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.

With the off season nearly at an end, it is time to step back and make our predictions based on the testing we have all been following so avidly. Or so it seems, judging by the number of experts pronouncing the obvious.

Of course Ferrari look the team to beat and McLaren and Renault are their nearest competitors – anyone could work that out after a quick look at the timesheets from the various testing venues used. And it is hardly controversial to suggest that Massa will be faster than his teammate in 2007 – again, that is pretty clear from testing.

It is so easy to forget that this is just testing and that the truth will only emerge once the season gets underway. Many a team has been embarrassed by their race performance after having a brilliant winter and others come good after a race or two. That’s what makes for a great season, after all – the unpredictability of racing.

That is what I keep telling myself, anyway. F1 could really use a closely-fought championship with several drivers and cars battling for honors – so I hope that all the indicators are wrong and Ferrari will not have the enormous advantage in the races that is so obvious in testing.

But allow me to point at one last interesting fact from the final day of testing in Bahrain: Scott Speed’s 8th fastest time in the Toro Rosso. Not only was he quicker than the Red Bull duo (which must be incredibly frustrating for them) but he has also given an answer to Gerhard Berger’s doubts about his commitment. I stand by what I have said about Speed in the past – our resident American is much better than anyone gives him credit for.

But it also vindicates the psychological skills of that man, Berger…

Apparently, Sebastien Bourdais is to be given another drive in the Toro Rosso while the contracted drivers, Liuzzi and Speed, are still waiting for confirmation of their seats this year. In an interview with Auto Motor und Sport magazine, Berger has been critical of his drivers’ performances in 2006, so it seems that I was wrong about the delay originating with Red Bull owner, Dietrich Mateschitz. My apologies to him, of course.

But what is Gerhard up to? If he is genuinely dissatisfied with his drivers, it seems a bit late to be still dithering. There are no obvious winners left on the market and Bourdais is certainly not available for this season. Montoya has admitted that he did receive an offer from Toro Rosso and that it gave him a good laugh, the rumors of Mika Hakkinen returning to F1 in a TR have been firmly squelched, so who else is a possible? Robert Doornbos? That would be taking more of a chance than keeping Liuzzi and Speed.

This indecision seems so unlike Berger until you remember the tales of his practical jokes on Ayrton Senna. When dealing with Gerhard, things are not necessarily what they appear to be on the surface. And I think the wily Austrian is using a bit of psychology to motivate his drivers (Sigmund Freud was an Austrian, remember).

It is just not true that Liuzzi and Speed did not perform well last year. At almost every GP we were told that the TR’s V10 would not be able to compete with the V8s, only to see the cars perform far better than expected, especially through the speed traps. Liuzzi was rated highly enough for Red Bull to want him as a driver until Mark Webber came up for grabs and, as pointed out in my post, An American in F1 – Scott Speed, Scott was looking the better of the two towards the end of the season.

Gerhard knows better than anyone else how good his drivers are – he would not have fought so hard to keep Liuzzi from the clutches of Red Bull were it not so. This feigned dissatisfaction is a Berger ploy to get his drivers fired up for the coming races, to light a bomb under them, in fact.

And it will probably work. Both Liuzzi and Speed are no doubt well aware of what Berger is up to but they will still want to prove themselves to the world. When the lights go out for the start of the first race, I think Toro Rosso will have two drivers who are absolutely determined to show their boss that he was completely wrong about them – that they are instead the quickest drivers to be seen in F1 in a long time.

He’s a wily old bird, that Gerhard Berger.

I begin to wonder what the Toro Rosso bosses think they are playing at. To keep contracted drivers in suspense while they try out everyone else who looks as if he could hold a steering wheel has to be bad policy at the least. It was just this kind of dithering that led to Alonso leaving Renault for McLaren.

Of course, I realize that Sebastien Bourdais, the most recent to have a test with the team, is not really in the frame; he has stated repeatedly that he will drive for Newman/Haas in Champ Cars next year. But what purpose is served by letting STR’s existing drivers wait until the last moment to find out whether their contracts will be honored? If nothing else, it shows that the team does not have full confidence in their choice of drivers.

That has to have an effect on Scott Speed and Vitantonio Liuzzi. To know that their bosses are looking for someone better must erode their confidence and does nothing for relationships within the team. I can understand Spyker’s delay in filling their second seat – Tiago Monteiro did not exactly set the world alight in 2006, after all. But Toro Rosso’s indecision looks completely unnecessary.

Both Liuzzi and Speed showed great promise this season. It is hard to evaluate them without a known-quantity driver alongside but they seemed to get the best out of a car that was not expected to perform as well as it did. Since there are no obvious budding Michael Schumachers out there, the best option for the Scuderia would be to confirm their drivers and get down to preparation for next year.

I don’t think that Gerhard Berger is the problem. He has hinted often enough that there will be no surprises in the driver line-up. It seems to be Dietrich Mateschitz, Red Bull and Toro Rosso boss, who is being slow to make up his mind. I guess when you’re one of the richest people in the world, you don’t give a schitz how a couple of lowly F1 drivers feel.