Australian Grand Prix: Was new-era F1 really racing or more like a computer game?

Russell said the new style of F1 had made his early battle with Leclerc “dicey”.

Leclerc, who finished third behind Russell and his Mercedes team-mate Kimi Antonelli, said the new requirement to constantly charge and deploy 350kw (470bhp) of electrical power “will definitely change the way we go about racing and overtaking”.

Lewis Hamilton, fourth behind Ferrari team-mate Leclerc, said he “loved it, the race was really fun to drive”.

World champion Lando Norris, who finished fifth, predicted that F1 was “just waiting for something to go horribly wrong” given the speed differentials involved.

And four-time champion Max Verstappen said he loved racing but not like this. “I do want it to be better than this,” he said.

Of the battle for the lead for the first 10 laps, Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur said: “I’m not sure that I saw something like this the last 10 years.”

But the misgivings remain, and team bosses retain open minds about the potential that the rules might need to be tweaked after three races this year – a point at which all have agreed to take a pause and reflect.

The battle between Russell and Leclerc was a function of the new technology.

One would use the overtake or boost mode to pass. But this not only left them vulnerable to being overtaken again, as the cars swapped around who had the most electrical energy, but also made it difficult for them to break away from each other, and the rest of the field.

In fact, their battle compromised them heavily, allowing Hamilton and Antonelli to catch up and briefly make it a four-way scrap for the lead before a virtual safety car led to split strategies and an ultimately comfortable victory for Russell and a one-two for Mercedes. They look formidably strong heading to the second race in China this coming weekend.

There was enough evidence in the race that the concerns expressed by the drivers were real, too.

The speed differentials at the start were startling. There was one very near miss between Liam Lawson of Racing Bulls and Franco Colapinto’s Alpine, and Norris and Russell both expressed concerns about them in racing on track, too.

Norris was the most outspoken.

“It’s chaos,” he said. “You’re going to have a big accident, which is a shame. You’re kind of driving and we’re the ones just waiting for something to happen and something to go quite horribly wrong, and that’s not a nice position to be in.

“Just depending on what people do, you can have a 30, 40, 50 km/h speed (differential), and when someone hits someone at that speed, you’re going to fly and you’re going to go over the fence and you’re going to do a lot of damage to yourself and maybe to others. And that’s a pretty horrible thing to think about.”

Equally, is racing by pressing a button for more electrical energy really racing? McLaren team principal Andrea Stella described it as “a little bit artificial”.

He added: “When the pace settles and everyone is on the same pattern from a deployment schedule point of view, then I think that overtaking becomes difficult. So I think even from an overtaking point of view, this is something that we need to keep reviewing.”