Weaving its magic: F1 returns - and why it's worth getting up for 5am

A new season is upon us: New cars, drivers, stories, sensations and surprises, yet at the same time everything will have a familiar ring to it.

It’s already happening in fact, with Giedo van der Garde having visited court Down Under to flex his legal muscles and try and barge his way into a Sauber seat just days, hours even, before the season starts. It’s a wrangle that’s probably been a lot more interesting than anything the Swiss team will achieve on the track this weekend and, as such, is typically F1.

As is the domination of one team. Everyone knows who will more than likely be at the front in this weekend’s Australian GP, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there won’t be surprises – both on and off the track - in Melbourne. Partly it’s the interest in seeing how the competitive order pans out; partly it’s the shock of the new. A good part of it is simply the satisfaction that F1 is back. And then there’s the brutal time difference, which leaves the Australian GP assuming a dream-like, slightly unreal presence. Did Ralf Schumacher really just launch a rear-mounted assault on Rubens Barrichello at the first corner and take out half the field? Looks like he did (albeit thirteen years ago)…but I’m still crinkly-eyed and squinting. Best make another cup of coffee.

The bad news for F1 fans who aren’t fans of Mercedes, Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg is that, after a pre-season spent playing with rivals the same way kittens are taunted with string, the world champions look set to pick up where they left off. But Williams fans have every right to feel optimistic, as can Ferrari’s followers (if they can ever truly find satisfaction in not winning everything in sight that is). Besides getting a handle on the magnitude of the Silver Arrows’ advantage, the fight to be ‘best of the rest’ is probably where the most genuine interest lies this weekend.

History suggests that the winner in Albert Park will probably go on to greater things (of the 19 races held there so far, 13 winners have done so in a car that has gone on to take the constructors’ title) but that’s not to say there won’t be surprises. Any track that has ushered Eddie Irvine and Giancarlo Fisichella on to the podium’s top step has, by definition, the power to cause an upset, while Mark Webber’s impromptu visit after finishing fifth on his debut in 2002 was far more memorable than Michael Schumacher’s win that year. A warning to Max Verstappen, though: Don’t try something similar if your own debut goes so well on Sunday. The FIA’s zero tolerance approach to completely unimportant things means it will probably take a dim view.

In short, those looking to Melbourne as a barometer for the rest of the season right the way down the field are best advised to hold off. The track itself hardly works a car’s aerodynamics the way Sepang does a fortnight later, for example, with the fog of analysis/guesswork only really tending to clear and reveal what we call ‘the pecking order’ once the circus heads back to Europe. So for now, why not put such concerns on the backburner, dare F1’s fickle finger of fate to try its hardest, sit back (like you’ll be sat any other way at five in the morning) and enjoy some great, unpredictable racing. Hopefully.

It goes without saying that unpredictability at the start of the season is borne out of unreliability, which leads us to the McLaren-Honda question. Might they salvage some kind of result from the pre-season mire? It’s a scenario we’ve grown accustomed to in recent years: Red Bull scrabbled from the merde 12 months ago while McLaren themselves were in a similar predicament three years before that. Yet they came through in spades in 2011, to the extent that one suddenly wondered what all the fuss had been about. How many times in the past have we completely under-estimated the ability of F1 engineers to solve problems and find inspiration on the hoof?

Besides Honda’s return, the new-ness/familiarity equation is perhaps best represented by Sebastian Vettel’s move to Ferrari, while Verstappen’s emergence, if it concludes with a points finish, would obviously impress. But would it surprise? The way Red Bull’s juniors have emerged in recent years – the next one even more callow-featured than the last, yet all with as much inner certainty as Clint Eastwood - it makes you wonder whether a mountain-top pow-wow with the Dalai Lama is part of their driver programme. Thinking about it, the same could probably be said of Kevin Magnussen, whose stand-in drive adds an extra element of zing to the goings on at McLaren-Honda.

Magnussen finished on the podium as a debutant the last time F1 visited Melbourne and although Verstappen wasn’t there, we like to think he set his alarm for early o' clock. But he probably didn’t lummox down the stairs like some of us probably will, ushering in the new season with a confused early-morning air that eventually subsides into pliant, hazy acceptance. The sun won’t have come up yet but the sight of the late-summer sun going down Down Under will have done the job. Whether we like it or not, the sport has started weaving its spell once again.

MW

Sky Sports F1 will be broadcasting every race in 2015, starting with live and exclusive coverage of the Australian GP on March 15. The race starts at 5am UK Time on Sunday.