About the only insight the opening race of the Supercars championship provided was that defending champion Shane van Gisbergen is fully motivated to retain his title.
Amid speculation about a change of order triggered by a new type of tyre, and some significant driver and team changes, it was business as usual for van Gisbergen as he dominated the opening 250 km race of the Adelaide 500 on Saturday.
He looked ominously unstoppable as he cruised to a comfortable victory in a race made difficult only by the sweltering conditions and the constant threat of mayhem around the treacherous 3.22 km Adelaide Parklands street circuit.
Starting from pole position in his new-look Red Bull Holden Racing Team Commodore, van Gisbergen ceded the lead to fellow New Zealander Fabian Coulthard in the early stages, but once he got back in front after the first round of pit stops, he was never challenged.
Coulthard finished a distant second, but he would have been encouraged by his front-running speed in both qualifying and the race, signalling that DJR Team Penske is on the right course with its Ford Falcons.
The American-controlled squad, which is built on the bones of Dick Johnson Racing, was widely tipped to pose the greatest threat this year to the all-conquering Triple Eight Holden team following a major reorganisation and the addition of a new star driver and senior engineer.
However, it was not Coulthard that was expected to lead DJR Team Penske's charge, but his highly touted new teammate – and yet another Kiwi – Scott McLaughlin.
But in the top 10 shootout qualifying clinch, Coulthard snatched second on the grid as McLaughlin made an error that dropped him to sixth on the starting grid.
In the race, McLaughlin had the speed to contend early on, but fell out of the running after he earned a pit lane drive-through penalty for a transgression during an early – and very brief – safety car period.
There may be a new name on the side of the lead Triple Eight Commodores of van Gisbergen and record six-time V8 champion Jamie Whincup, but it is the same powerhouse as before.
The only glitch was that Whincup was wrong-footed by his early first pit stop strategy and was restricted to an uninspiring sixth place.
Despite losing its technical guru – and long-time designer of its pacesetting V8 racers – Ludo Lacroix to DJR team Penske, Triple Eight and van Gisbergen rose to the occasion in its new guise as the Holden Racing Team.
Triple Eight took over as the only factory backed Holden team from Walkinshaw Racing, which had raced at HRT for 26 years until it was dumped following several seasons of poor results.
It had been in the shadow of Triple Eight as Holden's best performing team since the benchmark squad switched from Ford in 2010 and has been recast as Mobil 1 HSV Racing this year.
Although he was never a serious threat, James Courtney proved the Walkinshaw outfit has lost none of its – or his – prowess around the unforgiving Adelaide street track by finishing third in his Commodore.
While a strong result for a team stripped of its big factory backing, the concern is that the podium is yet another of the false dawns that have characterised Courtney's race-winning speed at the track in recent years.
That speed has disappeared at the less testing permanent circuits that immediately follow the Adelaide 500 and it remains to be seen if the long-awaited turnaround has arrived.
As the field sussed out the limits of the new-construction Dunlop 'soft' tyres, Prodrive Racing young gun Cam Waters revelled in the extra grip for his Falcon to finish a solid fourth ahead of Rick Kelly's improved Nissan Altima.