The 2003 season got off to a flying start at Sunday's Australian Grand Prix, providing the public with one of the most exciting and unpredictable races seen for some time. The FIA's sweeping changes, however, had little to do with it all, as it was the rain that, as usual, altered the established order. Richard Barnes reviews how the weather contributed to improving the season-opening Grand Prix

When the dust had settled after Sunday's season-opening Australian Grand Prix, the widest smiles may have been on the faces of winner David Coulthard and his McLaren team boss Ron Dennis, who saw his drivers transform a dismal qualifying session into a win and 16 Constructors' Championship points. Yet it was FIA chief Max Mosley who had the greatest reason to feel jubilant.

Mosley must have been a worried man after the first official running of the new single-lap qualifying format on Saturday. With the Ferraris of Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello cruising to an all-red front row, it seemed like the new regulations were having the opposite of their intended effect. During the lopsided 2002 season, Ferrari's major challengers, Williams and McLaren, were at least snapping at their heels in terms of grid position, if not performance. With only Williams's Juan Pablo Montoya mounting a serious challenge to Ferrari's dominance during Saturday's qualifying, and the McLaren pair closer to the Minardi end of the grid, it seemed like Mosley's grand plan had backfired.

Fortunately, motor racing is not just about mechanical absolutes, but also the frailties of human endeavor. It's hard to remember a dry Grand Prix in which five of the six favourites sacrificed their race chances to driver errors - three of them from a position of probable victory. In such circumstances, you'd also bet that Michael Schumacher would be the inevitable benefactor of other drivers' errors. Yet even the German World Champion's metronomic consistency was breached in what will be remembered as one of the most exciting and unpredictable season openers ever.

It was the best possible start to Mosley's brave new F1 world - four different leaders in three different cars, a surprise win for established star David Coulthard, race-long entertainment and intrigue, and a tense and close-fought finish (for the podium placings, at least). Max Mosley certainly has cause to feel vindicated. Yet, before we herald the new rules as the answer to F1's core problems, it must be noted that the spectacle of Australia owed little to the new rules. Instead, the credit must go to that greatest leveler of all - the weather.

Fans didn't enjoy a topsy-turvy and thrilling Australian Grand Prix because of the new qualifying format, but rather in spite of it. With limited overtaking opportunities on the Albert Park circuit, a dry race would probably have seen the Ferraris vanishing off into the distance as Ralf Schumacher, winner Coulthard and Finn Raikkonen battled to overcome the handicap of a lowly grid position. The new qualifying rules may well have served to shuffle the deck, but until such time as overtaking is made easier in the current formula, that is likely to cause frustration rather than thrilling racing.

It was the dampness of the track that lured Ferrari into a rare tactical blunder of starting on intermediates, and it was an almost equally rare moment of tactical Williams acuity that propelled Montoya to the head of the field on his dry grooved Michelins. It's a gamble that Williams have taken before, most memorably at Monaco 1997. On that occasion, the fickle European weather worked against them, destroying Jacques Villeneuve's and Heinz Harald Frentzen's chances from the start. On Sunday, it should have been a gamble of race-winning vision - until that other great leveler, the safety car, allowed Schumacher and the McLarens back into the frame before Montoya spun himself out of the lead.

While Montoya and Williams could blame bad luck and traction control glitches for robbing them of victory, even the Colombian's second place gave little cause for celebration. Ralf Schumacher looked out of sorts all weekend, and Williams have already shown their hand by running the 2003 car from the start. If they are scarcely able to keep pace with their rivals' revised but year-old designs, Williams must be praying that both of their rivals' 2003 cars experience unforeseen teething problems.

McLaren have greater reason for optimism. Coulthard and Raikkonen have developed into a well-balanced driver pairing that mixes experience and youth, as well as aggressive and conservative approaches. If the 2003 McLaren continues the performance improvement shown by the revised 2002 car in Australia, McLaren's return to the top could happen sooner than predicted. At the very least, they seem to have resolved the critical horsepower shortage that rendered their 2002 Championship chase so ineffective. A further plus is that both cars ran flawlessly, a rarity for McLaren early in the season, although Williams and Ferrari also showed that they're placing a high premium on reliability under the new points system.

However, even after ending their streak of 53 successive podium finishes, Ferrari must remain as firm favourites for the season. It took a tactical blunder, a botched pitstop, an uncharacteristic Schumacher mistake and the loss of some critical aerodynamic body parts to end Ferrari's podium streak. And even then, Schumacher was mere metres shy of a podium finish by the flag - a praiseworthy feat of driving under the circumstances. Nevertheless, it will irk the German that it was human error and not mechanical failure that ended the streak. A broken car can be shrugged off with "That's racing"; driver errors are naturally taken more personally. Neither Schumacher nor Ferrari will be in such charitable mode come Malaysia. Williams and McLaren may have narrowed the gap, but Max Mosley's dreams of parity are still some way short of realisation.

This applies to the rest of the field as well. Sauber, Toyota and BAR flattered early, only to deceive later. The status quo from 2002 has remained static during the off-season, with Renault once again emerging as 'best of the rest' from a very tight midfield pack. Jaguar continues to be the enigmatic dark horse, with local hero Mark Webber running a creditable fifth before retirement. If the car had lasted the distance, it would have been interesting to see how the mishaps of Montoya, Raikkonen and the Schumacher brothers might have affected Webber's final position. The Australian is emerging as a driver with legitimate star credentials, albeit only proven against F1 rookies like Alex Yoong, Anthony Davidson and Antonio Pizzonia so far.

Formula One has made a concerted off-season effort to revive itself and return to the halcyon days where it was the pinnacle of racing, and not just the pinnacle of technology. The new regulations haven't proven their value yet, but at least the season is off to a promising start. At the very least, Michael Schumacher is not leading the Championship. It's a situation that has not been experienced by anybody who started following the sport during the last two years. It's also ironic that, in the most technologically dependent sporting endeavor known to man, it took a simple and timeless act of nature to bring renewed hope. It's Formula One's version of the Chaos Theory - it rains on a Sunday morning in Melbourne, and television sets around the world switch over to F1 coverage. Let's hope it happens again in Malaysia.