Crisis? What Crisis?

That’s all we heard coming out of Melbourne. Ferrari is in trouble and that McLaren are superior. The McLaren’s had more speed and there was more to come.

Then came Malaysia and we saw why you can never judge a season by its opening race. The Ferrari’s for lack of a better word spanked the McLaren’s where it counted. Blocking penalties or not the McLaren’s didn’t have an answer for the Italian team. Now we are getting the oh so familiar ‘judge us later on in the season’ quotes.

Like I said, you can’t judge a season from its opening race. The frenzy about the dismal weekend for Ferrari was nothing more than an attempt to generate interest. Any seasoned Formula One fan knew different.
Raikkonen was at his imperious best yesterday, bided his time until the pit-stop before lacing in the quick laps to jump Massa before comfortably driving home. Massa’s start to the season has got to be of concern and really does put question marks over his. Two driver errors have cost him points and bring back memories of the pre-Ferrari Massa – the one who spent more time sideways than pointing the right direction. Ferrari would do well to give former mentor Schumacher a call and take the young Brazilian aside for a few tips on driving sans traction control. He’ll need to turn it around fast to justify Ferrari’s faith in resigning him at the end of last year with a number of drivers eyeing a Ferrari seat in the future.

The McLaren’s just lacked a proper balance from qualifying onwards. Any inboard shots showed the pair of them struggles to get a decent rhythm going. Neither was helped by the penalties but that been said, both cars were good enough to get the jump at the start. Doesn’t matter if you’re a Ferrari, McLaren or a Force India – if you are stuck behind someone it’s pretty darn hard to overtake. Once bottled up it was obvious it would be damage limitation. Although when free they still weren’t particular mind-blowing.

Kubica did a fine job to finish second. The Pole kept his head down and out of trouble. Unlike Melbourne where he tailed off after the first stop, Kubica gave a constant performance and fully deserved second. Trulli was another who had a fine day. It’s been some time since we have seen such a run from him.
It was a bad day for all of the Australian GP heroes. Heidfeld spent much of the day in the second half of the top ten before popping up with the fastest lap of the race while the Williams team suffered a weekend to forget, failing to string together a consistent performance.

PC’s Driver of the Day: Jarno Trulli. This was a close call, especially given the sterling jobs done by Raikkonen and Kubica. Trulli nicks it given his tendency to fall asleep during races. At Sepang Jarno coupled his typical qualifying pace with a solid race which gives up that Toyota may be turning the corner – for real this time.