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Ferrari technical director Aldo Costa says the team was mystified when it had problems with tyre warm-up yesterday, which forced it to focus on using the soft tyres earlier in qualifying than planned.

The problem was especially acute for Felipe Massa, who has always struggled in such situations, and had a spin on cold tyres in Q3.

“This morning the car was not fast,” Costa said on Saturday night. “We were doing some modifications yesterday following set-up development that we had to do to correct the balance of the car, but today it was not as expected, so we went back for qualifying with more or less the same car as Friday.

“Then we were struggling with the hard tyres to find the correct warm-up. And the qualifying was all conservative, because we had to stay on the conservative side, so we used one set of soft in Q1, and had less sets in Q2 and Q3. It was a consequence of what happened in FP3.

“Felipe is struggling more than Fernando. It’s a problem that we saw in the past and never really solved.”

Clearly there could races coming up where being kinder on the tyres will be an advantage.

“In some years it was a benefit to have this kind of car. We have done a race simulation in Barcelona, mainly with Fernando, and we were pretty happy about the result.

“In the past it has worked – now everything is different, tyre, cars. Let’s see tomorrow and understand if it’s then something we can let’s say we can have back in other conditions for the rest of the season.”

Tonight as Christian Horner and Adrian Newey were leaving the paddock I told them that the ‘start only’ KERS rumours were gathering momentum. Christian laughed and said we’ll see tomorrow…

The confirmation from the Red Bull drivers that they didn’t use KERS in qualifying led to speculation as to why. I asked some top people at teams like Renault, McLaren and Ferrari, and they had no clue.

The most obvious reason was some sort of reliability issue that meant it was safer to switch it off, on the basis that the team had enough in hand and didn’t need the 0.3s a lap benefit.

The problem is the race, and what the team would do at the start, given that without KERS both drivers would come under threat. Had Mark Webber qualified second you could argue that he’d be riding shotgun for Sebastian Vettel. But with Lewis Hamilton taking that spot Vettel would almost certainly lose the lead if he doesn’t have KERS at the start.

And that’s why suggestions tonight that Red Bull has a start only KERS system make sense.

When a car goes to the grid it goes with the KERS having been fully charged in the garage – it’s not a question of loading it up by using the brakes on the warm-up lap or anything like that.

So in theory you could have a system that gave you a start boost and was inoperative thereafter. It could be smaller, lighter, create fewer packaging compromises, and require less cooling. A simplifed KERS could create an always welcome opportunity to play with ballast, although obviously this year there is less scope to adjust the weight distribution, as that is restricted by the rules.

Without KERS working off the brakes, drivers would be able to use them in a more optimal way throughout the race, and be at less risk of damaging the tyres or flat spotting them.

And of course it’s one less thing for drivers to think about. Mark Webber has made his feelings about the multi-tasking he’s now required to do quite clear.

Remember RBR briefly tried KERS in early 2009, and Adrian Newey soon discarded it. Back then weight was an issue – Webber is not the lightest driver in the field – but the limit has since gone up from 605kgs to 640kgs, so that has become less critical.

Clearly Newey did his sums back then and found that KERS did not fit his way of going racing, and it could well be that it still doesn’t, for the reasons outlined above.

So does RBR just have a regular KERS system that can be easily set-up just for start use, with a few elements removed or disconnected? Or does it have a dedicated ‘mini KERS’ that meets the letter of the rules and is never intended to work over a race distance? Does it have both and thus the option to fit either, depending on the track and the circumstances?

We should get some answers tomorrow, with a little help from the TV KERS graphic. Then the question could be whether other teams feel that such a system is within the rules.

It’s pretty clear that some might think it contravenes the spirit of the regs, in that having a system that doesn’t harvest energy over a race as it is intended to doesn’t do a lot for the green image of F1.

Tonight I asked a senior FIA guy if any of this made sense. He said he had no idea, but would ask his experts in the morning…

Fernando Alonso says that Ferrari missed a trick today after it struggled for grip and lost performance relative to its rivals.

Having made some set-up changes the team struggled for grip this morning and had to go back to Friday’s spec. The drivers struggled with warm-up of the hard tyre, so had to use a soft set in Q1, which meant they were compromised because they then had fewer sets for the rest of qualifying.

Nevertheless he’s not disappointed to be only fifth on the grid in Australia, despite the Italian team being widely regarded as the biggest threat to Red Bull this year.

“We were not super competitive today from the practice,” said Alonso. “The qualifying we took a very conservative approach, we knew that if we risk, maybe we are fourth, if we took a very safe qualifying we are fifth or sixth. It was not the time to do any risks in the first race of the championship, but unfortunately we found ourselves with only one set in Q3, we tried to do our best, and as I said I think fifth position is more or less what we expected before qualifying, and a position we are happy with. The distance from pole, we are not so happy, and it’s what we have to look at and analyse.”

Alonso said that a lack of grip was the essential problem.

“Yesterday it felt a little bit better, more overall grip, better balance. Today straight away, Felipe or me, we said less grip than yesterday, track conditions a little bit worse, but the other people were better than yesterday. We missed something today that we need to understand a little bit better.

“Also the distance from Toro Rosso, Sauber, Renault, we knew from winter testing and yesterday we were around one second in front of them, today it was only two or three tenths. So it was something lacking in our car. We will try to do a good race tomorrow, and in Sepang we need to be closer to the pole for sure.

“Obviously you never know. Until you arrive to the first qualifying of the season it’s only rumours, it’s only a guess. Today it’s true it was very big, the gap, but yesterday it looked quite close to be honest, to them and to McLaren. I expect that this was not the normal pace from us and we will get better and better tomorrow.”

Karthikeyan eventually got out, but it was all in vain

The FIA Stewards have declined to give HRT dispensation to allow Tonio Liuzzi and Narain Karthikeyan to start in Australia after they failed to meet the 107% requirement, in accordance with Article 36.3.

After barely appearing on track at all in practice the cars actually ran without too many problems in Q1, and Liuzzi was only 2.1s off Jerome d’Ambrosio’s Virgin.

The FIA Stewards do have the option to waive the rule in ‘exceptional circumstances,’ but that wasn’t the case here.

Asked by this blog to clarify the new rule, the FIA’s Charlie Whiting said: “The 107% is a maximum, there’s no tolerance around that 107%. If you’re out you’re out. However there is provision in the rule for the stewards to allow a car in under exceptional circumstances, which could include setting a good time in a previous session, or if there were changeable weather conditions that clearly disadvantaged some cars that couldn’t get out at the beginning when it was dry.

“Those sorts of things, or generally speaking if a car’s done a good time in P3 for example, and has a mechanical problem and can’t do a clear lap. We’ve seen it all before. Then the stewards are probably likely to allow the car to start. I personally don’t believe it’s the case with HRT, but it’s a matter for the stewards.”

Jenson Button was disappointed with his Q3 session in Melbourne but delighted that McLaren has made so much progress with its update package.

Button qualified fourth, but Lewis Hamilton’s second place showed that the car has even more potential.

“I think we should be very happy with it,” said Button. “My Q3 was a right mess. I got stuck behind Rosberg, and Massa had a spin. It was all quite messy out there. My lap in Q2, the one I didn’t actually complete, would actually have been quicker, by quite a bit.

“Disappointing that I didn’t get the best out of it, but I think we should all be very happy with the package that we have here. It’s a massive step forward from what we had in testing, so we should be very pleased with what we’ve done this weekend.

“And there’s so much to build on still. It’s still in a very early stage this car, because we haven’t done much testing, so for it to be reliable, and relatively quick I’m very happy and very proud of the guys back at the factory for putting in all the hard work brining this package here.”

Button admitted that one of the issues in the last session was getting heat into the tyres.

“In Q3 it was, because I had cars all over the place. I think we need to get heat more than others. I was trying to get past to get some heat in the tyres, but they were blocking. It was a bit of a mess out there. It’s tricky in these conditions to get heat in the tyres, but the race will be completely different, we’re fine.

“I’m really looking forward to the race. We can have a good race from fourth – we had a good race from fourth last year – and we’ll see. Sebastian put in a very good lap, but we don’t know what their race pace is going to be like.”

McLaren had a disastrous testing season but after ‘going back to basics’ by hurriedly producing a less exotic exhaust and floor combination the team may well have turned its season around.

Jenson Button was fastest today – although he admitted that it might not mean much – and was delighted that the new parts worked so well and backed up what simulations had suggested.

“It’s definitely brought performance to the car, how much I don’t know. The feeling is much better, the car feels a lot more complete. When you have downforce at the rear, you can obviously add downforce at the front, then you get temperature into the tyres, you can have braking performance, there’s so much that comes with downforce.

“I’m very happy with how hard the guys have worked and what they’ve brought to this race, because in testing it was looking pretty tough for us. They’ve worked so hard, they’ve brought something here that’s good. I don’t know how good, but I’m pretty happy with the step we’ve made.”

The impressive thing today was that after such an unreliable time in testing the team had no problems with parts that had not be run before.

“We’ve got reliability. That’s something we haven’t had all winter, so finally to have a car which can run for as many laps as we want it to, it’s great. You’re able to do set up work then and improve the car. A positive day.

“I still don’t think there’s any use looking at the times. People are doing different things, and there are so many variables now with KERS and rear wings, we’re not going to get too carried away. It’s a positive day because we’ve been able to do so much running and get a feeling for the car in many different fuel loads. Lots of information to go through tonight and hopefully we’ll improve a bit further.

“We haven’t done a lot of reliability work because we haven’t had reliability, so it’s been a tough winter. Here we have the reliability, and we’ve picked up performance. The car feels nice to drive, still a few niggly things that we’ve got to sort out, but the basic balance is much improved from what we had in testing.”

Michael Schumacher expects to be much stronger this season after the tyre frustrations that hampered him last year have gone.

Michael struggled to come to terms with the 2010 Bridgestones, but the re-set provided by the arrival of Pirelli has given him new impetus.

“The only thing you can probably say is the characteristic of last year’s tyres was very unusual to my experience,” he said when asked by this blog. “The tyres we have now, they are a lot more normal. In this respect I’m happy to have this kind of character. Obviously the car, on top, is a lot more normal race car. Performance orientated, as a mixture, it gives more feedback, and I just feel more comfortable.”

Inevitably last year many people were sceptical when Schumacher cited the tyres as his problem, but when I quizzed him on that he said it’s not about proving people wrong.

“The most important thing is what I want to prove to myself. Even now I’m not absolutely 100% clear on the one lap factor what I had to do to make that tyre work. I didn’t really understand whether it was only the tyre, whether it was me for three years out, now knowing the team and not knowing all the switches and positions, and what I had to do to make the whole package working together. I don’t know, I just know now I do feel it, and I’m back on it.”

Michael says he has no concerns about this year’s new technology.

“In the time that I’ve been racing I’ve gone through many different development phases. There have been the very standard days of manual shifting, as I started, there have been the days of active suspension, traction control, ABS and so on, and there have been all the electronics that you adjusted on the steering wheel. We had last year f-ducts, we have this year rear wings, we have KERS. I can only say anything that makes me going quicker, that I can adapt and adjust in the car, that’s what I like.

“There are lots of predictions. I just think we should get on with it this weekend, we’ll see what is the reality. Testing is one thing, racing is another thing, then afterwards we can go into the details and analyse and see whether it was for the good or not for the good or whatever. And what did really happen. I think it’s too much talk at the moment.”

The FIA has given the teams a headache by adjusting the moveable wing rules on the eve of the first race.

The section of track on which the wing can be operated was set at 600m for race day, on the basis that the figure could be changed if experience in the early races proved that to be necessary.

However for the opening race in Australia it has already been changed to over 860m. The zone now starts on the approach to the final corner, but obviously drivers won’t activate their wings until the exit, at around the 750m mark.

The difficulty for the teams is that they have done all their homework on the basis of the 600m figure.

“I only found out today,”  Christian Horner told this blog. “It’s a pain because it screws up our simulations and affects gear ratios.”

The FIA’s intention has always been that the length of the zone stays the same at all tracks so passing is not easier at somewhere like Monza compared with other venues with shorter straights.

Update: Spoke to Charlie Whiting who clarified that now the FIA’s concept is that there is 600m at full throttle. The actual 867m zone here includes the braking area, which here is about 110m, and the ‘acceleration’ area, for want of a better word. So the maximum theoretical wing activation usage here is about 750m, although that depends on how early in the final corner drivers activate it...

Sebastian Vettel says that he wants to win the Australian GP because the trophy has a kangaroo on it. And he’s not joking!

While he said it with a smile on his face he insists that he’s motivated by simple things.

The World Champion also made it clear that he loves the friendly atmosphere in Australia.

“I like to come here, especially as a German,” he said. “In our country it takes a long time before someone calls you a friend or a mate. Here I find the whole country is calling me mate! It’s nice to come here. Usually the weather is nice, not like today, but usually it’s quite good.

“I really like the track, and if you finish on the podium they have a nice trophy on Sunday afternoon. It used to have and I hope it still has a kangaroo on the trophy. It’s something that you can get only here.

“I love racing, I love driving the car, but I love racing also for these little things. It might be funny in a way, but little things like picking up a trophy that is special or is different to all the trophies you get everywhere else!”

He’s got one target this weekend: “I don’t have to lie to you, the target is to win, easy as that. If you come here as champions of the last year, you want to keep on winning, that’s what it’s all about, and that’s why we have been working hard in the winter. I’m looking forward to a good weekend and hopefully picking up that trophy with that bloody kangaroo on it…”

The chances of Team Lotus retaining the rights to use the name after the legal battle that starts today have taken a serious knock.

The Daily Telegraph reports that Tony Fernandes is now in dispute with David Hunt, the man who acquired the Team Lotus name at the end of 1994 and agreed to sell it to Malaysia1, the parent company of  the then Lotus Racing, last September.

However, Hunt claims that the deal has not been completed as agreed. Without his support in court the team’s case is massively compromised.

Hunt told the Telegraph: “When we had to make the Team Lotus staff redundant in 1995 I made a promise to them and the fans to return it to F1 in the hands of a worthy custodian, and initially I had high hopes that Tony, Din and Nasa (Fernandes’ partners in Team Lotus) were going to tick the boxes.

“What angers me is that I have, in good faith, worked extremely hard on the build-up to the hearing because I believed Tony would honour our January agreement.

“He’s apparently ‘changed his mind’ at the 11th hour, by his own admission, now that I’ve done so much work on his company’s behalf, and he’s trying to renegotiate by offering new terms which are, frankly, ludicrous.

“All I’m looking for is for Tony to stick to his word and honour our agreement. If he doesn’t, then regrettably I don’t see why I should continue to provide assistance and this trial won’t be the last battle he’s facing, even if he wins.”

Update: After the story broke a team spokesman told the Telegraph: “Team Lotus has an agreement with David Hunt which was signed by both parties. David Hunt has tried to renegotiate that agreement, which Team Lotus is not prepared to do.”