In the end, the Australian Grand Prix didn’t turn into the Red Bull dominated affair that many feared after being the runaway stars of Sunday’s delayed qualifying shoot-out. Kimi Raikkonen and Lotus F1 took firm control of the race while Ferrari possibly should have had both drivers ahead of Sebastian Vettel rather than just Fernando Alonso. But what does this mean for the season ahead?

The first race of the season and Pirelli’s latest development of its tyre compounds held up better than some forecast, delivering the mix of two and three-stop strategies that the Italian manufacturer promised. Kimi Raikkonen’s victory owed much to the preservation power of the Lotus as his nearest rivals couldn’t compete with his two-stop run to the chequered flag.

So that wraps up pre-season testing for 2012 with Lotus’ Kimi Raikkonen setting the quickest lap of the week as Lotus topped three of the four days’ timesheets. Of course, that’s just the headline times and too much shouldn’t be read into it any more than doom and gloom should be implied from Sebastian Vettel’s position at the bottom of the overall timesheet.

Here endeth pre-season testing. Kimi Raikkonen finished as he started off testing in Jerez a month ago – sitting at the top of the timesheets, this time with the fastest lap of all eight days of testing at the Circuit de Catalunya. Sebastian Vettel, on the otherhand, was left propping up the table as a crash in which he damaged Red Bull’s latest front wing and gearbox problems limited him to a handful of laps.

Day two of the final test before the season curtain raiser in Melbourne saw Lotus’ Romain Grosjean top the timesheets for the second day running. Once again, the Frenchman set his best lap on Pirelli’s soft compound and it should be noted that Sebastian Vettel’s best time was on the medium compound. More interestingly, however, Grosjean ran a full race simulation alongside Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso.

After a disastrous second test, Lotus and Romain Grosjean returned to where they’d left off at the end of the first test – at the top of the time sheets. Meanwhile Red Bull, Ferrari and, in particular, Mercedes are already well into running long stints. That comes ahead of race simulations which, for me, are more informative than the headline-grabbing quick laps set on unknown fuel quantities.