Eagerly awaited, excitement, build up, anticipation...Round 1 in Sakir, Bahrain was all these, - prior to lap 2.

I don't know what it was, perhaps the new twisty layout, the diffusers, who knows but there was scant subject for Waxing Lyrical about...

Pole man Vettel got the drop on the rest of field, Alonso did an outside inside on Felipe, well that was the top three sorted until Vettel's Renault engine spark plugs started playing up. He and Luscious Liz dropped to fourth place ahead of Rosberg, Schumacher, Button and Webber. Hamilton played himself nicely into third.

While it was interesting to finally see who was where in terms of pace it really didn't excite all that much. As expected the new chaps in the pit lane, Lotus, Virgin and HRT didn't set the track on fire.

Karun Chandok with only 5 previous laps in his HRT smacked the wall on lap 1 - you would think that having no mileage he would settle in and see what the car could do etc. The other newcomers settled in much better but reliability struck both the Virgins - gearbox and hydraulics, the Lotus' managed to get to the end, well Trulli stopped but was classified 17th. HRT's Bruno Senna completed 17 laps.

Nothing much else though. It did however reiterate that qualifying is going to be extremely important in 2010. The times were not that close in Q3. While the top 3 were (close) the gap to 4th was enormous. 4th to 9th were sort of competitive in relation to each other, Sutil in 10th was off the pace but he was on the harder tyre.

The team mate battles? Vettel wiped the floor with Webber, Hamilton blew Button away, Rosberg edged Schumacher (can he keep it up???) and Alonso piped Massa. This was the closest battle of the top four teams.

With out doubt Ferrari seem to have the strongest driver pairing. Massa probably surprised many with his qualifying pace (4 tenths up on Alonso) and then in the race he sat behind him all the way until Vettel bowed out and the Ferrari's went into reliability mode. Go Felipe.

So the anticipation shifts to Melbourne. Some teams will have updates and some will have a chance to study all the data gained and others will work on their reliability.

I'm not as worried as the others on the internet who proclaim we must change the rules now to get some excitement into F1. Last year Bahrain was a bit of an anomaly as well. Toyota secured the front row in qualifying, in the end 2nd and 3rd were 2 seconds apart at the flag but the rest of the field were well spaced out (in terms of gaps, not boredom I think). It will probably be the same again next year.

I think Melbourne will bring the whole circus back to life and we will be saying, isn't this fantastic, F1 is great, tra la la!

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