MCLAREN-MERCEDES: It was a walk in Albert Park for Lewis Hamilton, who after his 5.4 second victory over BMW's Nick Heidfeld insisted that he could have gone quicker. "There is a long way to go and we never underestimate our competition," a cautious Ron Dennis said, referring to Ferrari's disastrous day. Heikki Kovalainen looked on track for second but was shuffled down to fifth when the timing of the last safety car spoiled his planned pit stop, and after passing Fernando Alonso's Renault he let the Spaniard back through when he accidentally hit the pit lane speed limiter.

BMW SAUBER: Nick Heidfeld finished second, and after qualifying second, teammate Robert Kubica was running fifth on a compromised strategy when Kazuki Nakajima - the Williams rookie who was penalised ten positions on the Malaysian GP grid for the incident - crashed into him. 

WILLIAMS-TOYOTA: A delighted Nico Rosberg's well deserved podium is the first in his career, while Nakajima was the last car to greet the chequered flag but he still collects three points due to the emaciated field, putting Williams at second place in the championship so far. 

RENAULT: Nelson Piquet's atrocious debut weekend got even worse when he incurred terminal damage on the first lap, while Fernando Alonso made the most of the Australian chaos with fourth place. "We must improve our level of performance in qualifying and our pace in the race," he said. 

TORO ROSSO-FERRARI: The team would not confirm that Sebastien Bourdais' problem was the third Ferrari engine to fail on Sunday, but it is a fact that he missed what would have been fourth place on debut. Amazingly, although his smoky STR2 was parked on the verge, he was still classified and collects two points. Sebastian Vettel got a terrible start and exited the race in the turn one melee. 

FERRARI: After arguably winning the 'winter' championship, Ferrari had one of its worst showings in recent history, as Kimi Raikkonen - following a couple of race-ruining driver errors - scraped a lucky point after his engine failed. Felipe Massa survived the David Coulthard shunt, and was lying seventh when his own V8 gave up. "The engines are being sent immediately to Maranello for analysis," said Stefano Domenicali, whose debut as team boss could not have been worse. World champion Raikkonen remained upbeat, knowing that the F2008 is still perhaps the fastest car in the field. "We are capable of recovering from far worse situations than this," he said. 

TOYOTA: Timo Glock left Albert Park wearing a bandage on his left wrist after his huge air-time and crash landing at the exit of turn twelve. Jarno Trulli was furious when he also had to retire with a battery that fried in the Aussie heat. 

SUPER AGURI: If the Japanese team was short on spare parts before the red lights went out, it is now in serious trouble, because Takuma Sato stopped on track with an unspecified failure and Anthony Davidson found himself the meat in a formula one sandwich on lap one. 

RED BULL-RENAULT: A furious Coulthard turned the live airwaves blue after his terminal crash with Massa, while unlucky local Mark Webber was one of the pieces of bread in the Davidson sandwich. 

FORCE INDIA-FERRARI: Giancarlo Fisichella's car nearly rolled over as he crashed out in the turn one chaos, and it is understood that he was referring to Glock and Piquet when he blamed some 'kamikaze' rivals. Adrian Sutil's car, hurriedly built overnight by the team after Saturday's incident cracked his race chassis, stopped with a failure of the hydraulics system. "The positive is that we have another event in just one week's time where we can try again," said team owner Vijay Mallya. 

HONDA: Rubens Barrichello's sixth at the chequer was cancelled by the stewards, because he drove through a red light at the end of pit lane. At the same time, his crew was limping back into the garage, after the lollipop man let the Brazilian driver go when the fuel hose was still attached. On the bright side, he kept Raikkonen's Ferrari at bay for 19 laps. Teammate Jenson Button's suspension got destroyed against Vettel's car in the first lap melee. 

MCLAREN-MERCEDES BMW's Robert Kubica only lost pole with a mistake, but Lewis Hamilton 's fastest time and Heikki Kovalainen in third represents a strong start to McLaren's season, despite a close call with an overnight repair job on Kovalainen's gearbox. "Hopefully today's result represents our performance for the future," said boss Ron Dennis.

BMW-SAUBER After a conspicuously low profile start to the weekend for the German team, Robert Kubica would have bagged pole if not for running too wide on the dirt at turn-12. The Pole and his teammate Nick Heidfeld topped the morning practice times, and Kubica's second on the grid, and Heidfeld not far away with fifth, is the team's best ever qualifying showing. 

FERRARI A fuel pump failure in Q1 left Kimi Raikkonen with only marshal-power in the pit entry, stranding him at sixteenth on the grid. Felipe Massa completed the pre-season favourites' off-colour day with just fourth place. "We knew from this winter that we would struggle a bit to do quick times over a single lap," said Luca Baldisserri. 

TOYOTA Jarno Trulli is a credible sixth on the grid, and Timo Glock impressively joined him in Q3 in his return to Formula 1. However, the reigning GP2 champion will drop five places for an unscheduled gearbox change, and a further five places - to a lowly nineteenth overall - after stewards ruled that he unfairly blocked Mark Webber. 

WILLIAMS-TOYOTA A mixed bag for the British team, with Nico Rosberg a solid seventh, but rookie teammate Kazuki Nakajima failing to join him in the final-ten Q3 by a wide margin.

RED BULL-RENAULT The team's press release made mention of 'the fast and the furious' - referring not only to the street-racing movie but to 'fast' David Coulthard, eighth, and 'furious' Mark Webber, whose suspected exploded brake disc in Q2 pitched him into the gravel at turn 6, caused a disruptive red flag, and left him fifteenth on the grid for his home race near the end of an impressive weekend. 

TORO ROSSO-FERRARI Sebastian Vettel continued to drive last year's car well as he broke into Q3, but the Red Bull junior team said an unspecified 'technical problem' prevented him from doing any running in the ultimate session. Rookie Sebastien Bourdais never made it through Q1, blaming a mistake and a yellow flag for his spoiled runs.

HONDA The struggling Japanese giant threatened to upset the form-guide and make it through to Q3, but ultimately its drivers settled in eleventh and thirteenth places. Rubens Barrichello was delighted that recent testing progress at Jerez delivered eleventh on the grid in Australia, but Jenson Button said he made mistakes because he was pushing too hard.

RENAULT Fernando Alonso dropped from third in a topsy-turvy morning practice to be just twelfth in qualifying, and the most remarkable factor is that the former title-winning team was the ninth fastest car on Saturday afternoon of the eleven in the field. The French squad said the Spaniard was carrying a differential problem, but the excuses were less convincing for the continuation of Nelson Piquet's disastrous debut weekend, as he split the Super Aguris for twenty-first place.

 FORCE INDIA-FERRARI All the pre-season hype, and mysterious testing and practice pace, including ninth again for Giancarlo Fisichella in the morning, culminated in grid positions seventeen and nineteen (Adrian Sutil). The team explained the discrepancy by referring to Sutil's spin into the gravel in Q1, and the need for Fisichella to 'lift off' for the resultant yellow flags. The Roman was then called before the stewards to explain how his best lap of the day was set after he drove through a yellow flag at speed, but escaped with a reprimand.

 SUPER AGURI-HONDA They were split by the abysmally slow rookie Piquet, but Takuma Sato and Anthony Davidson settled at the rear of the grid as Super Aguri's awful 2008 opener entered a second day. Dead-last Davidson is still a long way of his team mate's pace, with Sato saying he was 'very pleased' to be only a couple of tenths shy of the car ahead of him.