I must seem a miserable old geezer, with my refusal to join the general hubbub over Felipe Massa and Lewis Hamilton this year. It comes of being hasty in the past, placing too much hope in unproven drivers or teams and disillusionment after disappointment as a result. These days I’m slow to pass judgment, preferring to wait and see long after others have cast their votes.

Even so, my views on Massa are probably fairly obvious through various unguarded phrases and sentences in posts and comments. It has been Hamilton that I’ve been very careful about, watching and waiting to see how this season pans out. I want too much for him to be all that he is trumpeted as, the new British hope that will conquer the world, the one who will out-Schumacher Michael himself. Ever mindful of the crushing disappointments of former years, I hold my dreams close to my chest and put on the poker face.

But it is four races into the season now and Lewis has not put a foot wrong, in the car or out of it. If anyone ever looked a star on the rise, he is it. No-one, not even Michael Schumacher, broke the records for new arrivals as Lewis is doing.

So how good is he really? Never mind the pre-F1 resumé - we have seen those become irrelevant too often in the past - it’s how he races that matters. And thus far he has been very impressive, swapping fastest McLaren laps with his illustrious teammate and taking the fight to Ferrari. In a rookie, that is almost unheard of. The lad can drive, there is no doubt of that.

The detractors point out that he has had the luck to begin his F1 career with a team that has just returned to greatness; which is true - most new drivers start out in the lesser teams and hope to be noticed by those that matter. But how many of them would do as well as Lewis has, given the same circumstances? It didn’t help Alex Zanardi (second attempt, admitedly) or Michael Andretti to be in a top team.

Luck is an important part of a champion’s success anyway; if Lewis has it, that is one more string to his bow. But he has made his own luck, making himself known to Ron Dennis at a very early stage in his career and winning in whatever formula came his way. Everything looks so carefully planned that the only element of luck seems to be that he was available at the moment when McLaren had secured the services of the world champion and were prepared to take a little bit of a chance on the second seat as a result.

Out of the car he is just as good too. He oozes confidence yet retains enough humility for us to warm to him. His statements stick to the McLaren line with precision, yet are delivered with a breezy smile and obvious enthusiasm for his job. In fact, he has been the model of the good team driver and hardly needs the protection from the media that Ron has given him.

So why am I still hedging my bets? Perhaps I am too cautious but I want to see how he behaves when circumstances turn against him. Yes, he has held off both Raikkonen and Massa when challenged for position; how will he fare when someone gets past him? What will he do when the car breaks underneath him three races in a row? How will he handle it if Alonso manages to gain the upper hand in the mid-season?

I suspect that he will sail through such tests with all flags flying. I just want to see it, that’s all…

Back in October last year, I warned that it would be foolish to write off McLaren just because they had a bad season. And I admit to some relief that they have proved me right so far (unlike Honda).

When McLaren are good, they are very, very good and they will not lose competitiveness as the season progresses. The car is marginally less quick than the Ferrari at the moment but is likely to get better as the efficiency of the team ensures that improvement continues. The well-oiled machine is up and running and will not let up until all memory of 2006 is erased by a championship.

There has been a lot of speculation that Alonso is becoming rattled by the speed of his teammate. Don’t you believe it. Fernando knows that he is still quickest and he has been in this situation before - in the Renault team, Fisichella was faster than him on rare occasions, after all, but was never going to threaten him for the championship. Alonso/Hamilton is turning out to be a brilliant pairing of excellent drivers but it is the Spaniard who will emerge as the main contender this season. Hamilton’s turn will come later.

Whether we like it or not, the reason for McLaren’s success and efficiency is Ron Dennis. Mike Lawrence of Pitpass has written a very good article on the man that explains the kind of commitment and dedication required to get an F1 team to the level of McLaren. Ron is probably the best team boss of the lot, and that includes Jean Todt.

So the most likely scenario this year is the double for McLaren: the contructor’s award and Alonso as world drivers champion. More debatable is what happens thereafter; Ron has declared that he will step down within the next five years and it remains to be seen what will happen then. Martin Whitmarsh will be the boss but the possibility of Ross Brawn joining the team could make them even stronger in the future. We shall see.

This has been the most difficult to write of all these early season assessments; once the McLaren steamroller gets going, there are few dramas or problems that get in its way. And it’s the difficulties that give us something to talk about - success is just, well, success…

It seems to me that the knives are out at Ferrari already. After the Bahrain GP, technical director Mario Almondo was critical of Raikkonen’s race, suggesting that he work on starts and restarts; now Kimi has voiced doubts over the preparation of his car for qualifying.

Back in October of last year, I wrote of the difficulties Kimi would experience in fitting into the Ferrari team; since then I have seen nothing to change my mind. Even before he joined, Ferrari were talking about getting their new driver to smile more often and to moderate his private life. As I pointed out at the time, this amounted to implied criticism of a guy who has nothing to prove in F1 - we all know he is one the three fastest drivers around.

And now Almondo finds reason to pick at Raikkonen’s performance in Bahrain and Kimi, stung at last to put his side of the story (very tactfully - he said “we” most of the time), hints that he may not be getting the same treatment as Massa in qualifying. It hardly speaks of a team that is together in their determination for the Finn to succeed this year.

The most telling point is that these guarded exchanges are being conducted in public. Ferrari have been quite open in their criticism of Raikkonen from the very start, while their enthusiasm for Massa has been evident, Todt springing to the Brazilian’s defense after his ham-fisted attempts to pass Hamilton in Malaysia. Kimi has held his tongue until this latest statement but the tension on his face has been plain to see - he knows he’s getting a raw deal.

I have no doubt that Kimi will struggle on through the season, working with what he is given and trying to show the team who they should be putting their major effort into. My point is really that he shouldn’t have to - Ferrari only handicap themselves by favoring one driver over another, particularly when the favorite is the slower of the two.

But that is Ferrari; they have their likes and dislikes and woe betide you if you turn up on the dislike side of the equation.

The photograph up there illustrates the difference between Ferrari and McLaren. Ron Dennis has his detractors but he is the best man manager of the lot (now that Eddie Jordan and Ken Tyrrell are no longer around). He believed in Kimi from the start and never stopped doing so, even if he wished that the Finn wouldn’t party so heartily.

Ferrari assured us that we would see Kimi smile this year - pardon me for pointing this out but it ain’t happened yet. And that looks like a huge grin on the Finn’s face in that photo above.

One race done and already the muttering about cheating has started. Ron Dennis has been hinting that Ferrari’s speed can be partly attributed to a flexible floor on the cars. Since the scrutineers had a good look at this during their inspection, it may be that Ron made sure that they heard a rumor.

The point is that, if the floor moves downwards at speed, it can alter the under-car aerodynamics and lessen drag, thereby allowing more speed on the straights. That would show up on the speed traps but you could disguise it by increasing the wing angles, thus slowing the car to a believable speed on the straights but reaping the benefit of extra downforce in the corners. All of which would be illegal under the “no moveable aerodynamic devices” rule.

The scrutineers passed the cars in Melbourne but this does not necessarily mean that something underhand is not going on. Apparently, they test at the moment by looking only at upward flexing of the floor - but it would be downward pressure that would clear the matter up once and for all.

Naturally, a lot of people are saying that it’s just Ron looking for excuses for his own cars not being as fast as the Ferraris. But that presumes that he knew before the race that the McLarens would be beaten. It is far more likely that his concern is genuine, having noticed the complex arrangement for keeping the Ferrari’s floor in place at the front.

Probably, Ron hopes that the rumor will activate the FIA and they will have a quiet word in Ferrari’s ear to tell them to get rid of the system. That would be the most sensible way to proceed, avoiding any possibility of legal action and a continuing unseemly fight throughout the season. F1 has had enough of those, surely, with the mass damper fiasco fresh in everyone’s mind and the customer car row about to enter litigation.

This is the kind of thing that happens when the rules become so all-embracing and extensive, however. With the importance of aerodynamics and every constructor having wind tunnels, the cars get ever closer in design and performance increases become a matter of subtle and sometimes dubious tweaks. Since every designer is looking for ways to gain an advantage, it is no wonder that they work in areas that are not completely dictated by mandatory measurements.

And that means they push the boundaries of legality on occasion, thereby forcing the FIA to be even more stringent on what they will allow. It is an endless cycle of increasing complication that needs to be stopped before the rules become so limiting that there is no difference at all between the cars, apart from the color scheme and badge on the front. How do you do that?

Well, you could start by simplifying everything immediately; extend the flat bottom from nose to tail, for instance, and let the designers work out how they are going to cope with that. But it’s a long subject and I could best sum it up with the philosophy of “We need less regulation, not more.”