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“That's not nice and it shouldn't happen,” Heidfeld told BBC Sport. “He just pushed me wide, we made contact and that’s not a safe thing to do.”

That's going to make for an awkward debrief. Of course Heidfeld is referring to the manoeuvre Petrov used to defend his position going into the final chicane section, pushing Heidfeld almost into the pit lane.

Having said that, if they both kept their hands on the wheel rather than waving at each other, the incident might not have been so bad.

Petrov played down the incident as he said: 'To be honest I still don't understand what I did.

'The corner is a difficult one, and I knew Lewis (Hamilton) was behind me, but there were only two laps to go and I knew my tyres were good.

'But I picked up some rubber which resulted in understeer and I went wide, and it was a big bump there.

'When I took off and hit the ground, my first thought then was that my race was over. It wasn't scary for me. You know it's going to be a big shunt.

'It's actually more scary when you see a wall coming towards you when you crash.'

After finishing third in the first race of the season in Australia a fortnight ago, Petrov was naturally gutted not to have scored at least something on this occasion.

'It was a small mistake from me that shouldn't have had the consequences it had,' added Petrov, whose team-mate Nick Heidfeld was third.

'Both cars should have been in the points, but the good news is we clearly have the pace needed to compete this season.'

Darly Beattie actually made a good point during One HD's telecast (it's taken a few years but he's gotten there (I look forward to your letters)) that on a newly designed circuit there really shouldn't be these sorts of bumps or dips that would result in such a catastrophic launch. While I don't think Petrov should have tried to join with such speed, I'm sure he's done it elsewhere before without drama and what if he had some sort of failure that pushed him out wide, the result would have been similar or perhaps worse.

And if youa re wondering where the Rudderless Russian remark comes from, you can thank Martin Brundle.  After seeing the incident, he commented on why Mika Hakkinen was the Flying Fynn and then referred to Petrov as the Rudderless Russian when his steering broke after he landed from his huge jump.  Some of the best F1 commentary comedy I've heard since the Murray Walker days.

Martin Brundle takes a closer look:

"It depends also on whether it’s new or scrubbed, or whether you push them harder, but it does not take long (to go off). After just one lap you start losing five tenths, then one and a half seconds, then two seconds and three seconds…

“It’s difficult…well, not difficult but if you decided to delay your pit-stop for a lap you’ll start losing a second immediately, and then two seconds, and so on.”

When asked if the capabilities of the tyres drop gradually or sometimes level out for a certain number of laps, the Russian Renault driver replied:

“The performance just goes straight down, and then further down and down! We tried today to conserve them and drive smoothly, as you could with the Bridgestones, but with these you sometimes even lose a full second in just one corner.”

So we've gone from "great we'll have more pitstops" to a situation where was are back on the one lap qualifying to get these tyres to work, probably with a very slow outlap. It will be very interesting to see how this shakes out at the first track, which let's all remember is no Melbourne with is a street circuit.

Complaining about the tyres is nothing new, teams complained previously over the lack of refuelling meaning they couldn't make the tyres last with a heavy car, but we all saw what happened last season.

My view is we'll start to see teams forfeiting outright speed for tyre durability in their setup. Being able to run lots of wing with the new overtaking wing will most likely help in this regard. So we might see the pole sitters off the pace in the race as teams who chased outright pace will either see their performance drop off dramatically lap by lap with tyre degradation, or forced to take a pit stop or two more than their competition. 

Not long to go until we see how this shakes out in Melbourne!