MOTORSPORT: Sprinkle the spice GP needs

Wet brings out best in F1's giant pool of talent
Australia didn't get the fairytale Mark Webber victory it dreamt of; instead it got 20 or so laps of the best racing it's had.

Although the later stages of Sunday's Melbourne Grand Prix were anti-climactic apart from Webber running into the back of Lewis Hamilton, all things considered it was the best Formula One race in the quarter of a century that F1 has been coming to Oz. And the lesson from it is that what's needed for the future is not a night race but irrigation.

The rain at start time on Sunday was the recipe for the excitement of those early laps.

Thirty five years ago Ferrari put in an irrigation system at its Fiorano test track in Italy so that it could have a wet track when it wanted.

In view of the lack of overtaking that is the norm in F1, particularly since the outlawing of refuelling during races this year, a sprinkler system could dampen Melbourne's Albert Park track on demand without spectators getting drenched by rain.

The best of both worlds -- and better for now than any alternative in Sydney, if the weekend speculation is anything more than a wind-up.

What we saw in Melbourne this time around was a lot of cream in the driving ranks come to the top and, sadly, Webber make a meal of the best opportunity he's had to win on home soil.

Having put himself in a great position by qualifying alongside teammate Sebastian Vettel on the front row of the grid, Webber made several mistakes that cost him dearly.

For the second time in as many starts this season Vettel was robbed of victory by mechanical failure -- this time a front left wheel nut rather than the spark plug of Bahrain.

In an ideal world Webber would have been in position to pick up the spoils, but he was not in command of his situation the way others were -- and in the end he threw away a likely sixth place with a desperate lunge at Lewis Hamilton's McLaren. Had he waited another lap he might have picked up fourth if Hamilton and Ferrari's Fernando Alonso had come together in fighting for that position.

Instead Webber wound up ninth and with a reprimand from the stewards for his contact with Hamilton, who finished an unhappy sixth, compounding a bad weekend for him.

Even before he was in strife with police on Friday night for hooning as he left the Albert Park venue Hamilton was out of sorts.

However, McLaren has improved a lot on the team as we saw two weeks earlier in Bahrain, while Red Bull -- with clearly the quickest car so far this season -- is languishing fourth in a constructors' championship it should be leading.

Ferrari has the essential ingredient other than outright speed -- bullet-proof reliability. Both its cars have finished both races and already it has 70 points to McLaren's 54, while Red Bull's 18 is 11 less than the Mercedes factory team.

We have said here before that the pool of driving talent in F1 now is perhaps the deepest in its 60-year history -- and there was plenty of evidence of that at Albert Park.

Jenson Button's victory was masterful. He did it on the bit.

McLaren bringing him in early to change to slick tyres was decisive, he then put a stranglehold on the race and was able to cruise in the final stages as others battled for what was left over.

Robert Kubica's second place, from ninth on the grid, was absolutely refreshing.

It was a stark reminder of what a talent the Pole is and a sign that, as we predicted here a week ago, Renault may just be a fifth contender among the teams this year, although most likely it will be Kubica alone who will produce its results. His teammate, Russian rookie Vitaly Petrov, brings talent on top of the reported 15 million Euros that secured his Renault drive, but he is too raw to figure yet.

Alonso's recovery, after being turned around at the first corner, from 18th to eighth place in about 15 laps and ultimately fourth place was arguably the drive of the race.

In equal equipment to teammate Felipe Massa, and both of them on worn tyres, Alonso could do no more. He was careful not to risk contact with his teammate through any over-ambitious move, while keeping Hamilton and Webber at bay.

Alonso leads the championship with 37 points and Massa, with third place in Melbourne to add to his second in Bahrain, is only four points behind the Spanish dual world champion.

Nico Rosberg again consistently outshone returning seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher in the Mercedes team, with another fifth place.

Schumacher came in 10th, almost 70 seconds behind Button. He had great difficulty getting past Scuderio Toro Rosso's young Jaime Alguersuari and it's hard to see life back in F1 getting better for the great German in a hurry.

Unless Mercedes team chief Ross Brawn can weave some instant magic, Schumi might be in for a season of starting on the third, fourth or fifth rows of the grid and straggling in at the bottom end of the points finishers. It's a new experience after the halcyon days at Ferrari and earlier Benetton, and we must wonder how long he will put up with it.

Schumacher has been one of the absolute greats of F1, statistically the best of all, but he's in his 40s now, was away for three years and didn't win the championship the last two years he raced.

And, as was demonstrated at Albert Park, there's a load of younger drivers now capable of winning. We would like to think that Webber is among them, and it was only months ago that he won two GPs, but Bahrain and Melbourne this season have not been good for him.

Eighth in Bahrain and ninth in Melbourne in a car capable of winning is serious under-performance and has left him 10th in the championship with only six points.

Webber has repeatedly come through adversity before, but now more than he has to come up trumps to justify retention in what should be a, indeed the, top team.

>> V8 Supercars Australia is unveiling its Car of the Future proposals today, so we'll take a look over the next day or so at what that involves and what it may mean. Rain in the US has delayed Marcos Ambrose's NASCAR Sprint Cup round at Martinsville, Virginia, and the Indy Racing League race at St Petersburgh, Florida, for which Will Power is on pole position but Ryan Briscoe 19th on the grid, until Tuesday morning, Australian time.

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