Oscar Piastri claims that energy harvest limiting will differ from track to track, and will favour the boffins not the racers.

In the aftermath of pre-season testing, one of the great fears is that managing energy will not only compromise the actual racing, but actually threatens the spectacle, as drivers are forced to lift and coast.

We witnessed instances in Bahrain, where one driver would slow on a straight in a bid to harvest energy, while his pursuer would draw alongside only to run out of energy.

Indeed, the 50/50 split between ICE and electrical power is likely to be the deciding factor in some races, with Piastri claiming that this will be very much circuit dependent.

"From the simulator running I've done, it's very different," he said. "I think at certain tracks we're going to be much more harvest-limited than we are here," he added.

"Here, depending on where you set your optimality, you don't have to do much lift and coast," he said of the Bahrain track, "whereas in Melbourne, I think if you didn't want to do any, you'd be running out of energy very, very quickly.

"It just depends on the layout of the circuit," he continued. "Jeddah is another one... places where you have a few straights linked together by vast corners where it's very difficult to harvest, that's where the most kind of abnormality is going to come.

"There's going to be some big differences, but in saying that, again, you can change things around a lot," he said, explaining that in many cases the energy strategy will be programmed in advance. "We've seen people here in Turn 12, you can definitely make it a corner if you want to, and it's a lot harder than it was last year, but at the moment it's kind of all set before you get in the car.

"You can change it on the fly, but it's a bit different because you're not just managing it on the throttle, let's say.

"Melbourne is going to look quite different, I think, and it will be a challenge for us all, I'm sure."

"It's racing, Jim, but not as we know it."