Nigel Roebuck: Fifth Column

FIFTEEN SECONDS into the Australian Grand Prix, I thought back to what Keke Rosberg had said. We had been talking, a month or so ago, about prospects for the 2007 season, and had got on to the subject of L Hamilton. It went, of course, without saying that he was very quick, very smart.

"The other thing to remember about Lewis," said Rosberg, "is that he's unbelievably brave - I mean, 'Gilles brave'..."

That registered. Rosberg had countless bare-knuckle fights with Gilles Villeneuve, beginning with their days in Formula Atlantic, and folk who witnessed them say they have never seen no-holds-barred racing like it.

"Gilles," Keke said, "was beyond brave. Totally fearless..." That being so, for him to say 'Gilles brave' of someone else had a particular resonance.

Villeneuve was renowned as one of the great starters - one thinks of the 1979 Austrian Grand Prix, when he lined up on the third row, yet held a clear lead as they flew up the hill for the first time. The audaciousness, the sheer chutzpah, had us on our feet, and it was the same when Lewis did his number on Sunday afternoon.

Having qualified fourth, he looked boxed in behind a swerving Kubica as they streamed towards the first corner, but then he swooped from right to left, took a wide line in - and passed both Kubica and Alonso on the outside before slotting in third, behind Raikkonen and Heidfeld.

It was like sleight of hand. There was no hesitation, no touch with another car, no locking a brake, no running wide. The move was instinctive and confident, executed to perfection - and this was the very first grand prix start of his life. Even if his car had failed to last a lap (as did Michael Schumacher's Jordan on his debut at Spa in 1991), already he had done enough, put a marker down, shown himself exceptional.

Rosberg, of course, knows Hamilton from way back, for Lewis was Nico's team-mate in karting days. "Trust me," he said, years ago, "that kid is good!" If anyone had doubts as to Lewis's ultimate pedigree, as he progressed through the ranks, they were dispelled last summer when he was a class above the rest in GP2, ultimately winning the championship, as Nico had done the year before.

Hamilton's entire weekend had a surreal quality about it. Even before driving his first lap of Albert Park, he was questioned endlessly by the press, said he was 'living the dream', and so on, and in the circumstances it would have been no surprise if reality had fallen a little short of expectation. As it was, he qualified fourth, and for most of the Australian Grand Prix ran second - ahead of Alonso.

As an F1 debut, this ranked with any in the history of the sport. You can say all you like about the 'McLaren system', about the way Lewis has been groomed by the team, about the meticulous preparation for the start of his grand prix career; the fact remains that still he had to do it, still he had to deliver. Yes, there were little mistakes here and there, but Schumacher was making them right to the end of his career, and in the case of both men it was because they were driving to the edge.

Henceforth, I suspect, the word 'Hamilton' will appear only in the results columns. Fleet Street has come upon a fledgling British sporting icon; from now on he will be simply 'Lewis'.

Such was the impact of his arrival in F1 that Raikkonen's victory, on the occasion of his first race for Ferrari, took something of a back seat. Another pre-season quote from K Rosberg: "Kimi is fantastically quick - the quickest driver on earth.

He won't have the same relationship with Ferrari that Michael had, because he won't live with the team in the same way. If the results don't come fairly quickly, who knows what'll happen? But if they do, nothing else will matter."

Over in Atlanta (where he would finish an impressive fifth in the Nextel Cup race), Juan Pablo Montoya watched the start on TV, then found other things to do: "What else are you going to watch? I could predict the end of the race. By lap three, Kimi had like six seconds' lead..." An exaggeration, but you knew what he meant. Any other winner looked unlikely, to say the least.

Throughout winter testing, Massa seemed to have a slight edge on Raikkonen, and many - myself included - tipped Felipe to win in Melbourne, figuring that his confidence had to be sky-high. When it came to it, though, a gearbox problem accounted for him in Q2, and that meant starting way back, which became the very back when it was decided also to change his engine on race morning.

Would Massa have beaten Raikkonen to the pole? We'll never know, but the fact is that everything went swimmingly for Kimi in Melbourne (save having to race without a radio), and psychologically - with no predetermined numero uno in the team any more - this will have had a powerful effect: after just one race, Ferrari looks upon him as a winner. No wonder Massa looked so glum as Raikkonen flew round to take the pole.

Since the revised qualifying system was introduced last year, it had become the custom of many leading teams, in the first and second segments, to send their drivers out at the last minute, simply to set a time quick enough to keep them in the game. One understood their reasons, but it always seemed a risky practice, for it left no margin - either for mechanical problem or driver error. And on Saturday, as Massa suddenly slowed on his one and only quick lap, it looked like folly. On this occasion, it was not a problem which could have been sorted in a minute, but it might have been.

Next day Raikkonen disappeared up the road as soon as the lights went out, and while we have seen in times past that it can be a mistake to read too much into what happens at the opening race, the ease of his victory, on top of Ferrari's clear advantage in testing, must have been a touch dispiriting for all save McLaren, and perhaps BMW. If the outcome is the same at Sepang, a very different sort of track, everyone can start to worry.

The question of 'customer cars' came up in Australia, as expected. For a long time now, there has been concern from such as Williams and Spyker that Toro Rosso is racing effectively this year's Red Bull (albeit with a different engine) and that Super Aguri is competing with effectively last year's Honda. On the strength of last weekend, Honda should be concerned about that, too, for Takuma Sato and Anthony Davidson consummately out-qualified Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello.

Twelve months ago, Jenson started from the pole in Melbourne, but this time was agreeably surprised, he said, to find himself as high as 14th. In the past there have been times when his... disappointment with his car has been all too apparent, but at the weekend it was as if things were so bad it simply wasn't worth getting upset - in public, anyway.

The 'Earth Car' is thus far showing a marked reluctance to grip it. If this had been 1968, there would have been nothing very remarkable about the in-car footage of Button's qualifying lap - slide, catch, slide - but in today's F1 if a car strays much from its prescribed line, there's something very wrong. You watched Raikkonen's lap and concluded that only a wrong set of points could have deflected him from pole position. The Ferrari seemed to be driving itself. The contrast was stark.