Mark Hughes: F1's Inside Line

If there's one fundamentally unsatisfactory thing about this sport, and Formula 1 in particular, it's how it is so machinery dependent that it cannot tell us anything definitive about relative driver performance - whether x is really as good as y and if a is quicker than b. All you can do is look at the patterns, watch up close, ask questions of those who are working closely with these men.

But right now, in the early stages of the 2007 season, we have probably one of the best opportunities of all time to get a good handle on how the talents of the pre-eminent drivers of an era - in this case Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen - compare.

Because Alonso has directly replaced Raikkonen, who in turn has directly replaced Schumacher, we have two teams of people with collectively a near-direct comparison of the three greats of the last few years.

With this in mind I spent some time in the first three races of the season gathering intelligence from those teams about their impressions. No-one at either Ferrari or McLaren is going to go on record about specific comparisons, but you can be assured that the views expressed below originate directly from a collection of key personnel at those teams.

We all know the generalities about these three drivers, the very obvious stuff like Schumacher's phenomenal work rate, Alonso's relentlessness, Raikkonen's coolness at the outer edge.

But the specifics of what they need from a car, how they work the team and, most fascinating of all, how outright fast they are in comparison to each other when we're talking tiny degrees rather than orders of magnitude, we couldn't really call before.

Not with any degree of certainty, and not based on anything other than an educated hunch and the data footprints of their races. And neither could anyone else - even those inside the garages. But that's no longer the case.

At McLaren they have been deeply impressed by Alonso's character. How he can remain so grounded and pleasant yet at the same time very much assume the role of leader?

He was immediately a more demanding driver than Raikkonen had ever been in terms of letting them know exactly what he needed and making sure he got it. He stays around longer, gets into deeper conversations with the engineers, works at understanding things much harder. He takes the initiative of leadership, is already more than just an employee - something that McLaren hasn't seen in a driver in many years.

What about in the car? There is still a feeling from those at the coalface that they have yet to see the Raikkonen-like devastating high-speed precision that wrings every last gram of speed from a car.

Fernando was in formidable form in Malaysia, and his trademark relentless sequence of mega laps that break the back of the opposition was very evident. And those laps in the early part of the first stint of that race where his victory was built were the closest we've seen to him wringing the McLaren's neck.

That solidity of performance - the way you know he will not drop off, how he never needs to be reminded which are the critical laps of a race, particularly around the pitstops - paints a picture of a more reliable, rounded driver. But the raw speed doesn't seem to be coming as easy as it did to Kimi.

That said, everyone there is aware that he is not a double world champion for nothing and are more than prepared to be blown away any time soon.

At Ferrari they had over the years developed a highly complex way of working with Schumacher, particularly in terms of verification and some of the sub-systems used within their testing procedures.

With a new driver coming on board they pared this back to the basics and set about building it up from there, in the expectation that it would take most of the season to get back to the previous level of sophistication.

Instead they were amazed to find that Kimi had the mental alacrity to be at that level before the season had even begun. Each new level they explained he soaked up like a sponge - albeit with little in the way of verbal confirmation.

With Kimi, everything is in the doing, not the saying. He's undemanding, very relaxed - and so the initiative has to come from the team. But when they do that, he responds. He may have a reputation for leaving the circuit early, but whenever they require him to stay longer, he does so without complaint.

But with Kimi they realise they need to pull the process along whereas with Michael it was almost impossible to feel the distinction between him pushing them and they pulling him. But that's fine, they say. They can work with Kimi's way just as well.

What they very much appreciate - and what made them a bit uneasy about the idea of Alonso being Michael's replacement - is the way Kimi will never wash his laundry in front of the world when things aren't going smoothly.

One thing the Ferrari engineers have been amazed at is just how much oversteer he likes in a car. The more you dial in, the faster he seems to go. It gives him instant direction change but his great feel, precision and speed of input can then dampen down what would normally be the negative consequences of that.

At first they struggled to believe just how he could do that - but now they know. They have also seen a little insight into that fantastic high-speed precision the McLaren guys used to rave about. When he's really in the zone, they say, he's forced them to recalibrate their ideas of what is possible.

When that was said to me, I thought I might be misinterpreting it, so to make sure, I said: "What, even after Michael?" I received a straight-in-the-eyes response: "Yes."

But there was no disguising their disappointment with Kimi's Bahrain race, and especially his very poor restart.

It paints a picture of a guy with more dips and crests in his performance than either Schumacher or Alonso - but the top of those crests are higher even than theirs.

There are guys at Renault who will tell you that much as Alonso was liked, they still worshipped Schuey from all those years ago when he was a Benetton driver. Alonso worked hard, but Schuey loved being in there with them, like there was nowhere else he'd rather have been.

But though the work rate was consistent, Schuey's performance had more blips - invariably through over- rather than under-striving - than Alonso's, who of them all seems to have the best feel for what is possible.

There were days when Michael strayed above the top of that curve, just as there are days when Kimi stays beneath it, but Fernando seems to sit pretty much on top of it. So we still have no definitive answers, but now we have a more refined set of questions.