You had to go down to row 5 to find McLaren's Juan Pablo Montoya and Kimi Raikkonen.  The Ferrari drivers?  Rubens Barrichello qualified 11^th, and Michael Schumacher was in 19^th (because of an engine change.)   For reasons you will soon see I should also mention that the other Renault driver, Fernando Alonso, was in 13^th.

Now you might have expected that this starting order was an invitation for a disaster. Not so.  But the start did have a quirk.  Just as the race was about to launch, Kimi had a problem with his car on the grid.  So the rest of the field had to do the first lap under yellow so that they could push Kimi's car off the grid.  I think they called it another parade lap, but it counted as one of the race laps.  Then the field came back to the grid for their standing start, or was it now a restart.  In the mean time Kimi's car had been fixed so he could start at the back, except he had to wait until they had all started before he could start. 

 In spite of all this, the start was very orderly.  And the race turned out to be tremendously exciting, because (a), there was a lot of great  and thrilling  passing on the track (as opposed to in the pits) which was captured for the TV audience, and (b), there were a number of drivers who you would not have expected to do well, who really did well.

The winner, for any of you who don't know, was Giancarlo Fisichella, who led most of the race in his beautiful powder blue and yellow Renault.  He really smoked the field. But that didn't detract from the excitement because nobody thought that he could smoke the field for the whole race.   Perhaps less surprising was that Rubens Barrichello and his Ferrari came in 2^nd.  I have to say that Rubens drove a great race coming from 11^th on the grid and putting on one wonderful passing move after another.  When Rubins made it to 2^nd place there was the thought that he just might be able to win the race.  But then Giancarlo just turned up the smoke a little more and Rubins had to settle for 2^nd.  Filling out the podium was the biggest surprise of all, Giancarlo's teammate, Fernando Alonso, who had started 13^th , and also put on a remarkable passing demonstration.  Team Renault had plenty to be proud of. 

Also remarkable about the race was the team finish of Red Bull Racing, with David Coulthard  4^th and Klien in 7^th.  McLaren did not do as well as might have been expected, although Kimi ended all the way up in 8^th, while Montoya was 6^th, three positions ahead of where he started.  As for Michael Schumacher, it was not his weekend.  Although he had been working his way up though the field as you would expect, he and Nick Heidfeld, of Williams, collided as Nick tried to make a pass on Michael and the two of them went out of the race. 

 So there it was, not just a surprising starting grid, but surprising finishes and surprising teams. And the future for this year's F1 season?  I think we can expect that the next four races will also have surprises.  Why?  Because the Ferrari team will not have their 2005 new cars and engines until the 6^th race, Spain.  Then we will see.  Still, I have to say that the F1 season is off to a great and exciting start.  The next Grand Prix is in Sepang, Malaysia on March 20^th.  If you are not going to be there you can catch it live on Speed TV, but check the time.