Michael Schumacher and his Ferrari team won the season opening Australian Grand Prix in dominant fashion, making their rivals and fans fear of a repeat of the 2002 season, the most one-sided Championship in recent history. Atlas F1's Richard Barnes, however, believes there are still plenty of reasons to expect a close season

After nearly five months of off-season angst, speculation, guesstimation and wild predictions, the 2004 season finally got underway in Melbourne - in a weekend characterized by even more angst, speculation, guesstimation and wild predictions. It's an immutable part of the annual F1 cycle, the opening weekend scramble for the Holy Grail, that single set of incontestable truths that maps out the entire season in the collective mind of the spectators.

And so it was on Sunday. Or, more accurately, for each session of the weekend. Ever since the staggered launches of the 2004 contestant cars from early January, the weekly titillation of testing times had only served to increase speculation of each team's genuine pace, countered by claims of 'sandbagging' and unreasonably light testing fuel loads. Come Melbourne, we wanted definitive answers, and we wanted them now.

Had Ferrari given Michael Schumacher a vehicle worthy of his challenge for a seventh championship title? Had Bridgestone found answers to Michelin hot weather superiority? Had Michelin found a tyre that could be both superior and legal by FIA standards? Was the Williams' new stubby nose configuration the 'next big thing' in aero design? Would Sato upstage Button, or Massa upstage Fisichella? Was BAR's testing pace genuine? Would Juan Pablo Montoya and/or Ralf Schumacher be handicapped by their respective departures (one certain, the other rumoured) from Williams? Would this be Toyota's year to step and challenge the big guns of the sport?

From the first free practice session on Friday, the stories and conclusions changed almost with each session. By the time the chequered flag had fallen on Sunday, some were convinced that Melbourne had provided a crystal ball roadmap of how the entire season would play out. If only life and F1 were that simple.

A good F1 season doesn't play out like a shabby sitcom, with a different plot premise and a set of reworked punchlines each week to give the illusion of development. Instead, it unfolds like a well-crafted spy novel, with each chapter adding new plot twists, switchbacks and red herrings to keep the reader guessing until the very end.

So which will the 2004 season be - sitcom or spy novel? Recent history is on the side of the spy novel. How often in recent years have we seen a team dominate the first race, only to have that advantage nullified later in the season? In 1998, McLaren seemed unstoppable at the Australian season opener, only for Schumacher and Ferrari to come on strong in Europe. Two years later, the roles were reversed. And last season, the balance swung from Raikkonen to Schumacher to Montoya and finally back to Raikkonen and Schumacher again at the very end.

Amidst the doom and gloom predictions of another Ferrari 'redwash' year, it was Sunday's winner, Michael Schumacher himself, who injected a note of realism into proceedings. Schumacher's warning, that Malaysia would prove a truer test of Ferrari's pace relative to the rest, was in keeping with Ferrari's ultra-cautious approach. Even if Ferrari won the first six races of the year, lapping the field each time, Jean Todt and his team would scowl and collectively urge each other to redouble their efforts, lest their bountiful rewards lure them into complacency.

Yet, in this case, there's a great deal of common sense in Schumacher's statement. A hot and sticky Malaysia will prove a very different challenge, particularly for the Bridgestone runners, than the mild upper-teen race temperatures in Melbourne. Michelin are also claiming progress with their wet weather tyres, and Sepang may provide the perfect conditions to put that claim to the test.

Ferrari and the rest of the teams, largely closeted away from the media and fan speculation, were pursuing a different Holy Grail in Melbourne. For the first time, they were being forced to make one engine last for an entire Grand Prix weekend. It's not a surprise that almost all got it right, first time. If the spate of new F1 rules in the past few seasons have proved one thing beyond doubt, it's the ability of the engineers to adapt to whatever technical challenges the FIA can throw at them - without missing a beat.

It was an easy bet that Ferrari would take the one engine rule in their stride. The last time a Ferrari engine let the team down was in mid 2001. Nevertheless, and even with Schumacher's caveat about Malaysia, the team has every reason to be thrilled with the F2004's debut. For starters, they've avoided a repeat of early 2003, where Schumacher had to win several races on the trot just to cancel out Raikkonen's early points advantage. Now, in a season where bulletproof reliability is once again likely to be the norm, it's the young Finnish challenger who will be left pondering how to turn around an immediate ten point deficit against Schumacher, the most consistent points scorer of the era.

On the other hand, the F2004's debut was almost a carbon copy of the F2003-GA's first outing at Spain last year. On that occasion, the new car debut also brought a Ferrari victory, with Renault's Fernando Alonso as the closest challenger, and the two Williams cars of Juan Pablo Montoya and Ralf Schumacher lagging in the minor points placings. Ferrari will have noted that the F2003-GA's advantage didn't last long. By Monaco, Juan Pablo Montoya had mounted a charge that lopped chunks out of Schumacher's championship lead race by race, and only faltered right at the death. It would take an optimist to bet against the same thing happening in 2004.

For the rest of the field, only McLaren and Toyota came away from Melbourne with no reason to feel at least reasonably satisfied. With their historically high championship expectations, McLaren's lack of performance seems more worrisome, particularly after the initially promising testing times of the MP4/19. David Coulthard's solitary point for eighth and Raikkonen's retirement, the first among the field for this season, have left McLaren seventeen points adrift of arch-rivals Ferrari in the championship that team boss Ron Dennis covets - the Constructors' title.

Toyota's championship expectations may be lower than McLaren's, but not by much. The Japanese giant is not accustomed to motor racing failure, and seeing Olivier Panis battling against the Minardis and Jordans for much of the afternoon did not fit with their plans of finishing among the top five constructors this season. Panis' stable mate Cristiano da Matta didn't fare much better, and technical director Mike Gascoyne will welcome the hotter temperatures in Malaysia - if only to put some respectable distance between his cars and the Bridgestone-shod backmarkers.

For the other main contenders, Melbourne had its bright moments. BAR have made the biggest off-season improvement, Renault look to be building on the steady progress of last season, and Williams are poised to strike. Montoya could have mounted a better challenge if his first corner mistake, troubled pit-stop and track position hadn't counted against him. Although nobody at Williams is kidding themselves that Ferrari could have been denied on Sunday, Montoya won't be unduly pessimistic. Last season, he gave the field a 25-point head start before Monaco.

Melbourne 2004 may not have provided the most thrilling opening chapter in recent times. But often, the most gripping stories develop from ordinary beginnings. If anything, Sunday's race has whetted the appetite for the next GP in Malaysia. And that is surely a promising sign.

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