Brazilian Rubens Barrichello finished runner-up on Sunday for champions Ferrari, ahead of Fisichella's Spanish team mate Fernando Alonso.

Briton David Coulthard gave the new Red Bull team a strong debut with fourth place after running as high as second while Australian Mark Webber was fifth for Williams.

"It was easy from the beginning to the end," Fisichella said. "It's the best start of my career and to win the first race of the season is great.

"I was quite conservative, never pushed to the limit except at the end when Rubens was catching me and I went a little quicker."

While Fisichella started his first race for Renault on pole position and won with a 5.5 second margin, celebrating only the second win of his 142-race career, Schumacher was never in contention.

The German, winner of 13 of last season's 18 races, capped a miserable weekend with retirement 15 laps from the finish after a collision with compatriot Nick Heidfeld's Williams.

Heidfeld skidded into Schumacher and shunted him off into the gravel at turn three and although the Ferrari driver was pushed back on to the track, he pitted and retired. Heidfeld also stopped.

The world champion's race had already been wrecked by starting 19th, with an engine change before the race, after a sudden storm rained on his hopes during Saturday qualifying.

Barrichello, usually cast in the role of Schumacher's loyal number two, charged back from the midfield to show that Ferrari remained a force despite starting the season with a modified version of their 2004 car.

"It shows that Ferrari has no crisis. We're here, we're going to fight," he said. "It's still our old car and the new car is going to give us even more pleasure."

Alonso also had a brilliant race, narrowly missing out on second place after being held up for 17 laps by Canadian Jacques Villeneuve's Sauber.

Webber's finish, after he started third, was a disappointment for the home crowd and left the Australian still searching for a better result than the fifth place he secured on his Formula One debut for Minardi in 2002.

Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya finished sixth on his McLaren debut and Austrian Christian Klien handed Red Bull two more points with seventh place.

Finland's Kimi Raikkonen was eighth, starting from the pit lane after being pushed off the grid during an aborted first start to the race.

Curiously, Fisichella's victory was the first he had been able to celebrate on the day of a race.

His only previous win was at the rain-hit and crash-strewn 2003 Brazilian grand prix, where he was declared the winner several days after the event when a timing error was discovered.

Marian Karthikeyan, India's first Formula One driver, finished 15th for Jordan as the highest-ranked of the four men making their grands prix debuts in Australia.