MELBOURNE -- First start of the season, first corner, first crash and first controversy have all hit Formula One in a matter of seconds.

The in-car footage of Ralf Schumacher's Williams plowing into the rear of Rubens Barrichello's Ferrari, speeding skywards before crash landing and plunging into the barriers will be rerun endlessly.

So will the debate about whether, with eight of the 22 cars written off at the first corner, the Australian Grand Prix should have been restarted instead of being allowed to continue behind the safety car.

"From my point of view it should have been red-flagged and the race started again," said Michael Schumacher, Ferrari's race winner for the third year in a row and older brother of the uninjured Ralf.

"There is a certain rule and they (race officials) followed the rule, but maybe you can argue the rule should be changed."

Jordan's engineering head Gary Anderson, with Italian Giancarlo Fisichella out of the race, was adamant that the International Automobile Federation (FIA) was at fault.

"The decision not to stop the race by FIA is absolutely absurd," he said, speaking from the pit lane wall during the heat of battle.

Others disagreed, not always depending on whether or not they were victims. The general feeling was that the sport as a whole had benefited from a rare reversal of fortunes which allowed smaller teams to enjoy their moment of success.

Minardi, who last scored a point in 1999, and Toyota, in their first grand prix, both scored points.

"In grands prix you get one crack at it and if you screw up, you screw up," declared Jaguar's Eddie Irvine, the surprise fourth placed finisher.

Australian Mark Webber, in his first grand prix, finished fifth for Minardi. The crowd loved it and he was feted around the paddock.

"From our team's point of view it's been a very disappointing weekend," said BAR boss David Richards, who saw both his cars fail to finish.

"You've got to remember that the role of the race director is to manage safety and he has to decide whether the track is safe to continue driving on under a safety car as it happened.

"Clearly there were no incidents after that so his decision was correct. If you make the decision from an entertainment point of view you look at it on a completely different basis.

"That's not his role. Whether we would have got a better show out of it had we restarted, well that's clearly a matter of conjecture. You certainly wouldn't have had an Australian hero in Mark Webber tonight."