THE AUSTRALIAN GRAND PRIX

The mornings race wasn’t an overly exciting one, but combined with the qualifying provides us with some good talking points to delve into. So here goes………

To be honest, qualifying wasn’t so good. A lot of the important laps were spoilt. Michael Schumacher was on an extremely quick lap that would surely have taken pole when the session was red-flagged due to David Coulthard’s overt display of affection towards one of the circuits perimeter walls.

As I had mentioned in my last article, the Prost’s were not good. Jean Alesi looked like he was having a nightmare trying to keep his car on the black stuff, and was out-qualified by his new team mate Nick Heidfeld. The Jaguar’s seemed to have terrible handling in the entry and mid-points of the corners, but Eddie managed to drag his car into a fairly respectable grid position.

After a good ‘off’ in the mornings warm up, Jensen Button’s day didn’t get much better. His first two qualifying runs were spoilt by fuel pick-up problems. He switched to the spare car, which was set up for Ralf Schumacher, and went out again. He eventually qualified 21^st (he was using Ralf’s suspension settings). This probably wasn’t such a bad thing as it meant he wouldn’t get himself right in the middle of the more aggressive boys right from the start.

The start was fairly unimpressive, with both Ferrari’s getting bogged down, causing Rubens to be overtaken by Frentzen. The most impressive first lap was driven by Mr Button – 21^st to 15^th, not bad for the new boy.

The McLarens both looked strong, with Mika pulling out a bit of a gap. I was a bit worried as to why Michael didn’t pressure David more in the opening laps, I was hoping for more from him. In the end it was fairly irrelevant as David’s engine decided to call it a day. Mika followed shortly after with seemingly the same problem – let’s hope those Mercedes were still under warranty. Initial reactions were that they had air pressure problems, causing the valves to go out of line.

Rubens put in a quick pit-stop to put himself ahead of Frentzen, but unfortunately didn’t put enough fuel into the car – he would have to stop again. This was fairly immaterial when both the Jordan’s decided to call it a day – Frentzen with gearbox troubles and Jarno with……..oh, I can’t remember – it was about four in the morning for gods sake – do you expect me to remember every minute detail?!

So, towards the end of the race Rubens put in some very fast laps – including a fastest lap – to put some distance in between himself and third place. He came up behind Michael who duly waved him through knowing that he was going to have to stop again. Michael was chilling out, going easy on fuel, brakes and tyres – an easy ten points were on offer. He did, however, have a bit of a moment towards the latter stages as the Ferrari got well out of shape in one of the chicanes.

From then on it was a cruise to the line. Fourth place to eighth was a pretty close fight with Jensen right in the fray – however his engine let go towards the end. An impressive debut none the less. I’m looking forward to seeing how he goes in Brazil in a fortnight’s time.

The race finished with Michael, Rubens, Ralf, Jacques (yay!), Giancarlo and Mika Salo in the top six places. Mika Salo was particularly storming, a few more laps and he would probably have taken Fisichella, and maybe Villeneuve. It was a great day for BAR (their first ever championship points), Arrows (an impressive performance), and Ferrari – who for once start the season on a competitive footing with McLaren.

The next race is in Interlagos in Brazil in two weeks – expect Rubens to repeat his impressive performance from last year. It’s going to be a hot season.

Tristan.