The team’s have endured back to back races in tough (hot) conditions and while some people feel the real season won’t start until the Spanish Grand Prix, I think a few things are coming to the fore that will provide the theme of this season’s championship.

1. BMW are the fly in the ointment for Ferrari and McLaren. If either of the top two teams stumble during a race this season, they won’t just fall behind their main rivals - odds are they’ll fall behind BMW as well. With BMW able to match the pace of McLaren and showing better reliability than Ferrari, the damage from a bad weekend will be greater than what either team faced last year. Unlike 2007, the front runners are now looking over their shoulders.

2. Toyota weren’t grandstanding! I can say it - I was wrong. I honestly thought that Toyota were going to be nowhere this season but happily the team with megabucks have proven me, and many others wrong. We never really got to see Trulli’s ultimate pace in Melbourne but in Malaysia, he put in a strong qualifying performance and followed it up with a determined run to fourth, holding off a late charging Lewis Hamilton. Toyota aren’t quite with BMW yet but they seem to have the measure of Red Bull and Williams. As a qualifying specialist, Trulli should not be underestimated and he might wreck the race plans of more than one driver this season.

3 . Massa is looking hopeless. Wow, can it get any worse for Felipe Massa? Two races, two unforced and very amateurish driving errors. Worse, the second ‘off’ cost him an assured second place. I haven’t even brought up the silly crash with David Coulthard in Australia. F1 claims it has the best drivers in the world so you would expect that lapping the track would be fairly easy stuff. Apparently not for Massa who is looking more and more uncomfortable in a world without traction control. He’s 14 points behind Hamilton after two races and can already kiss his title shot goodbye. If he doesn’t improve, Ferrari will not be able to hold onto the Constructor’s Title.

4. Ferrari have a serious reliability issue. I’m not sure of the count but…let’s see, in Australia we had Kimi’s engine expire, Felipe’s engine expire and Sebastian’s engine explode. Interestingly, in Australia Adrian Sutil’s Ferrari powered Force India had ‘hydraulics’ problems and again in Malaysia. It wouldn’t be so suspicious if Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari powered Torro Rosso didn’t also fail because of hydraulics in Malaysia. So in all, six Ferrari powered cars have failed to finish for mechanical reasons in two races. That’s a 50% failure rate. Even in the dark days before Schumacher at Ferrari, the team wasn’t this bad, was it? With engine homologation looming, now is not the time for problems.

5. Alonso is showing a champion’s character. Fernando put in a scrappy race in Australia and between the retirements of those in front of him and the bizarre pit-limiter mistake from Heikki Kovaleinen that slowed his car right after passing Alonso, the Renault driver was lucky to steal fourth place. Still, unlike most, he tamed the Australian circuit without the aid of traction control. In Malaysia, he put in a hard fought race, dispatching David Coulthard and harassing Mark Webber relentlessly at the end of the race for the reward of a single point. There have been many former champions who just switch off and fade as soon as they aren’t fighting for wins (Hill, Hunt, Scheckter) but Alonso is not one of them. He flogged a pretty awful car around the track with sublime control. He seems at ease at Renault and back on the form that marked him as one of the most complete drivers in F1 - past or present. I’m happy he’s back to normal.

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