Two races in and it’s hard to really assess how this season is going to pan out given that the two races have led to six different people on the podium, but already there are some clear winners and losers among the teams.

This is how I think the teams have faired in the season openers:

Ferrari :  Last year’s champions, but they are going to struggle to retain the title if they carry on as they are.  Uncharacteristic mechanical failures have resulted in a lot of the drivers’ time being spent off the track.  The drivers haven’t covered themselves in glory either, with both falling off the track in Melbourne before Massa repeated the mistake in Malaysia.

From a spectator’s point of view is Alonso joining Renault a good thing in the grand scheme of things?

It’s not an easy question to answer.

What it guarantees (hopefully, barring unforseen circumstances) is that the three best drivers are all going to be at different teams for the next year at least.

Unlike this year where Alonso and Hamilton were both at McLaren, next season will see Hamilton remain at McLaren, Alonso at Renault and Kimi at Ferrari.  Throw a BMW driver or two into the mix and perhaps a Red Bull and it sounds like it could be a good year of racing!

It seems Fernando Alonso is being backed into a corner slightly over where he will be driving next season.

Assuming there is to be no contract breaking going on, then where can he go?

There has been much speculation on this which I won’t go over again, but basically he seems to have a realistic choice between Renault and Toyota - between a team who were once great and could believably be great again, and a team who has loads of money, but are unlikely to be great anytime soon.

There is also a vacant seat at McLaren, but that’s hardly a likely option!

So McLaren are now accusing Renault of spying on them in much the same way that McLaren were accused of spying on Ferrari.

The accusations were first raised at the McLaren -v- Ferrari hearing which to me made it look like McLaren were simply trying the “but they have done it as well” tactic more often seen in primary school classrooms, so I didn’t pay them much heed.

Now various documents have been leaked which seem to point to there being more evidence and indeed a much more serious breach of the rules in this case than in the McLaren case - if the evidence really does stack up that is.