Having described Melbourne as a "weekend to forget" in the post-race press release, it was clear what sort of mood to expect when Jean Todt sat down an hour or so later for the post-race press debrief.

Asked what lesson Ferrari would take away from Melbourne, the answer was brief and unflinching. "That it's better to start on the front row," snapped the Frenchman.

A clear case of déjà vu, for isn't this what Ferrari was saying this time last year? "In a way," he agrees. "I would say that we had this problem several times last year and our major problem was warming up the tyres. Saying that, we had another specification of tyres available which was used by our competitors using Bridgestone tyres, and they definitely had a better warm-up. So it was up to us."

So would more running on Friday have helped? "Yeah, definitely," he admits. "We only used one specification of tyre on Friday, thinking we would do the job when the track would have been less green on Saturday. Unfortunately, we couldn't do it. You always learn."

Asked if the thinking that it was too much of a risk to take a tyre that the team had never run on before, he replied: "Yeah. We were not expecting such cool temperatures and we definitely didn't have enough information to make a good comparison."

The obvious question, looking at Michael's performance was how he was suddenly so much quicker, doing 1:29s/30s and then suddenly posting 1:27s: "It was because we had the right temperature, after refuelling, with a lot of fuel in." admits the Frenchman."

But he was posting those times before his pitstop… "Yeah, because he had the tyres at the right temperature," he adds.

Asked if he felt the car was good when it was running in perfect conditions," Todt admitted: "Yeah, not bad. When everything is working together, we have good potential. Unfortunately we couldn't express it properly.

"It was kind of like in the first race, not in the second one and even less in the third one."

There are now five teams running on Bridgestone rubber, so how important is it that they are all generating data for the tyres? "It's much better," he admits.

But asked if this can be decisive for the championship, he responds: "It definitely gives us more input which we were missing last year. Last year, in the same situation, we would have even less clear ideas. At least we know that our competitors, with different specification, we know what they can do.

Asked if the teams work very closely together, the response is brief: "We exchange some data."

Yet surely the fact that Williams and Toyota went quite well today will be encouraging compared with last year? "That's a good point," he agrees. "Bridgestone have definitely done a good job, on construction as well."