A year goes by very quickly in Formula 1, but one can still remember the events of last year. Comparing the first five races of 2009 to this season's same grands prix and the turnaround for Scuderia Ferrari leaps off the page. Last year, one team, Brawn GP, had dominated the opening stages of the championship, winning four of the first five races, all with the same driver, Jenson Button. In the Constructor's classification, the former Honda team had 68 points, 30 more than its closest pursuer, while its lead driver had 41, 14 more than his team-mate and 18 more than the third placed man. Scuderia Ferrari? Seventh, with just six points to its name, thanks to sixth places for Raikkonen in Bahrain and Massa in Spain.

One year later and we are dancing to a very different tune. If one applies last season's scoring system to 2010, allowing for a correction for the 2009 Malaysian Grand Prix, where only half points were awarded as the event did not reach the 75 percent distance rule for full points, one can see that the team which has made the most progress is Ferrari, gaining 41 points, followed by McLaren (+33,) Renault (+11) and Red Bull (+4) while the newly born Mercedes team has spiralled down 47 points compared to its former incarnation as Brawn GP.

The Scuderia's progress is also visible from the fact that, with the old points system, Fernando Alonso would today be leading the Championship, albeit by just one point ahead of Button (28 to 27) and the team would be joint leader with McLaren on 47.

If one looks at the data for podium finishes and results in the top eight, the comparison between this year and last for the Prancing Horse is striking: from two miserly sixth places in 2009, it has now gone to eight finishes in the old points zone, of which 50% have been on the podium. The figures show how much the situation has changed, in a championship that appears to be more closely contested than any in the past decade, Ferrari and its drivers are right in there in the fight for both titles, irrespective of what points system is applicable.