The Australian Grand Prix provided us with a few pretty major graphic illustrations. It wasn’t only that opening an F1 season at the appallingly redesigned Bahrain International Circuit is a shocking idea, because for my money what today displayed in no uncertain terms is that Lewis Hamilton ‘aint going to find 2010 quite as easy as he thought he was going to.

His post race strop pretty much summed it all up.

“I think I probably had one of the drives of my life and unfortunately, due to the strategy, I was put further back and then I got taken out by Mark Webber,” he told the BBC.

OK Lewis, calm down. Because, if we’re being honest, you kind of made your own bed on this one.

Before this season had even begun, the removal of refuelling had already been picked up within the F1 community as a facet of the new era of Formula 1 which could work against Lewis. Notoriously hard on his tyres, the 2008 world champion’s driving style does not naturally lend itself to having to preserve one’s rubber for as long as possible. On the flip side, his new team-mate and 2009 world champ Jenson Button is renowned for his smooth, almost effortless driving style which would, so we presumed, give itself more easily to the new regs.

JB won today’s race because of two major factors: Firstly, it was Jenson and Jenson alone who took the gamble to pit when he did for slicks. Second, it was Jenson and Jenson alone who pushed when he knew he could on his tyres, and yet still held enough in reserve to make them last until the end of the race.

So when we heard Lewis on the radio to the team in the middle of the race, cursing them for making him pit for a second set of slick tyres, and then slamming that very second set when he’d knackered them, we’re left with a very easy comparison. Because if his team-mate had managed to make them last the distance, why couldn’t Lewis?

“I’m happy with the job that I did. I think I honestly drove my heart out today and I think I deserved better than what I ended up with, but I’ll keep fighting to the next race.

“All I know is the guys do, always, a fantastic job, but the strategy was not right,” he said after the race. “Everyone else in front of me did one stop and for some reason I did two.”

Lewis always likes to talk up his role as a team-player at McLaren, but his post race sentiments reflect the dented ego of a man who has had his feathers very much ruffled by a driver whom he had perhaps failed to size up accurately. Most people expected Lewis to completely batter Jenson this season and maybe Lewis expected as much himself, so seeing Button take McLaren’s first win of the season will hit Lewis where it hurts. It will hurt even more as today’s race was won not only through Jenson’s superiority in the smooth driving stakes, but also through Jenson’s experience and confidence in making the right call at the perfect time.

Lewis has been criticised in the past for relying too heavily on the team to make decisions for him, and last season’s whole fall-out from the Australian Grand Prix came about because, as Hamilton himself has gone on the record to state… he did what the team told him to do.

When Lewis was asked who had been responsible for the call to stop a second time, he replied: “I don’t know, we’ll find out.”

The fact that the call came at all, and that Lewis either didn’t feel confident enough or have the wherewithal to overrule McLaren if he truly felt confident enough on his original set of rubber, shows us that Lewis either still lacks the experience to make his own calls or that he may have to look back on this race and admit that the team was right to make the call because he’d knackered his tyres.

Either way, slamming the team isn’t going to help matters. It just smacks of sour grapes on a day when the newboy to the team got one over on him.

The public face may be one of all smiles at McLaren, but I guarantee it will not be long before the cracks start to appear if Jenson’s confidence, maturity and smooth driving style keep reaping the rewards that they did today.

P.S. Apologies that I haven’t posted in a while… but my Daughter Sophie said hello to the world last Thursday morning. She is gorgeous, and she and her Mum are both doing fantastically. My attention has, naturally, been with them.