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After Jenson Button’s win in Australia McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh says that the team is well placed for a title challenge, given its recent history of developing its car over the course of the season.

The difference is that this time McLaren has started off with the best package on the grid as a useful base from which to improve.

“We’re starting from the right place,” said Whitmarsh. “We know that we’ve got to improve the car on a race by race basis, that’s the nature of this sport. We’ve got some formidable competitors, Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes and Lotus look strong as well.

“It’s pretty tight. It’s as it should be, it’s F1, it should be difficult to win, and it is. I think we’re looking forward to next weekend, we do fancy our chances there, but who knows?

“This feels pretty good. We’ve got two fantastic drivers, a strong team, and now it’s up to us. We can win this if we improve the car at a quick enough rate. So that’s what we’re going to set out to do.

“Assuming the trend in Barcelona remains we ought to feel comfortable that we can go to the next high speed track in Sepang and be very competitive. That’s the aim anyway, we’ll see how it goes.”

Whitmarsh was full of praise for Button, who did a near faultless job all weekend.

“I think he’s just got stronger and stronger. He’s got such a mature, laid back easy manner it just belies the underlying hunger to win that he has. I think he must now believe that he’s in with a good chance of a proper title run this year, and I think providing that we can continue to improve the car, and not make mistakes and be reliable, there’s no reason that he can’t.”

He also had an interesting take on Lewis Hamilton, who made his displeasure at the result all too clear in post-race activities: “Lewis wasn’t happy today, but when Lewis starts getting happy with being third or being beaten by his team mate, he won’t be the Lewis that we all love and admire…”

Felipe Massa was in dire need of a good start to the 2012 season, given his poor recent form and the obvious question marks hanging over his future.

Alas his year got off to a terrible start after he beached his car in the gravel in Friday practice, qualified 16^th, and crashed out of the race.

In fact the Brazilian looked like he might turn things around on Sunday when he jumped up to 10^th at the start. However, almost immediately he began suffering with tyre issues, to the extent that he had to make three pit stops – although the last was at least under the safety car.

“The start was great, I passed many cars,” said Massa. “I don’t know to be honest how many, but I passed many cars. It was very positive for the race, but then after five laps I was suffering completely on the rear tyres, just sliding around every corner, and none of the other tyres were using tyres, just me.

“I was struggling completely with the balance of the car, not just talking about the race but every day, the whole weekend. We need to understand why. Everybody was doing many laps with the soft, with the medium, I couldn’t do many laps. I was driving even very smoothly, not to use [the tyres], because I knew it was not very easy to do two stops. And it was not possible.”

Massa’s race came to an end when he collided with Bruno Senna, who had climbed up from last after a first lap clash. The stewards subsequently agreed that it was a racing incident.

“One car from Toro Rosso tried to brake on the left side at corner three, and I did the corner in front. Bruno had a chance to have a good turn-in because I was fighting with the other car, and then he was able to have a good line to put the car on my side, but on the outside. And then we both did the corner to the left, he was to the outside and I was completely to the inside.

“I turned, he went a little bit early and he turned a little bit too much, we touched each other. For me it was something that can happen in a race. From my side there was nothing wrong because I was on the inside. At the end of the race, trying to fight for the position, you cannot say it was completely wrong.”

Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali sees Fernando Alonso’s charge to fifth place in Australia as a positive step, although he admits that the team still has a lot to do in order to improve the disappointing F2012.

Alonso set a surprisingly competitive race pace from his 12^th starting position, although he struggled to get up to speed in the final stint in the cooler conditions after the safety car.

“I think we learned for sure a couple of things,” said Domenicali. “First of all the performance of today was not what we saw yesterday. Above all, the performance of the first two stints of the race was not too bad, considering really the situation. Then after the safety car something happened so we need to understand what was the real problem, because we saw a different race pace if you compare the first two and the last one. So this is the analysis that we have to do.

“I think on that respect today the race of Fernando was very, very good. Considering as I said the level of performance, to be fifth is something important. Considering the situation of the championship that I am expecting to see this year that it is vital that when we have so many problems to score these points.

“I would say that is a step forward, but we don’t have to hide behind that, because we are not happy about the performance of the car. What I’m asking to my engineers is to really as much as possible to try to fix the things that in their view are now much clearer.”

Domenicali insisted that the team knows what it has to put right, but denied that anything as serious as modification to the chassis was required.

“We have understood the problems of the car. This is clear. What I really need to say that after the understanding we need to make sure that we fix it, and not only fix it, but to fix it as soon as possible.

“In terms of the chassis there’s nothing going ahead. In terms of developments, yes, there are a lot of things that have to be improved, because I think there are two fundamental issues, one is the speed and the other thing is really the traction. Those are the two fundamental things that we really need to solve, and we really need hard to fix as soon as possible these major issues.”

He also conceded that the team would have to work hard to solve Felipe Massa’s problems. The Brazilian struggled to keep his tyres alive in the race and eventually crashed into Bruno Senna.

“The point was starting from yesterday Felipe didn’t feel he had a great balance on the car, and so it has affected the performance of the qualifying and also the race.

“So now what it important is to really analyse everything in order make sure that there is nothing strange, because that is the fundamental thing that we need to do, in order to help Felipe, to make sure he is performing without any extra pressure that I know that he has. He needs to be focussed really on his driving and we need to help him on that.”

A frustrated Fernando Alonso is hoping that he can still score some decent points in Australia, despite starting from a disappointing 12^th place.

Alonso didn’t make it out of Q2 after spinning into the gravel trap at the first corner, while his team mate Felipe Massa starts down in 16^th. The situation appears to be even worse than the team anticipated.

“I think I touched the grass,” he admitted. “I didn’t realise when I was driving, but looking at the TV, the left tyres were on the grass, so I spun putting the tyres there, and qualifying unfortunately in the gravel. I don’t know what would be the position without the incident.

“Maybe it was possible to go in Q3, maybe not, because the times were very close. If you go in Q3 you have no new tyres for tomorrow, so maybe at the end of the day it’s a good compromise to be P12 with new tyres.

Regarding the race, he said: “I think points will be the first priority, and then second priority, top five.”

Alonso made it clear that he was not very happy with the team’s current situation.

“We are obviously not quick enough, we are not competitive to fight for the top places at the moment, so it’s something that maybe we knew or we expected after winter testing. We have some ideas, and maybe today we confirmed we are not competitive.

“We still have a lot of work to do, we have to be more organised than ever, I’m sure we worked 24 hours a day before this race, now we need to work 25, and it’s the only way to improve the car and win races soon.

“This is the target. The target maybe was to start the championship with a competitive car, able to win races, that was the message all winter and all the second part of last year. We didn’t arrive to that target, to arrive in Australia with a winning car. We need to arrive as soon as possible with a winning car in the next couple of Grands Prix.”

A website that has been known to be close to Bernie Ecclestone reported this week that we could expect a big announcement soon, and a close aide of the F1 boss confirmed to me with a smile in Australia that news was indeed on its way – and that it involved the structure of the sport and would shake a few people up.

A few team insiders speculated that it might involved Ferrari and Red Bull signing up to a new Concorde Agreement, and Sky News has reported something along similar lines tonight with the suggestion that those teams will have a stake in the ownership of the sport via the new 2013-2020 deal.

This would be linked to a public offering of a sale of part of CVC’s stake in F1, which Sky says will be placed by Goldman Sachs and which values the sport at “well over £10bn.” Another recent report suggested that any available shares will be those currently owned by Lehman Brothers, which has a 15.3% stake.

Sky reports that Ferrari as usual has a special position as the oldest team in the sport, and there’s extra cash for the first team to have won consecutive constructors’ titles since 2008, the team in question being Red Bull.

There is also mention of single car customer teams for new entrants.

A Ferrari/RBR deal is certainly logical, and if true the next question has to be what deal did or will those teams get as the first signatories, and what is available to everyone else – the FOTA members, essentially. We await developments with interest…

Note: Intriguingly the Sky News story, which was a blog by business editor Mark Kleinman, has seemingly now disappeared from the website after being up for only a few hours on Saturday evening UK time. That is perhaps not surprising given that it contained what appeared to be extracts from legal documents that one might assume were not supposed to be in the public domain…

Nico Rosberg slipped to seventh on the grid in Australia after failing to get a good final lap in, but his overall pace throughout the session has given the German cause for optimism.

He also believes that he has a good package for Sunday’s race.

“I’m feeling good because the team has progressed well and gone in the right direction, which is great,” said Rosberg. On the other hand my qualifying wasn’t ideal, I got it a bit wrong on the last lap unfortunately, so seventh place. Anyway, in general an also for the race we have a much better car this year, so I can still work my way up tomorrow.

“There are so many things that are new this year, I was a bit in a corner in qualifying in terms of the set-up, where there were a few things that I wasn’t quite so happy about. It’s just a matter of learning with my engineers to improve things. Still as I say on high fuel things were looking good for this weekend.”

Rosberg said that the potential of the package was encouraging.

“I feel that there’s still some way to go to get the most out of it. Maybe the others are in the same situation, but definitely I can say that we have some way to go. All this together is definitely looking much better. As we’ve been saying all the time it’s really important that we progress towards the front, and we’re doing that for sure. So that’s great.

“Also I think in terms of race pace and high fuel, last year that was a bit of a weakness, that we generally a bit stronger in qualifying, and not so strong in the race, and that’s also something that we’ve improve for this year.”

Felipe Massa says a simple lack of grip was the cause of his struggles in qualifying in Australia, something that came as a surprise after testing suggested that the car was at least potentially good over one lap.

The Brazilian only made it out of Q1 in 17^th because Kimi Raikkonen didn’t get his final lap in, and would have been 17^th and last in Q2 had Sergio Perez not had a gearbox failure, which gifted him one place.

“The weekend is a little bit more difficult that what we expected,” said Massa. “We expected to be a little bit more competitive than what we are. So I’m sure the track doesn’t help 100% our car, but anyway I expected to be better than what we are. I was fighting all the time with the balance, to have the balance, to have the grip. I was struggling massively without the grip in the car. That was really the main issue I had today.

“So for sure whenever I improve the balance I find a lot of time, because fighting every corner, easy to pass a little bit the limit, because you lose the rear, the traction is difficult. For sure the track is not helping that.

“Now we need to concentrate for tomorrow, to make a better job in the race than in the qualifying, and then concentrate as well to improve the car in the quickest way we can.”

Asked by this writer if he was disappointed to have such a bad opening to the season when he needed a flying start, he said: “I’m not disappointed, just because I was fighting to find the balance of the car all the time, it was very difficult, I’m disappointed because of that. I’m sure if I had a normal car with the grip there it would have been no problem.”

The FIA has confirmed that neither Pedro de la Rosa nor Narain Karthikeyan will be allowed to start in Australia under the 107% rule, despite the HRT team requesting dispensation for “exceptional circumstances.”

After running very few laps in practice both drivers managed to record respectable times – de la Rosa was just over 1.2s outside the margin – but that wasn’t deemed to be good enough.

Team boss Luis Perez Sala said: “It’s obvious that we still have a lot of work ahead to be where we should be and even more to improve on that potential, but today was the first time we were able to complete both sessions with both cars and that is positive.

“Although today wasn’t the result we desired, we’ve fixed some of yesterday’s issues and were able to spot out the weakest points. Now we can work on them and find a solution. These solutions aren’t immediate but with every day and every session we’re in better conditions. Time is precious and next week in Malaysia we’ll have another four sessions to prepare for the next race”.

Jenson Button was encouraged with McLaren’s performance in Melbourne after topping the first session today, while also acknowledging that the true picture has yet to fully emerge.

Thanks to the short dry window in FP2 Jenson’s time actually stood as the quickest of the day. He was only 15^th in the second session as he did not go for an out and out time at the end.

“This morning we were able to do some set-up work,” said Jenson, “and this afternoon we were just getting a little idea of the car and how it reacts to putting wet tyres on and inters, and at the end just doing a slightly longer run.

“There’s a lot of useful information, but obviously you’d like a lot more. It’s the same for all of us, but hopefully we’ll be able to find a better balance than everyone else.

“The car does feel different here to the last test, it’s a very different type of circuit, a different layout, and the average speed of the corners is much lower.

“The car for me is working well here, but there’s still some areas where we think we have to improve the car, as always on a Friday afternoon. And yeah for sure the weather hasn’t helped. We go into tomorrow quite happy, and a lot of discussions tonight to decide which direction we go in terms of strategy with the tyres, and also about the set-up of the car.”

Jenson conceded that despite the obvious limitations that everyone faced, it was stil good to be top: “We all say it’s only P1, it’s only P2, but it is a nice way to start the season, you’d rather be first than last. A positive day, I think.

“I’m reasonably happy with the car here actually, it feels nice. There are still areas to improve, but a relatively good Friday considering the limited running. We have a good understanding of the car, which is key, and lots to build on for tomorrow.”

Michael Schumacher started the 2012 season in the best possible way by topping the times in FP2 – having been beaten only by the McLarens in the first session.

Although there was only a brief dry window at the end of the slower FP2 session and drivers were running different programmes, there were nevertheless signs that Mercedes is in the hunt.

“Today was a nice start into a hopefully exciting season, and certainly two promising sessions for us. However, I would not go so far as to speak about being confident, as the weather conditions were too mixed to gain a clear picture.

“We know what Friday sessions are for and don’t know what fuel loads others were running. On the other hand, it is good to see that we were competitive in different circumstances today and that the car provides good handling – I just feel it.”

Meanwhile team principal Ross Brawn was equally cautious.

“It’s obviously been a patchy day with the weather conditions, however we have achieved a reasonable amount of work on varying fuel levels,” said Brawn. “Whilst the overall picture is still not clear, Michael and Nico seem quite happy with the cars at the end of today’s two practice sessions.

“Tomorrow should see a dry morning, and we will start to get a better perspective. Everything ran smoothly today which is a tribute to the team, and everyone at our factories in Brackley and Brixworth has done a very good job to prepare for this first race. So far at least, it’s going well.”