Guide: Formula 1 circuits 2008

Guide: Formula 1 teams 2008

THAT Lewis Hamilton would start the first Grand Prix of the season from pole position was perhaps to be expected, and the remarkable young Briton duly delivered in Melbourne yesterday. How it was achieved, however, and the driver who lined up beside him on the front row, was not. A spectacular qualifying session ended with Robert Kubica’s BMW-Sauber second only to Hamilton because he put his back wheels in the dirt after a lurid power slide during his final flying lap. It cost him the three-tenths of second that would have seen the headlines read ‘Pole on pole’.

Almost as eye-opening as the performance of the BMWs - Kubica’s team-mate Nick Heidfeld lined up fifth - was that of the Ferraris, though for very different reasons. Felipe Massa did a respectable job to get on to the second row of the grid, behind the second McLaren of Heikki Kovalainen, but world champion Kimi Riakkonen had it all to do after what the team claimed to be an electronic fuel pump problem saw his car coast to a halt just short of the official start of the pit lane shortly before the end of the first qualifying session.

The word in the paddock was that the car, minimally fuelled for the first session, had simply run out of juice. As Honda’s Ross Brawn once put it with a grin when he was the Scuderia’s technical leader, ‘We had a fuel pick-up problem. There was no fuel to pick up.’

Whatever the cause, starting from 16th was not how the Finn can have anticipated beginning the defence of his world championship, but those with the sport‘s best interests at heart were rubbing their hands. Despite the insistence of most drivers to the contrary, the evidence suggests removing traction control has made a marked difference to the behaviour of the cars.

In every practice session, and during qualifying, they have been sliding around corners in a breathtaking and sometimes uncontrollable style which made for riveting viewing, and should make for equally unmissable racing. Conditions, both weather and of the track, have undoubtedly been a factor - it is unlikely the cars will slide around so pleasingly in Sepang next Sunday - but it does mean Raikkonen should not have lacked for overtaking opportunities. Hamilton’s own efforts had an uncharacteristically ragged edge, in the first two sessions at least, and plenty of other cars had sideways moments.

Hamilton was pleased but slightly defensive, indicating he had had problems with ‘traffic’ in every session, even the third. If so it wasn’t obvious, but his suggestion that the start of this morning’s race was likely to be critical carried weight. If the removal of traction control has had more of an impact than anticipated, starting without any form of launch control should make a real difference. Wheel-spin and slow get-aways could mix it up nicely.

Kubica highlighted the improvements wrought on a BMW-Sauber car which, when testing began back in January, looked anything but promising. Even on Friday they were struggling to find the right balance, and asked whether his team could take the form into the race, Kubica was equivocal. “It’s a very quick car, but it’s difficult to put into the right place for each corner - it’s very tricky to find the right set-up,” he said.

Definitely better to be quick and difficult to drive than the opposite though, as he acknowledged. “It’s a great start to the season, and it gives me a lot of hope we can be very competitive as the season goes on.”

Whether it means the season will not after all be a two-way battle between McLaren and Ferrari remains to be seen, and probably won’t be clear until the first race of the European season in Barcelona next month, but there is hope.

“Definitely not the result we were expecting,” was Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali’s dry reaction to qualifying. Those words will almost certainly be repeated at the end of this morning’s race, though not necessarily by Domenicali.