Formula One 2007 – Ferrari emphatically takes the first battle

One of the hardest men in a sport full of hard men, Ron Dennis’ press conference showed no signs of his emotional and personal triumphs. "Of course as always we came to Australia to win, but a somewhat unexpected strategy adopted by BMW was very disruptive to our race. Following Heidfeld's first pitstop the gap was just too big to realistically close it and the additional range from our strategy was subsequently wasted. Both drivers did an excellent job giving us a narrow lead in the Constructors' Championship. A special thank you to the test team and the workforce back at the McLaren Technology Centre who have worked so hard during the winter and contributed so much to the faultless reliability that we have enjoyed throughout the weekend. The coming Malaysian test should give us every opportunity to further improve the competitiveness of our cars."

Mercedes’ Norbert Haug: "The season started well with Fernando and Lewis scoring 14 points out of 18 possible on their debut race for Vodafone McLaren Mercedes. Fernando showed with his performance exactly why he is the double world champion whilst Lewis made a perfect start to his Grand Prix career and proved absolutely worthy of the confidence we have had in him for the past ten years. Although we still have to work hard to further improve our technical package we showed today that throughout the winter we have made improvements. We will now focus on the Malaysia test and are looking forward to the next race. Thanks to everybody in the team in Woking, Brixworth and Stuttgart, all their efforts will pay off."

The BMW Sauber F1 Team started the 2007 season off in Melbourne with fourth place for Nick Heidfeld. In its second season as a full factory outfit rather than an engine supplier, the team appears to have almost bridged the gap from also-ran to the leading teams. It is ironic that the new seamless-shift gearbox which is reportedly worth at least a quarter of a second a lap around Albert Park should have cost the team points but it did. A gearbox problem caused Robert Kubica to retire on lap 36 while lying in fourth place.

Nick Heidfeld’s fourth place bodes well for the prospects of the team this year. "I had a very good start, which was an even better one than Kimi and managed to pass Fernando,” said Heidfeld. “Of course I hoped to stay in front of him, but realistically I knew the McLarens were quicker than us. Thinking about how happy we are, you should not forget where we came from as we started last season eighth in the constructors' championship. Our pace is really good and fourth is a super start to the season. I feel very sorry for the team with Robert's retirement, as he was also very strong. My tyre strategy to take the softer ones first was riskier. I knew after the first stop there was the danger of getting stuck in traffic, and this is what happened, but I took the risk anyway. The race was a lot of fun, but in the final laps I was a bit lonely. Mechanically my car was perfect." Mario Theissen (BMW Motorsport Director): "Nick drove a good race and his fourth has earned us five points in the season curtain raiser. He was on soft tyres for the first stint and we didn't think they would last very long. In hindsight, we could have done a longer first stint. Robert was strong and showing the same pace as Nick when his gearbox stuck in fifth on lap 36. Now we have to focus on getting our reliability sorted out. The most important lesson today is we have been able to match our testing performance. We have clearly been the third fastest team, and that is a good baseline for the next races."

Willy Rampf (Technical Director): "Nick's fourth place is a very good result and reflects our qualifying performance, as we were the third quickest team in that. We ran our cars on different strategies as the new tyre regulation stipulates you have to use both compounds in the race. Another reason was the new Safety Car rule which says the pit lane will be closed until the cars are in their proper order on the track. You have to make sure you don't go into such a period with the cars on the same pit stop strategy. Nick was on the softer compound for the start and Robert would have used it at the end, which obviously didn't happen. Both our drivers were quick and strong."

For fifth-placed Renault, the prospects of another drivers championship already look slim as it does not appear to have the drivers to regularly get on the podium, let alone win races now that Alonso has flown the coop.

Giancarlo Fisichella is now the team’s lead driver, who reflected on his afternoon thus: “It was a busy one! I did not have a moment’s respite. I made a good start even if I didn’t gain any places. Then I adopted my rhythm to the strategy we’d decided on, but I have to say that this grand prix was tougher then expected.”

“We thought that our race performance would be better; that we would be closer to the leaders. The long runs on Friday showed that we were on the pace, but today we were a bit further back. We’ve still got a lot of work to do.”

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