Formula One made it's return today when all twenty driver took to the Albert park circuit in Melbourne, some earlier than others, with Esteban Ocon having brake issues on the Sauber and Stoffel Vandoorne suffering a cooling problem on his McLaren Honda.
It was a slow start but the main players soon got down to business with the two Mercedes boys leading the way through most of the two ninety minute sessions.
Ferrari proved to be the challengers that Red Bull had anticipated with both Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel right in the thick of things, splitting the two Mercedes in the end after spending some time at the top of the leaderboard.
Vettel did have a DRS issue and spent some time in the back of the Ferrari garage watching the monitors, but he was very relaxed about it all and the problem was soon sorted.
The beautiful pink car of the Force India team looked stunning on track, as did the Toro Rosso, perhaps one of the nicest of the ten teams with the stunning silver bull on the brilliant blue background.
One thing that was noticed however, was the horrid sounds of the McLaren Honda as it roared down the straight, making sounds very alien to those of the other cars around them as it sounded like it was grinding with each gear change.
Alonso seemed very relaxed as the sessions went on around him, but Vandoorne managed to get in a lot of running during the course of the 180 minutes of track time.
Sadly Felipe Massa had a reliability issue and his Williams stopped out on track, but it was the Renault of Jolyon Palmer that brought out the one and only red flag for the day after losing control at the final turn.
All in all it was a great first day back at school, but this reporter believes we could see a lot more from Ferrari tomorrow. Stay tuned!
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