Kimi Raikkonen, the Iceman, made a two-stop strategy work perfectly on his way to victory in the season-opening formula One Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park.
All eyes were on the two Red Bulls in Melbourne, with world champion Sebastian Vettel and local favorite Mark Webber starting in the front two.
However, Webber, failed to get a good start, and ended up sixth, while Vettel was outmanoeuvred by Lotus, helping Raikkonen to a comfortable victory.
Fernando Alonso of Ferrari finished second, with Vettel taking third.
"It's the first race, so you don't really know how it's going to go, how the tyres are going to be," Raikkonen said. "I didn't really do any long runs in the winter.
"I knew that I had a good car, so I had a feeling that it was going to be a good race but you have to get through the first laps and then go from there."
Raikkonen admitted to being a little disappointed at starting from seventh place in the grid after an underwhelming qualifying session, but the end result of course made up for all that in the end.
"I was pretty disappointed this morning after the qualifying," he former world champions added. "Obviously there was only one lap really on the dries and I took it a bit too easy and got a bit of a small mistake in one corner.
"It was more timing and getting it right than really the maximum speed from all the cars, so not the ideal starting place but it was still ten places better than last year, so not a disaster in that way. I knew that my car is quite good. It's been feeling good all weekend and when we did the longer run it felt good."
Alonso, who like Vettel made three stops, looked happy to finish second, with this year's Ferrari car looking a lot better than the one that struggled at the beginning of the season last year.
"Obviously it was fantastic race, with fighting all through the race," he said. "I personally enjoyed it. Obviously at the end it was a little bit sad not to be able to win the race, but Kimi was fantastic today, the Lotus car as well. We need to congratulate them for a fantastic race."
Vettel will not be too concerned with the result in Melbourne, knowing there is plenty of races ahead and with Red Bull looking like the strongest team.
"I think the pace was there," Vettel said. "The naked pace. Qualifying was pretty good for us. I think we had quite a good run, and then also the first two laps of the race were pretty good and also the first two laps on each set of tyres felt pretty good.
"But yeah, obviously after that we couldn't keep it up and surely the times set in the front, from Fernando but Kimi especially, were quite impressive considering the amount of laps on the tyres. So, we couldn't do that and that's why, I think we lost out a little bit today."
Alonso's Ferrari teammate Felipe Massa took fourth place, while Lewis Hamilton, in his first race with the Mercedes, finished fifth.
