Let's give it a few races to see whether there is any progress. I don't think Honda will be hanging around the midfield too long. It will be transferring itself up to the front of the grid in the not-to-distant future.

At the back end, it should be the same three-way fight between Toro Rosso, Force India F1 and Super Aguri.

With Toro Rosso, it will be interesting to see whether there is progress made in the same way that RBR is stepping up - being the sister team, you would think there would be some feedback going through the system.

Everyone is going to be looking at Sebastien Bourdais. He has come from Champ Car, where he has been very successful. He got overlooked a bit in his European years and went to the States. Now he comes back with titles under his belt and we will see whether there is the genuine pace there.

I am waiting to see whether STR can make a big step up. We saw some good performances by Sebastian Vettel over the end of last season, when he got in the car, and it will be interesting to see if that potential stays there.

The Force India car has pretty much carried on from where it left off when the car was a Spyker. It doesn't seem as if a huge amount has gone on there, but we will see.

There is a new paint scheme - although we have seen that car in several different paint schemes over the last few years with several different names attached to it. Let's hope that this situation now is going to have stability and give everybody the resources they need to try and improve.

With Giancarlo Fisichella and Adrian Sutil, they have two very respectable drivers and a nice mix of experience and youth.

Super Aguri, meanwhile, is on the other end of the stick at the minute. It seems to be struggling even to get to the first race. Lack of funding is obviously a key point and there are lots of rumours about equity partners and sponsor partners and whether Honda is going to bail them out for another year or so.

It is a great little team though. They have put a lot of effort in and they deserve to be on the grid. If they can put an F1 team out from scratch in such a short space of time - as they did - then I am sure they can overcome the problems they have got at present. [Mark was speaking prior to the news on Monday that Super Aguri had secured its future after agreeing a deal with Magma Group - Ed].

So, to sum up, while I think Felipe will have the edge this year overall, I am going to opt for Raikkonen to take the pole and the race win in Australia, with the Brazilian taking the runners-up spot and Lewis third.

Then I am going to put Heidfeld in fourth followed by Heikki Kovalainen and maybe Alonso.

Enjoy the race and look out for my next column on Crash.net prior to the start of the European season and the Spanish GP.


MB