As expected, Raikkonen won with ease, the Ferrari clearly the quickest car on this track and the driver one of the three fastest men in F1. Although the entire world is now expecting a Ferrari walkover this year, I am not convinced. The McLarens were good too and will get better.

Of course, the red team will improve their car as well but it is hard to better something that already seems just about perfect; go the wrong way and you could ruin it. And there are those lingering doubts about Kimi’s ability in testing – can he give the kind of input to the engineers that they had from Michael Schumacher? Massa will help with that but again I am unsure of his technical prowess.

I am also not all that impressed with Felipe’s drive through the field. When you have a car as superior to the rest as the F2007, it does not look all that good to be held up for lap after lap by a car as evil-handling as Button’s Honda. I’m sure Michael would have made short work of it.

Enough has been said already about Lewis Hamilton’s excellent race without me adding the same accolades; the lad is a star and will ensure that McLaren win the constructor’s title this year. Alonso is brilliant and will assist in the development of the car until it can beat the Ferraris so Ron Dennis has plenty to smile about at the moment, in spite of not winning this first race of the season.

The BMWs were not quite on the pace of the front runners and Renault were well off it. Both will improve with time, however, and may be able to challenge for the lead in later races.

The Hondas were awful, with Barrichello having the better time of it and expressing himself reasonably happy. Button thinks that the problem lies in the front aerodynamics but, judging from what Flavio Briatore had to say about the Bridgestones being the root cause of Renault’s difficulties, I would suspect that tires also have a lot to do with the Honda malaise. Hopefully, they will find a solution and be more competitive in future races.

Otherwise things went more or less to plan. The Toyotas were a bit better than we’d guessed, the Williams a bit worse. But which would you rather be sitting in for the next GP?

Finally, another word about Scott Speed: until his front tires deflated, he was well ahead of Liuzzi. Gerhard Berger was content with the Italian’s performance in this race – perhaps he will admit that the American seemed pretty “committed” too…

Raikkonen on pole, Alonso next up – no surprises there. Even the four tenths of a second gap was about what we expected. Massa might have been able to make it a Ferrari front row but a broken gearbox put paid to that. It was a good reminder that nothing can be taken for granted in this first race of the year, however; there will be more retirements to come and they could easily make a mess of any predictions.

The second row is interesting: Heidfeld and Hamilton. The BMW could be even better than anyone suspected, likewise Lewis Hamilton. No wonder Ron Dennis was fairly chortling with glee afterwards – he has picked a winner in the young Brit and can look forward to a great season for McLaren. And, with Kubica confirming the pace of the BMW with his fifth grid slot, maybe even Mario Theissen will consider the possibility of victory in this race.

Fizzy did as much as could be done with the Renault in hauling it into sixth, but Mark Webber worked wonders to grab seventh in the Red Bull. For the Toyotas to be next up is also something of a miracle, especially as both had trouble in the second period of qualifying. Any bets on how long they will last in the race?

As for the Super Aguris being tenth and eleventh, I don’t have to say anything – Colin Kolles is shouting loud enough for his protest to be heard back in England. At least it shows that sometimes it’s better to go with development of last year’s chassis than a completely new car – Honda are mystified by their RA 107′s refusal to perform.

Otherwise the grid is more or less as one would expect, although the Williams cars were a little disappointing. But allow me to point once again at Scott Speed; he was almost a second faster than Liuzzi and for a while looked as if he would make it into Q2. The guy is in F1 on merit, I tell ya.

And now we will all sit down to see what happens when the red lights go out; for me, it will be 10:30pm Saturday, others will be in Sunday. All around the world there will be sighs of contentment as our withdrawal symptoms are eased. It has been a long wait but at last we begin – and this season looks to be a humdinger.

First practice day of the new season and form in testing is confirmed on the track so far. The two Ferraris fastest, Massa ahead of Raikkonen, the McLarens quick, with Hamilton third and Alonso seventh, it’s business as usual. Well, apart from a few minor anomalies, that is.

There’s Fizzy in fourth, for instance – wasn’t he supposed to be blown away by Kovalainen this season? But Renault had a disastrous practice, so maybe Heikki didn’t get a decent run. Neither did the Fizz but we’ll ignore that for the moment. None of this is very meaningful anyway, it being very early days yet.

Moving down the list, the Beemers are up there in fifth and ninth, Heidfeld ahead of Kubica, but yesterday’s man (in more ways than one), Alex Wurz, grabbed sixth fastest, thereby beating the more fancied Nico Rosberg and giving hope to the Williams faithful. Nothing wrong with the Toyota engine, it would seem, so what are the factory team (12th and 16th) doing wrong?

With David Coulthard unpredictably completing the top ten, we begin to see a pattern emerging – today was the day of the (unofficial) number two drivers. Well, okay, Heidfeld is down as number one for BMW but you know we all think Kubica will beat him this year. And everyone (except me) backs Kovalainen to beat Fisichella, whoever is supposed to be number one at Renault. Never forget that Flavio knows how to light a bomb under his drivers…

And, speaking of lighting bombs, it looks as though Berger’s patent explosive has done wonders for Speed as well – over a second quicker than Liuzzi. Well done, Scott. Just keep it up all season and I won’t have to resort to statistics to prove you’re quicker than your Italian buddy.

Everything else is pretty much as expected except that Super Aguri have almost guaranteed themselves a court case by grabbing the midfield – 11th and 13th (Davidson quicker than Sato, please note). They also beat the Hondas so run the risk of the factory team asking for their cars back. At least Toro Rosso had the sense not go faster than the boss’ cars.

Now we all wait to see what will happen in qualifying. There will be some shuffling around, no doubt, but I think we’ve seen the basic order today – for the first ten slots anyway. To me, it seems a good sign that the first day of the 2007 season has been the day of the underdogs – we should be in for some furiously-fought races if this carries on.

The big news today is that Lewis Hamilton grabbed the quickest time on the final day of the Valencia test sessions. This bodes well for the young driver’s future, showing that he has no problem getting back into the car after a big shunt. No doubt McLaren are heartened too to see the MP4-22 performing so well already.

We all know it’s meaningless, of course; off season testing is always an unreliable indicator of likely results in the races that follow. So why do we follow it so closely, poring over lap times and making guesses as to which teams will be the stars of the coming season?

It’s addiction, you know – so starved are we of action in the sport that we’ll read anything to get us through the lean period. These few months when nothing is happening but hype and hope are the real test of the F1 fan’s stamina. To outsiders it might seem that we should take a break and go off to watch football until the season opener (Melbourne, Australia, March 18, by the way) but they really don’t understand what drives us. We’re addicted and must have something to feed our habit.

So we read every scrap of info that comes our way, ponder arcane details of design in the new cars, compare testing times, listen to what even the lowliest F1 mechanic has to say. Without even noticing, we feed the habit, even stooping as low as to pick up stogies dropped by Bernie Ecclestone as he wanders the world, adding GPs here and cutting a few there.

It has to be said that there are benefits to this obsession too. Unlike the part-time F1 fan, we do not have to spend the entire Australian GP wondering who the heck that guy is in the Bloopmobile Special this year – not only do we know, we could tell you his age, his career history and what he had for breakfast this morning. To my shame, I have to admit to missing the occasional off season in the past and being very confused in the first few races as a result.

How fitting it is that F1 has been the last refuge of the tobacco advertisers for so long. Like nicotine addicts condemned to wear the patch for three months, we hang on grimly until we can once again light up the television for that first, so-satisfying hit of the year. Life is merely an annoying interlude between races.

As with the dwindling band of committed smokers, we are determined to hold on to our habit, too. To tell an F1 fan that “hey, there’s hockey on the TV” is like offering gum to a smoker – it just doesn’t cut it and he returns to reading the obscure article about Barrichello’s new helmet design that he found on the back page of the local rag this morning.

But hey, I don’t mind admitting it: my name is Clive and I’m an F1 fan. Try to convert me if you will, I won’t change. Fact is, I love this sport…