The F1 circus left Melbourne, following the first round of the 2004 World Championship, unanimous on two counts: the Ferraris are shockingly fast, and the new qualifying format is a complete disaster. Roger Horton returns from Albert Park with insight into the weekend's events

Unanimity is an unusual state of affairs in the Formula One paddock, but as its assorted members drifted away from Melbourne's Albert Park circuit after the opening round of the 2004 World Championship, all were agreed on two points: that the Bridgestone-shod Ferraris were awesomely fast, and that the new qualifying format had been a disaster.

To Ferrari and Michael Schumacher first.

"I never saw his eyes shining so brightly as he speaks of how happy he is to come to Melbourne and to start the season," said Michael's long-time manager Willi Weber before a wheel had turned in anger in Australia. This is not good news for the six-time Champion's rivals, hoping, perhaps, that the 35 years old German's energy level might have diminished even just a fraction. According to Weber, his charge is as hungry now as he has ever been, and if Ferrari continue to provide him with a superior car then we might as well hand over the trophies now and save ourselves the bother of the remaining 17 races.

Fortunately, this is Formula One and things can change quickly as last season proved, but the sense of shock felt by Ferrari's main rivals was palpable as the weekend wore on and as Schumacher toyed with his opposition. Pole position, a perfect start, three efficient pitstops and the fastest race lap on lap 29, just prior to his second stop, is about as good as it gets and afterwards he looked as fresh as ever. Credit to a great Champion and his team is due, but another repeat of their 2002 domination is not what formula One needs.

Once again the cool temperatures experienced on race day (24°C, down from 35°C during qualifying) provided the main excuses for the three top Michelin runners - Williams, McLaren and Renault, the latter being the only team to select a compound suitable for the cooler weather that Melbourne often seems to serve up for the race. Quite why the others chose to ignore this option remained a mystery and so the graining experienced by Williams in particular came as no surprise to Michelin, although just how much of a performance advantage this option gave Renault is hard to evaluate. Certainly no one was pretending that the result could have been changed in any significant way if the other two teams had chosen the same compound.

As it was, Fernando Alonso continued to build on his already substantial reputation with a mature drive into third position. When and if the Spaniard is provided with a race winning package he will win, and that is not the case with every driver in a top four team.

For Williams, their lack of pace came as something of a shock, especially given the form of their cars in pre-season testing. Juan Pablo Montoya compromised his race with a first corner off, but thereafter drove aggressively to salvage a fifth place finish. Typically, the highlight of his race was a series of overtaking manoeuvres as he passed first his teammate Ralf Schumacher, then Jarno Trulli and finally the impressively driven BAR of Jenson Button.

After the race Button had no complaints about Montoya's rather aggressive driving despite being forced onto the grass as the Williams took up the entire available road. Clearly Button has bigger fish to fry than wasting time and energy criticizing Montoya, and his growing maturity at BAR is not going unnoticed up at the sharp end of the pitlane. Overall, the fact that some expressed disappointment at a sixth place finish highlights just how expectations have changed around this team. Team boss Dave Richards clearly has all the ingredients in place to finally make the BAR-Honda-Michelin combo realise the team's potential after so many years of hype and under performance.

Meanwhile, Ralf Schumacher drove another steady race and that repaired the damage done during qualifying where two mistakes on his timed lap had seen him start only eighth on the grid. Unlike Button, Ralf was less than impressed with his teammate's overtaking manoeuvre, claiming that if he hadn't made room both cars would have gone out. Ralf is a superb high-speed driver, but is he a racing driver?

Over at McLaren the post race atmosphere was decidedly grim. It was hard to observe anything positive from McLaren's awful weekend. David Coulthard messed up another qualifying session; Kimi Raikkonen's Mercedes engine lost coolant and overheated; and the cars were just plain slow.

Team boss Ron Dennis had stated prior to the race that he had taken a very conservative approach to this event but in the end that strategy failed too. McLaren have too much strength in depth not to recover and find its lost speed and reliability, but will it be soon enough for them to be a factor this season?

Interestingly, in an interview with Dennis he himself never tried to deny the suggestion that his Mercedes engine is down on power compared to BMW. And indeed, insiders at McLaren have suggested that it is as much as 50 horsepower - or about 5% - down, which, if true, is a huge burden for the team to carry and would explain just why the team is struggling so much.

If one Japanese manufacturer is on the up, then Honda's bitter rivals Toyota looked decidedly off colour in Australia, the scene of their point scoring debut, two years ago. The cars lacked downforce and the lack of grip saw Cristiano da Matta make numerous off track excursions during the weekend, and he and Olivier Panis finished two laps down. With their budget and resources Toyota should now be making steady progress up the grid but at least they now have the experienced hand of Mike Gascoyne at the helm to give the team some much needed direction. One can only wonder why it took them so long to realise that F1 is not Rally or Le Mans and some proven specialised expertise was required. As one experienced insider observed, every team needs to have a person who is clearly in charge and now Toyota has Gascoyne to call the shots.

Despite the fact that Friday in Melbourne saw a record attendance of over 81,500 spectators, there was much agreement in the paddock that the overall format of the race weekend needs to be amended. Some - like Frank Williams and Ron Dennis - favour keeping things stable until the circus reaches Imola. Others, however, were urging an immediate change. Overall the main points of criticism were the lack of focus for anything newsworthy on Friday for the media to report on, and the rather long and unfocused double qualifying session on Saturday afternoon.

Despite BMW allowing their drivers unrestricted mileage during Friday's two practice sessions, most teams' personnel and drivers admitted 'holding back' in some way during these sessions, which are almost solely concerned with tyre selection and set up issues. Overall the fans at the track were once again short changed in not seeing any on-the-limit driving, which is, after all, the very essence of Formula One. Mario Theissen, BMW Motorsport Director, made the point that the current trend is to test more and more, essentially away from the fans, whilst running less and less at Grand Prix weekends when the fans are present in their thousands, and a TV audience in the Millions. Clearly this makes no sense.

The long drawn out back to back qualifying session had an air of expectation as the fast men went out at the beginning and the end, but in the middle was a long black hole, when there was no chance of anything happening that was going to radically change the order of the grid and additionally severely disadvantaged the slower teams and raised some safety issues for them as well. Qualifying for the grid has always been one of the highlights of Grand Prix racing but more and more one gets the feeling that any system that rewards pure raw speed (and Ferrari) needs to be avoided at all cost and the more 'artificial chaos' created the better.

The opening round of the season's Championship was not a classic, and this race once again proved that test times in Europe don't always translate into a good race result around Albert Park's lakeside track. But, as Williams' chief operations engineer Sam Michael reminded everyone during his post race debrief, two years ago they had recovered from a shellacking in Australia only to score a dominant one-two result at the following race in Malaysia. One suspects that more than just the Williams fans will be hoping for a repeat of that in Sepang's searing heat.

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