Thursday March 9th, 2000

by George Darwent, On The Edge

Melbourne turned on a glorious day today to kick off the Australian Grand Prix. With the sun beating down, more than 60,000 spectators flocked to the Albert Park circuit, the second highest for the Melbourne Grand Prix in its four year history. Even with no Formula One events on today, the crowds still turned up to see Nascars, Formula Fords, V8 Touring Cars and the famous McLaren two seater, but for those in the know, there was only one reason to come on Thursday - the Official Formula One Drivers photo shoot.

Previous photo shoots have been practically unrestricted - anyone with a grandstand ticket could get to it. By this year, however, fences were put up and just a handful of photographers were allowed in. Or so to speak. I had to stick my lens through an opening of about 10 cm x 10 cm, which is not a lot considering the size of modern lenses. In addition to this I had about 150 international photographers in front of me, and several thousand fans crushing behind me.

The shoot has generally been a swiftly-run operation, running with the reliability and precision of Ferrari, while having the speed of Mika Hakkinen in his McLaren on a hot lap. Unfortunately, this year the photo shoot ran like Jacques Villeneuve in his BAR; the first few drivers were very much the lesser lights of Formula One, back markers such as Gene, Mazzacane, de la Rosa, with breaks of 10 minutes inbetween each driver.

Finally, after much anticipation, we got to the decent drivers, the Frentzens, Trullis, Wurzs and Fisichellas. It seems this year the drivers were allowed to spend more time signing autographs for the fans without being whisked away to the sanctuary that is the Formula One paddock, which is ironic considering that the barriers prevented anything thicker than a piece of paper going through to the other side.

For the most part, the crowd was relatively quiet, not really getting into any atmosphere, until the man they had all been waiting for arrived - Mr M. Schumacher. Once again he proved to be the ultimate professional, as he has been in previous years. Despite his past discrepancies he still got the loudest cheer from the crowd by a long way and rewarded them by staying to sign every autograph he could, and pose for every photo he could.

Once Schumacher was gone, the show was basically over. Barrichello seemed to be enjoying his new-found spot in the limelight very much as he was very jovial during his shoot.

The last drivers to show up were, as usual, the Mclaren pair of David Coulthard and reigning world champion Mika Hakkinen. Mika of course showed up 45 mins after Daivd, making the whole shoot last for 2 hours, when it usually runs for 20 mins. After providing us with this hold up, he was not the most popular man on the grid, which was not helped by his blatant disregard for the fans, perhaps signing one or two autographs but certainly not sticking around.

Overall you still get the impression that for a driver to be loved and not just liked, not only has he to be an exceptional driver in the cockpit, but also a professional out of it. But then again, it's that two-hour session on Sunday that counts, and not the one on Thursday...