With an on-the-hoof strategy change winning Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix for Jenson Button from his rather miffed Brawn GP team-mate Rubens Barrichello, the Briton has now won four of this season to date’s five grands prix. Little wonder, therefore, that conventional paddock wisdom has ‘Jens’ wrapping up the title by September – the very outcome the wholesale (and horrifically expensive) rule changes were designed to prevent.

But, scratch beneath the surface of that result and there is plenty of reason to believe the title hunt will go all the way to the final corner of the final lap of Abu Dhabi inaugural race at the desert state’s spectacular marina circuit on November 1.

Yes, Brawn GP took their second one-two in only the team’s fifth race, yes, Ferrari made a sow’s ear of it; ditto McLaren. BMW were hardly on the pace, coming man Seb Vettel dropped from second to fourth and Toyota suffered a point-less race, but all pointers are that the Brawn Boys face a stiff challenge in Monaco and beyond.

Felipe Massa was carrying by far the heaviest fuel load of the front runners, and could so easily have taken the chequer but for refuelling problems after Ferrari redesigned the its tank layout as part of their revised package. An internal issue scuppered Kimi Räikkönen’s qualifying, with a minor hydraulic problem causing a throttle glitch and his subsequent retirement.

Yet, when running in clean air, the red cars were quick, and whilst the drivers have effectively written off their championship hopes, race wins look very much on the cards during the 12 remaining races – starting in a fortnight.

Vettel’s strategy was screwed when he got stuck behind Massa’s (heavy) Ferrari – which slipped ahead by dint of the spurt provided by KERS on the run to the first corner – and few doubt the young German and Mark Webber will soon prove Button’s thorniest challengers. Both Toyota’s qualified well, and, again, racing incidents rather than performance issues meant the Japanese team went back to their Cologne base empty-handed.

McLaren is confident that things are back on track, whilst BMW made arguably the largest leap up the grid, with silly things masking their progress – Robert Kubica’s final qualifying lap was blighted by an incorrectly fitted left front tyre, whilst Nick Heidfeld battled to get his rubber up to even temperature.

With just two tenths being the difference between qualifying 15^th and progressing to Q3 and fourth on the grid, slips are heavily penalised. The good news, though, is that the reward for finding those elusive fractions is massive progress, which is why I genuinely believe the season is far from over. With the circus now having returned to Europe – and staying here for a run of nine races – all teams are beavering away.

In past seasons the first race in Europe has generally been characterised by parties in teams’ new motor homes – those palatial homes-from-base which cost tens of millions and take a week to erect – but not this time in Catalunya: Such has been the toll taken by the credit crunch that only Ferrari unveiled a new (triple storey) facility, and whilst swish, it somehow lacked the ‘wow’ factor.

Sign of the times...

Talking of which, the times are very much set to change if FIA president Max Mosley is successful in ramming through his two-tier Formula 1 concept, more of which after Monaco. Suffice to say that five or six (possibly even seven) teams are in open revolt against the governing body, with Toyota’s John Howett exclusively revealing to me on Friday that they were considering not entering the 2010 championship, entries for which open for a week from 22 May.

Others team bosses weren’t quite as forthright, but admitted off the record that they, too, were looking at similarly drastic steps to force an about-turn. A series of meeting will be held over the next week, and things should be a lot clearer after the race in the principality – which falls slap-bang in the centre of the entry window.