| MELBOURNE |
| AUSTRALIAN GRAND PRIX 3rd March 2002 Well it was certainly an eventful start to a new year! After months of speculation over who would win and who would be looking for alternative employment in 2003 the season finally got under way at Albert Park last weekend. Ferrari proved right from the first practice that they would be taking up exactly where they left off - from the front, with the usual sublime performance from Michael Schumacher and a confident start from Rubens Barrichello, as predicted the McLaren's and the Williams weren't far behind. Qualifying may have had a slightly different outcome had it not been for rain twenty minutes into the session. Michael Schumacher would probably have been first not second and whether Ralf would have beaten J-PM (don't get us wrong we hope he still would have) is more questionable. David Coulthard finished fourth and Kimi Raikkonen was an impressive fifth and looking like he could be giving DC some serious cause for concern in the not too distant future. It was business as usual at the back of the grid too, Jaguar failed as usual to live up to their pre-season hype finishing a fairly lacklustre 19th and 20th behind Mark Webbers excellent debut performance in the Minardi. BAR and Renault showed they has also made little obvious improvement over last years mid-table mediocrity. So we prepared ourselves for an exciting race, we had hoped all winter that Ralf would kick things off a way that set him out as a serious championship contender, hopefully with a win. Well he got a good start at least. The juries still out on who was actually repsonsible for the major pile up at the first corner. Personally we think that it would be unfair to blame Ralf or Rubens entirely. Rubens certainly weaved around in front of him a lot more than is allowed in the rules but Ralfie was certainly leaving breaking until the last possible moment. It's difficult to see if how he was ever going to get around that corner with his car in one piece. Still aside from them it was an unlucky start to the season for innocent bystanders, including Allan McNish, Giancarlo Fisichella, Jenson Button and at least one BAR. The race continued under the safety car which was slightly dissapointing because a restart would have made a much better spectacle. DC, Trulli JPM and Michael led under the safety car and when the race restarted Michael cashed in on a mistake from JPM (funny that mistakes from JPM are never mentioned in any newspapers and those by Ralf are made out to be far worse than they are) and went third. After pressurising Jarno for a good few laps the inevitable happened and Jarno made a mistake locked up his wheels and raced into the barrier writing off his Renault and calling out the safety car. On the subsequent restart DC locked up, Michael was still sleeping and JPM capitalised zooming into the lead. Michael however had other ideas than letting it turn into a JPM show and overtook him comfortably a few laps later. It was the last that was seen of the Ferrari this race. JPM ended second after DC's car gave up and Kimi, in his first drive for McLaren managed a podium, exactly a year after making his debut, he set the fastest lap too. Special mention to Mark Webber who to the delight of Paul Stoddart scored a magical two championship points, Toyota also managed one on their debut allthough it was sixth behind a Minardi. But hey a finish is still a finish. HOW WE RATE THEM Michael Schumacher : 10/10 - you can't start a season a lot better than that Rubens Barrichello : 4/10 : Lucky pole, then made a mistake that ruined the race David Coulthard : 6/10 - Unlucky(ish) although it's hard to imagine he'd have beaten Michael Kimi Raikkonen : 8/10 Great debut Ralf Schumacher : 7/10 - Please don't do it again. Juan-Pablo Montoya : 8/10 Good start to the season |