:37.448).

Why so? Well, obviously, we don't know. As we all know only too well, optimum testing times (ie, best laps) are an unreliable barometer of forthcoming race (or even qualifying) pace.

Sepang paddock whispers during the test were, if anything, a tad more reliable. And what we all heard was that Lewis had got a bit lost on day four, and had ended up with a less driveable MP4-22 than he'd started day two with.

OK, that info may be unreliable, but at this stage we have no way of finding out. Modern-day Formula One is so secretive when it comes to technical (and commercial) matters, that asking official questions about them (rather than courting off-the-record steers from paddock 'snouts') is often a fruitless waste of time. So all I'll say at the moment is: (a) the rumour may be true, (b) the rumour may not be true, and (c) we'll find out for sure this weekend.

Or will we? We may not, in fact, and for two reasons: (a) Lewis is so quick, and has so much natural ability, that he may well qualify and race with a less-than-optimum set-up - and, since even a comparatively ill-sorted MP4-22 is still a pretty damn quick racing car, he may well qualify and race pretty well even if he's less than fully comfy with the way things are feeling in the cockpit.

Equally, such is the gulf between Alonso's and Hamilton's experience and expertise when it comes to setting up a 2007-vintage F1 car, with all the against-the-clock guestimating/fettling that this entails, that McLaren may well ask Fernando's side of the garage to share all their data with Lewis's - and Fernando and his crew will doubtless agree. We're not dealing with Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost here, after all.

But if that happens, what then? Well, you should remember that, of all the drivers on the 2007 grid, Fernando probably likes the quirkiest set-up of all - a result of his astonishingly savage early turn-in.

Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton © LAT

In the two years that Giancarlo Fisichella spent alongside Fernando at Renault (2005 and 2006) - driving a car that was usually not only set up for, but also owed some of its design fundamentals to creating a platform from which Alonso could perform his savagery with comparative ease - he (Fisichella) was never comfortable.

As a result, Giancarlo, a man who had routinely outpaced every F1 teammate he'd ever had before 2005 - including some big names, such as Ralf Schumacher (at Jordan), Jenson Button (at Benetton) and Felipe Massa (at Sauber) - was never able to drive a car that had been dialled in to a Fernando-spec set-up with any real confidence.

What Fisichella didn't do, of course, was study what Alonso did, meticulously, with his engineers, and with Fernando himself, the better to learn how to take his undoubted talent to a new, world championship-standard, plane. Lewis will. In fact, that's what Lewis is probably doing right now, even as I write.

And if his and his engineers' studies lead them to the conclusion that: (a) the best way of arriving at a driveable set-up, for the early races of young Lewis's F1 career at least, is to copy Fernando's set-up, and (b) doing so requires Lewis to learn to drive a little more like Fernando, then (c) that's exactly what Lewis will do.

It's called driving around a handling problem - because an Alonso-spec set-up is a handling problem for any other driver - and all seriously able drivers can do it.

So keep your eyes peeled on Lewis's initial turn-in at Sepang and Sakhir. If you begin to notice it becoming just a little more brutal than hitherto, and you see his lap times remaining close to Fernando's nonetheless, you'll know what's afoot.