The Briton eventually tailed former karting rival and BAR/
Honda team-mate Button across the line, both also behind Webber and Tonio Liuzzi in the only
Red Bull cars to make the finish. Webber had looked comfortable in seventh early on, maintaining his grid position, but dropped down the order at both his pit-stops and appeared unable to make up the lost ground in between. Liuzzi, meanwhile, drove a quiet race, determined to make the flag as the Toro Rosso team sought to learn as much about its new machine as possible.
Their respective team-mates -
David Coulthard and
Scott Speed - both suffered dramatic exits, the Scot involved in an accident with fellow veteran Alex Wurz and the American claiming that an exploding right front tyre had forced him off and out. While Speed emerged unscathed after a bumpy ride across the grass, DC took to the air after an optimistic lunge on Wurz's
Williams. Admitting to being at fault for the incident - 'I was going too quickly for the corner', he said - Coulthard probably wasn't aware just how close his rear wheel came to making contact with the Austrian's helmet, before the RB3 bounced into the gravel trap, its left-front corner re-arranged.
Wurz also retired, despite having got his car going again, joining Kubica, Speed and Christijan Albers in civvies before the race ended. After a pre-season in which the Spyker team had praised the reliability of its new car, Albers had the ignominy of being the year's first race retirement, and probably its most bizarre, claiming that he had missed his braking point for turn three when his earplug cable became tangled in the cockpit.
Remarkably, given past experiences, there as no call for the safety car on a sunny Melbourne afternoon. Had it appeared, however, it was unlikely that - even being a Mercedes - it would have ruined
Kimi Raikkonen's walk in the park.
