Motorhead: Button and Vettel's role reversal

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(EUROSPORT) Action,overtaking, talking points – it might be a new season, but the Australian GrandPrix made it feel like Formula One has never been away.
On paper,too, it all looked rather similar to last year, with the top five drivers inlast year’s championship finishing in the top five places in Melbourne.

But subtleshifts in the pecking order at Albert Park point to a complex and exciting 2012championship, which may take considerably longer to decide than SebastianVettel’s one-man show did last year.
In fact, itlooks as if the defending champion has swapped roles with Jenson Button forthis year’s campaign, judging by the way the race played out.
The Britwas the new Vettel, getting out in front, controlling the race from the head ofthe field, and making driving look as easy as a Michelin-starred chef wouldcooking up beans on toast.
The German,by contrast, was the new Button, turning an unspectacular qualifying positioninto a very creditable second place with good strategy, enterprise andopportunism.
On racepace there was, on the face of it, little to separate Red Bull and McLaren. ButMcLaren had demonstrated their raw speed advantage in qualifying, and even ifit turns out on future weekends that the two cars are well-matched on racedays, getting out in front will be nine-tenths of the battle for McLaren. It’sone thing to set similar lap times, but it’s another altogether, even in theera of DRS and KERS, to be overtaking.
Button wasunderstandably delighted with the 13th race win of his career. “The car isbeautiful,” he told his race engineer as he coasted home on his lap of honour,“And she is quick.”
Indeed,Button’s McLaren was a sight to behold, responding to his every command like afaithful hound.
Comparethat with Fernando Alonso,who was driving a dog of a Ferrari.
There’ssomething about Alonso’s style that makes him look quite brilliant when the carisn’t at its best. Not simply content to drive the machine well beyond wheremost had believed its limits lay, Alonso also managed to make it lookdifficult, as if to accentuate quite how good a drive he was putting in.
Ferrari’sproblems run deeper than Alonso made them seem. After he was forced to fend offthe visibly-quicker Williams of Pastor Maldonado in the latter stages of therace, Ferrari can consider themselves fortunate to possess the man who does thebest job of minimising the damage in having a less-than-competitive car.
So despiteButton and Vettel’s role reversal, Alonso’s doggedness proved that some thingshave stayed much as they were a year ago.
Alonso’sFerrari team-mate Felipe Massa had another race to forget, qualifying 16th andeventually retiring after a racing incident.
FortunatelyLewis Hamilton was nowhere to be seen for this particular Massascrap, but despite the Brazilian and his compatriot Bruno Senna refusing toblame one another for the tangle, Massais unlikely to take heart from going out while fighting for 13th spot.
As forHamilton himself, he did a passable impression of the 2011 Lewis, with errorsand bad luck costing him precious points.
The errorcame at the start, allowing Button to dive into the first corner ahead of him –and the bad luck precipitated from there.
Had he beenout in front, it was unthinkable that his first pitstop would have left himstuck behind Sergio Perez. And without that hold-up, Hamilton might have gotten away with hissecond stop coinciding with the arrival of the safety car, allowing Vettel tojump him for second place.
Incidentally,pitting both your drivers on the same lap, as McLaren did on lap 37 with just a10-second gap between them, must rank as Formula One’s equivalent of trying toscore a Panenka-style chipped penalty kick. Mighty impressive when it comesoff, but with an almighty risk of stubbing your toe and looking very silly, asGary Lineker once did, if anything goes wrong.
Hamilton’s miscalculation was marginal,however, and on another day he might well have gone on to win from poleposition. From the outside at least, he seems happier and more focused than hedid last season, and McLaren have provided a car which can contend for thechampionship.
But if Hamilton needed any reminding, Australia showed that dominantmachinery or otherwise, his team-mate could still prove the biggest obstacle tohis title aspirations.
 DRIVER OFTHE RACE: Kimi Raikkonen (Lotus) – There were several strong contenders for thehonour, with Alonso (12th to 5th) and Sergio Perez (22nd to 8th) unlucky tomiss out – but given that this was Raikkonen’s return to Formula One, the awardhas to go to the Finn. Starting 18th and ending up 11 places higher was no meanfeat, and despite errors he showed racing instinct to climb two places on afrantic final lap. To cap it all off, he was great value over the radio. Understatedlydescribed by Lotus team principal Eric Boullier as ‘talkative’ over the courseof the race, the Finn at one point asked why there were blue flags being wavedby the stewards. Have you really been away that long, Kimi?
QUOTE OFTHE WEEKEND: "It's going to be damn hard in Malaysia. It's going to be a lothotter and we have cooling problems already, so it's going to be very hard. Wedon't want to bulls*** ourselves, it's going to be very difficult. With HRT Iwas under a false impression with the new car. I obviously knew there would beproblems but I thought we could get in, and I am very wrong” – What HRT lack insending drivers around the track in their cars on Sunday, they go a small wayto atoning for by the sheer quotability of their driver Narain Karthikeyan.
COMING UP:About half an hour after the racing in Melbourne, the teams were packed up andpreparing for next weekend’s Malaysia Grand Prix. With plenty at stake afterrace one, there’s everything to play for at Sepang. We’ll be building up to therace all week on Eurosport, and bringing you live text commentary from everysession, starting on Friday.


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