The 2005 Australian GP Review

Formula One's many parts took a collective deep breath in Australia last week as the sport prepared for what is going to be one of the most intense seasons ever experienced. To play catch-up in a season like this is something all teams would desperately want to avoid so it was vital to make an impact on the very first day of the new season. Vital, too, for the sport, that the impact was made by someone other than Michael Schumacher.

And so the sight of Giancarlo Fisichella standing in his cockpit, arms aloft while his team pushed him down the pitlane and into the winners' enclosure, brought a beam to many faces. All the efforts of the governing body to contrive an odd result by playing around with qualifying were made good by a brief burst of monsoon weather. And while the race may not have been a thriller, the result was all that Formula One could have wanted.

Not that a Renault victory was odd at all. They had expected to be on the pace, it is just that most of their rivals were knocked out in qualifying. But it is just one of 19. And with more races, each single one could be said to count for less, a fact that could explain the reactions of Michael Schumacher when he said his Australian experience had been a positive one. Positive? More like positively awful.