Ralf Schumacher got the 2007 Formula 1 season off to a positive start for Panasonic Toyota Racing when he took the final point for eighth place in the Australian Grand Prix.

Team mate Jarno Trulli and Schumacher started the '07 Melbourne curtain-raiser from eighth and ninth places on the grid respectively and both TF107s ran strongly in the top 10 from the start.

"We got both cars home and scored a point, which is always pleasing in the first race of a new season," Schumacher said. "Towards the end I had a slight problem with pneumatic consumption but it didn't prevent me from finishing and we must now work hard to improve our race pace to bring us closer to the front-runners."

Trulli, meanwhile, ran right with Ralf throughout the first stint but then lost a little ground in traffic.

"I didn't get the greatest of starts and lost a couple of places before the first corner," Jarno explained. "I then lost a bit more time when Fisichella came out of the pits just in front of me and although he was on a heavy fuel load I couldn't get by. But it was a long race and Australia often throws up a few surprises, so it was good to get both cars to the finish with no mishaps."

Pole position man Kimi Raikkonen got off to a victorious start in his new seat at Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro, beating the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes cars of Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton into second and third positions. The race therefore produced the youngest podium in Grand Prix history - with an average age under 25! -- and Hamilton was the first rookie to score a podium finish on his debut since Jacques Villeneuve at this race 11 years ago.

Fourth place fell to Nick Heidfeld's BMW Sauber, ahead of Giancarlo Fisichella's Renault and Felipe Massa's Ferrari. Nico Rosberg was seventh for AT&T Williams.

There is now a three week gap before round two in Malaysia, which Senior General Manager, Chassis, Pascal Vasselon, thinks will provide a better indicator of what we can expect throughout the season.

"We test in cold climates during the winter and there can be some warm-up problems with tyres in Australia. Malaysia, however, is always hot and so it will be interesting to see what happens there. We have come away from the first race with a point but the car is not where we want it to be in terms of performance and we will be working hard to improve. Ralf was a little bit marginal with his pneumatic consumption in the race but drove solidly to score a point, while Jarno had some brake issues to contend with but also brought the car home."

A change in the regulations for 2007 requires the drivers to use both the available tyre compounds in the race and in Australia the Toyota drivers adopted the same strategy of doing the first two stints on the harder Bridgestone tyre and then the final stint on the softer one. The drivers experienced some rear degradation on the softer one but not enough to threaten the team's point-scoring start to the year.