Phew!

What a race! It was almost a struggle to keep up, there was so much going on. We had overtaking, rain, overtaking, the safety car, overtaking, a first corner incident, and even some overtaking, and that was just the first lap! More interesting things happened in the first lap at Melbourne than in the entire race at Bahrain. I doubt we'll hear anyone whining about how dull Formula 1 is these days for a while at least.

So, the race. A well-deserved win for Jenson, whose smooth, precise driving style suited this race to perfection, not to mention having the courage to make that call for slick tyres ahead of the field. Any of four men, I think, could have won this race, but only one of them did. As for the other three, Vettel (and the entire Red Bull team, who could only turn first and second on the grid into a single eighth place in the race) must be the unluckiest man in F1 at the moment: having started both races on pole, and led them both, his car has let him down on both occasions. Vettel seemed to have a fairly comfortable lead over Button, and but for the brake failure which put him in the gravel trap it's hard to see him losing the lead to Jenson.

I'm sure my co-blogger will come back to me on this one, but I think Alonso's first corner incident may have cost him the race. He had plenty of pace coming back through the pack in pursuit of Massa, Webber, Hamilton and the rest. And finally, there's Hamilton. He was sixth despite having probably overtaken most of the cars in front of him: Button early on, Massa twice I think, and that outrageous (in a good way) move around the outside of Rosberg. I'm tempted to agree with him that he had the drive of his life, but a bad call on tyres from the team let him down. Looking back on it now, it was certainly the wrong decision. Having said that, while Button was able to look after his tyres for 50 or more laps, I don't think Hamilton, with his much more aggressive driving style, could have done that: when he was caught in the dirty air behind Alonso, he complained on the radio that his tyres were going away from him (these were his third set, at least 20 laps newer than the ones Jenson won the race on). He seemed also to be getting wound up behind Alonso, and even called the second pit stop 'a terrible idea'. Lewis is good at motivating the team behind him, but is also someone who has performed best when he had a teammate who didn't challenge him in Heikki Kovalainen, and I wonder if having a teammate who does, and who beat him easily today, is beginning to rattle him.

It may be too early in the season for the world championship standings to be meaningful, but in the driver's standings, Alonso is leading with 37 points, followed by Massa on 33 and Button on 31. Bernie's new points system may have been intended to favour race wins rather than consistency, but Massa who hasn't won a race is ahead of Button who has. In the constructor's standings, Ferrari are on 70 points, McLaren on 54 and Mercedes on 29 while Red Bull tie with Renault on 18.

Finally, as Martin Brundle seems no longer to nominate a driver of the day, I propose each race we name a Skiver of the Day, for the driver or other F1 personality who shows outstanding lack of effort and/or achievement. Today I'm going to give the inaugural Skiver of the Day to Jarno Trulli: to finish first, first you must finish, but starting is probably a prerequisite too.