The Australian Grand Prix, the first race of the 2002 season, was an action packed event, with several on-track incidents and plenty of racing. But there was a lot more to it than what the television cameras showed. Roger Horton reviews the action that took place behind the scenes

Melbourne is a great place to start the new season. The city, like most of Australia, is sports mad, the people are friendly and welcoming, and the track is easy to get in and out of. What more could you ask for? The weather? Yes, it was a shame about the weather, especially as by the time the Formula One brigade flew out on the Monday after the race, the normal summer weather had returned and the skies were blue once again. Clearly the weather Gods are Japanese, not French!

Last year we endured quite a number of 'flat' races with predictable outcomes, but although it was pretty clear from the outset that the Ferraris were going to stroll to victory in this race so long as they kept going, there was so much going everywhere all weekend that it was impossible to get bored. Indeed, as the last laps played out against the sound of thousands of Aussies cheering on their newly adopted national hero Mark Webber, it was very much a case of juggling just what story to cover first.

Although Formula One cars are extremely impressive pieces of kit, it is the human side of the sport that most followers find so interesting. Observing how different drivers react under pressure and handle the many stresses that occur over an entire season can be fascinating stuff, and after watching an individual driver for a while, it is pretty obvious why he is successful, or not, as the case may be.

Michael Schumacher is, of course, the benchmark when it comes to evaluating the individual way a driver can adapt, and mould his personality to suit the demands of a race weekend. As soon as Schumacher arrives at a circuit to do his job, he puts on his 'game face' and it's in place until he is standing on the podium, once again 'conducting' the Italian national anthem, something he has had lots of practise at in recent years. He may never get a musical degree from the Sorbonne, but who cares? Certainly not the millions of Italians who have seen what he has achieved for their beloved Scuderia.

Juan Pablo Montoya is the driver who many believe is the most likely candidate to, if not eliminate, then certainly curtail Schumacher's musical 'career'. Montoya has reduced the business of being a racing driver down to a few simple rules. Nothing that this Colombian does is complicated. In a recent interview with The Guardian newspaper he talked about preparing himself before a race. "It's simple: get in car, drive car, see what happens."

This is the essence of Montoya's whole approach to life, and therefore to racing, because for him, racing is his life. So keep it simple, get in the car, drive the car, and see what happens.

There was a perfect example of Montoya's ability to handle pressure in Melbourne. With just minutes to go before the start of the sighting lap, an electrical problem was diagnosed on his car. He was asked to vacate the cockpit whilst his mechanics worked feverously to fix it.

Now everyone at Williams still have vivid memories of what happened just prior to the Belgian Grand Prix last year, when the team was caught out replacing a faulty rear wing on Ralf Schumacher's car, and the German was left high and dry, his car still on its jacks as the field took off for their sighting lap all around him. Ralf, let's say, certainly lost his sense of humour that day, and although in the heat of the moment his anger was understandable, there are always times when it's better to keep your thoughts to yourself.

Yet as the drama played out all around him in Melbourne, Montoya was content to suck on his drinks bottle and keep out of the way. When required he calmly strapped himself back in his office ready to go to work, and found the time to joke about it. No wonder the team hold him in such high regard.

All over the Grand Prix weekend the BAR area in the paddock had a rather strange look about it. Not only was Dave Richards, the new team boss, very much in evidence, but so too was the old one Craig Pollock. Pollock was there in his capacity as Jacques Villeneuve's manager and "as a shareholder in BAR." Now in normal life a dismissed employee is generally kept away from his old office to save everyone's blushes, but if Richards cared he certainly didn't show it, whilst Pollock made no attempt to keep a low profile.

Pollock was at least spared his usual post race job of explaining away another dismal performance by the Honda-powered machines, and just why they suffered yet another rear wing failure on Villeneuve's car. On the other hand, it will be of interest to see who joins Pollock in the ranks of being an ex BAR employee when Richards announces the clear out that is surely coming. There were some suggestions in Australia that it would start with the people responsible for the design of these consistently under performing cars, and it's certainly hard to make a case in their defence.

Over the next couple of weeks or so we are going to be hearing a lot about cost saving in Formula One, with suggestions from the FIA that the teams will only be allowed to use one engine per weekend, together with two-day race meetings. Like many of these proposals, which will be voted on at a meeting of the F1 commission on March 19, the devil will be in the detail, but quite how much money is going to be saved by making the engine suppliers design and build a completely new family of engines is hard to say.

And then there is the question of just what constitutes an engine. Does it mean that the entire unit complete with all its ancillaries will be sealed before practice starts and nothing touched at all until the chequered flag falls? If not then the teams will simply employ portable engine repair workshops and constantly rebuild the one unit allowed. And why stop at just engines, what about gearboxes and transmissions, or brakes, if more or less the whole car had to be untouched wouldn't that save yet more money?

No wonder that some of the more sensible team owners were urging caution before rushing into a major revision of the rules, but are the powers that be going to listen? Patrick Head, the outspoken technical director of Williams, was scathing of the whole subject, suggesting that the idea was a political ploy by Ferrari to gain an advantage over their two closest Michelin-shod rivals.

"If you're Ferrari with tyres that don't need scrubbing, and Michael Schumacher who only needs one lap to get a time out of the car, your best way of doing damage to your two serious competitors is to propose one engine for a weekend," said the Englishman in Melbourne. "It's all politics. We're being manipulated."

Indeed, and on Sunday morning the two British teams and their respective engine suppliers were seen having a long and detailed discussion in the McLaren hospitality area, no doubt thinking about ways of handling the coming political battle. The word in Melbourne was that it's likely that the changes would get enough votes on the 26-member F1 commission for the changes to be pushed through, but it's sure to be a hot topic in Malaysia.

You are also sure to hear the phrase 'for the good of the sport' being bandied around a lot when these proposed changes are debated. When you hear a team owner saying this, then you know that that particular team owner believes that his team will gain from the new rules. No team owner cares one jot about what's good for the sport, he cares only about advancing the interests of his own team, and when he deviates from this path he is essentially finished as a serious player in the Piranha Club that is Grand Prix racing.

The interpretation of the rules regarding Michelin's new tyre design was another subject of interest in Melbourne, and Michelin called a special media briefing to set the record straight on the subject of their now infamous asymmetrical grooves. It seems that by having different angles each side of the Rib and the base of the tyre, the Rib, or contact patch of the tyre, was stiffened and this apparently went a long way to eliminating the need for the dreaded scrubbing that so bedevils the users of the French company's products.

The rules state that the grooves must taper uniformly. The Michelin argument is that to taper uniformly means to taper linearly and that that doesn't necessarily mean that the grooves have to be symmetrical. So on such arcane interpretations of the rules are the battles for the Championship won and lost!

Max Mosley, President of the FIA, went public on this subject as the teams were preparing to leave for down under and warned that in his opinion these tyres were illegal and so Michelin left them at home. It wasn't, according to Michelin boss Pierre Dupasquier, a big deal. "We go to the FIA with lots of ideas every week, they only said no to one, we are still working on a lot of other ways to make our tyres better."

The little Frenchman was, however, highly critical of Mosley making public what was an internal issue between the FIA and an entity competing in the World Championship.

Reports suggest that Michelin will take yet another new groove design to Malaysia, after successfully testing it at Silverstone. If Michelin could produce a tyre that no longer needed scrubbing to make their performance stable, then the politics of the one engine proposal might suddenly change. One thing's for sure; the Sepang paddock will be full of intrigue.

I am perhaps in the minority, but I left Albert Park not entirely convinced by the performance of McLaren new boy Kimi Raikkonen. Sure he scored his first podium, and yes he came from the back of the field to achieve it. But whenever a driver suddenly pulls out a really fast lap, a lap much faster than he had be running before, a red light flashes on for me, and I can't help wondering why he wasn't lapping faster the rest of the time.

So let's look back on Raikkonen's race in Melbourne. First the good bits. He survived the first lap carnage and is last at the end of lap one. He pits on lap two for a new front wing and to remove some debris that has become lodged down the back of his seat. This takes over three minutes and he resumes still in last position.

When the Safety Car releases the cars on lap six he is running now in ninth place and behind the Minardi of Mark Webber. In successive laps he passes the Australian, then the Jaguar of Pedro de la Rosa, and the Jordan of Takuma Sato to run in sixth position by lap nine. When Jarno Trulli spins out and his team leader goes off, the young Finn finds himself in fourth place behind the Schumacher/Montoya battle and Eddie Irvine's Jaguar. By the time he has dealt with Irvine the gap to Montoya is some six seconds.

He then starts to lap with impressive speed, gradually closing the gap to Montoya, and the two commence a race long battle for second place. By the end of lap 30 he is less than a second behind the Williams, and well in contention to make a pass in the pits that we all love so much. For some reason he then slackens his pace and by lap 35 has allowed the gap to extend to some three seconds, just as the pitstop sequence is about to start.

On laps 36 and 37 he suddenly wakes up and produces his two fastest laps of the race, the second of which, a 1:28.541 stands as the fastest lap of the entire race, and some 0.602 seconds faster than Montoya's best effort. He stops on the next lap, and manages to emerge in front of Montoya's Williams, but only just. With Montoya filling his mirrors he outbrakes himself into the first corner and his trip across the grass costs him his second position. If he had not allowed the gap to stretch out so much he would have be far enough ahead of Montoya to have had a much more relaxed exit from his pitstop, and second place would have been his.

This is nitpicking perhaps, but Raikkonen is in the big leagues now, and he needs to learn to keep his concentration going for the entire race, and not just when he feels like it. In race trim, the MP4-17 McLaren looked to be pretty quick and his team boss Ron Dennis will not thank him should his lack of application cost him a win.