Two drivers each did a year in Formula One, then were taken away from the races and given a year of testing to hone their skills. From the first race of last year Fernando Alonso looked like the year away from racing had been well-spent. To judge by the performance of Felipe Massa at Melbourne, he has not learned much. Massa is still too ragged and being ragged is not the way to be quick.

So far as I could see, Alonso's car twitched only once and that was coming in for his third pit stop. Good. He was trying to shave the odd hundredth of a second from the time it takes to come into the pits.

Fernando is just starting his third season in Formula One and I can think of very few drivers who have been so complete so early in their careers. In the last fifty years there have been three: Jim Clark, Jackie Stewart and Ayrton Senna. Alain Prost and Michael Schumacher were quick straight out of the box but, at the start of their third full season, I don't think either was as complete as Alonso is now.

Fernando's start at Melbourne was breath-taking, I have never seen someone who is better than Alonso at starts. He not only jumped from fifth to third, but he suckered Montoya into making a costly mistake. Remember, Fernando took to the grass at the start, but I reckon he knew it was sufficiently dry and hard not to give him a problem. I don't recall anyone further back the grid having the nous to do it. We are looking at a driver with a first class racing brain.

Some people thought that Kimi Räikkönen could be a favourite for the 2004 Championship. It's early days yet and McLaren may win races, but Kimi will never be World Champion unless McLaren produces an utterly superior car, the sort of car with which any one of half a dozen drivers could take the title. Kimi's retirement at Melbourne tells me that he is not the next Michael Schumacher, Alonso has that spot.

How can I possibly say this? Simple, Kimi is not a Natural Winner as he showed when he became wobbly when his car let him down. When a Natural Winner wins a race, he celebrates, of course he does, winning sends rushes to the brain that are achieved otherwise only by sniffing stuff up your nose. When Sir Stirling won the 1955 Mille Miglia, he attended the dinner and prize giving and was so pumped up that he then drove home, across the Alps, across France, across the English Channel and only when he got to London did he hit the sack.

A Natural Winner does not get huffy when the car lets go and the reason is that the failure is only a hiccough, it goes against the natural order of things. The Natural Winner
expects to win and anything that prevents that is an abnormality which can be shrugged off.