Back with a clean slate

It's like a sepia photo etched in the burnt ember of memory. Michael Schumacher pummelling the steering wheel of his Ferrari as he crossed the line at Suzuka, screaming down his headset radio in ecstatic relief, pirouetting with Jean Todt on the podium, drenching the diminutive Frenchman in frothing champagne.

Michael Schumacher, world champion, being tumbled through a maze of flight cases behind the Ferrari garage to be enveloped in a roiling sea of crimson-clad mechanics and engineers; Rubens Barrichello being bundled in behind him, the Hockenheim winner being encouraged to celebrate his role in denying Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard crucial points that allowed Corinna Schumacher to run down the paddock to find and embrace Ralf Schumacher in championship celebration.

Like a flickering newsreel. Four months ago and the edges are already blurred, the focus not so sharp, the colours washed out. It's history. What's now is this: Michael Schumacher's trademark shrug, the dismissive mood. No, he doesn't feel any pressure. The car's good, right? Bring it on.

The past is non-existent. It's sporting year zero. It's the Australian Grand Prix.

Deep in the Albert Park paddock on Thursday afternoon and the phoney wars of launches and lunches, promotional tours and tests are condensing into a corridor of fevered hype, expectation, fear and fervour.

There are 17 races to be won and lost. From Sao Paulo to Suzuka, Barcelona to Budapest, there is nothing mapped. Destiny is a fiction. From the glittering palaces of Ferrari to the tenement funsters at a reinvigorated Minardi, the world is about to be born anew.

At McLaren, Ron Dennis is dismissing suggestions that his new car is a fast but fragile beast. David Coulthard is insisting that this could be his year.

At Jordan, Eddie Jordan is in familiar, sponsor-friendly mode, leaping onto a flight case to welcome new kit sponsor Puma with a barrage of corporate doublespeak and a few barbed words for the hacks who have assembled to hoover up some sandwiches, wash them down with a VB and walk away with a new rucksack.

At Benetton, Jenson Button is chatting amiably to mates, pausing to cast a curious glance at a passing Juan Pablo Montoya.

The rivalries change, the cast swap costumes, but the plot is annually replayed. What's done is done, what's to come is a new struggle, a fight where the vanquished can be rearmed with better weapons, better skills and the victors can be beaten by complacency and over-confidence. The air is light here, heady. Anything is possible.

Possible, but not likely. Through the tapestry of relentless positivism run skeins of doubt, a dark thread of realism. Button's glance at Montoya is the curiosity of one who is wondering if what they're saying is true, that the man who replaced him is that good.

It's the glance of a man who knows that his new Benetton is hardly the equal of the Williams he was forced to leave behind. He knows he will not reach the dizzy heights of a third place start at Spa this year. He feels the struggle coming.

Down at Minardi, new owner Paul Stoddart is holding court with local journalists, the fan who bought the ultimate slot car set. But behind the screens of the hospitality is a car he knows is already worn out, it's three-year-old Ford engine a wheezing, consumptive beast alongside the howling, screaming powerplants of the manufacturer-backed teams.

But even they rest uneasily. Jordan's chummy confidence, the always good-humoured appetite for success, is stifled by his pitlane proximity to Honda-powered rivals at BAR. The spectre at Jordan's Honda-fuelled feast is Jacques Villeneuve and Craig Pollock relishing their transfer to the middle garage of the paddock. They are pillars of the F1 community. But still they feel they are pillars made of sand. Jordan hover, the shark ready to scavenge away works power if BAR faulter.

It never changes. Each year the banners and flags are hung out on this little street of dreams. In eight months, one of those banners will be waved in celebration. The 10 others will be set at half mast.

But only for a short time. After all, here, anything's possible, right?