The pros and cons of F1's new dawn as Melbourne opener throws up intrigue galore

Finally the bold new era of Formula 1 is underway.

Meanwhile, the upside is that the high level of torque being produced, four times greater than last year at times, means that the drivers are really challenged in keeping the cars under control. Add in more weight and less downforce and we saw some incredible skills. The drivers won't like it, and no doubt downforce will be regained and engine power delivery calmed to an extent, but they will be revered for mastering these cars just like the '80s champions. There's now definitely more of an element of "I couldn't do that" for onlookers than in recent years. The great surprise of the weekend was how well the new boys like Kevin Magnussen and Daniil Kvyat got on top of the wayward cars especially in wet qualifying, and it looks like being one of the stand-out features of the season with such great talent to watch. I feel for Daniel Ricciardo after a stellar performance all weekend, I know what it's like to have a podium finish taken away from you when you've risked your life and given your all. The whole fuel meter issue will be an ongoing saga I suspect as the 100KG per hour fuel flow limit is a huge performance cap and differentiator. Red Bull will now challenge the FIA as to who can monitor the fuel most accurately but I suspect that, having been told many times over the weekend including in the race that Ricciardo's car was consuming too much fuel (Sebastian Vettel's wasn't) that the team will lose the battle unless there's some irrefutable evidence. I remember the fuel counters in the previous turbo era and in sports car racing being accurate and that was 30 years ago. Other systems on the car are incredibly accurately managed but there seems to be a dispute and variation on this subject. I found the start of the race slightly curious with the likes of Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and Vettel having apparently no speed compared with others, but only Alonso would continue sadly. Magnussen so nearly spun his McLaren in a straight line as the rear tyres lit up, something I managed to do in the 1987 Austrian GP in a turbo Zakspeed, wiping out a few others. The double formation lap and Safety Car took away some of the fuel consumption issues but it was still unusual to witness the early lifting of the throttle for the corners. I guess we'll get used to that. Thankfully we didn't have lots of easy overtakes, and in fact it seems that the KERS and DRS combo may not be as effective as last year in that respect. The likes of Valtteri Bottas were having to make the passes wheel-to-wheel in the corners which bodes very well. The cars actually looked faster despite much slower lap times because they were moving around in the high-speed corners. Somewhat incredibly after the chaos of winter testing and the two previous days in Melbourne, we had 15 of the 22 cars running at the finish and two of the retirements were knocked out by Kamui Kobayashi's brake problem into the first corner. This will normalise now over the next few races but the pace of the Mercedes, which I suspect was below their potential anyway, indicates a dominance even Red Bull didn't often enjoy. Let's hope their two drivers can race each other hard because the following pack thankfully look well matched. MB