Open season now Schumacher's gone

Formula One/ Australian Grand Prix: It's impossible to ignore. No matter how many times you try to work around the subject, it's the only lead into the 2007 Formula One season that makes any sense: No Michael Schumacher.

Melbourne in the past decade has always been about Schumacher. If Schumacher was slow on Friday in Australia we might be in for a good year. If, as happened in 2004, he emerged from the garage and in first practice was three seconds quicker than any rival then, well, you might as well have plonked yourself down by the Yarra River and started searching the wanted ads for a new job, the next eight months would be that unlovely.

This year, though, Melbourne has a buzz not seen since the self-exiled Juan Pablo Montoya walked through the paddock gates in 2000. There is no supreme being at the front of the grid anymore.

No Schumacher means no certainties. For the first time in a long time the championship could be won by any of a half-dozen drivers.

There's Fernando Alonso, divorced from Renault and in the arms of an apparently reinvigorated McLaren.

Kimi Raikkonen, long recognised as the quickest driver in Formula One (if not the most consistent) has offered up his McLaren drive to arch-rival Alonso and is settling into his new role as Schumacher's heir at Ferrari.

There's new kid Lewis Hamilton at McLaren, the ever-improving Felipe Massa as Raikkonen's less fancied but some would say sharper team-mate at Ferrari.

And then there's Renault, being written off without Alonso but now in the capable hands of Giancarlo Fisichella and the young Finn Heikki Kovalainen, a youngster who two years ago leapt from obscurity to beat Michael Schumacher in the annual Race of Champions event in Paris.

If, as is expected, BMW-Sauber join the party, 2007 could prove the most open season in two decades.

That's the hope. And across Melbourne the buzz is being borne on the wings of that optimism. But as always there are caveats.

In pre-season, Ferrari have been impressive. The revival begun by Schumacher in the middle of last year is still in progress. Couple that with possibly the quickest driver pairing on the grid and wise old cynics would predict no more from 2007 than another red march to victory, with Raikkonen just edging to the front of the charge from the ever-improving Massa.

That, though, would be doing a disservice to McLaren. The Mercedes-powered team have been a misfiring force since the heady days of back-to-back championships in 1999. Burdened with cars that were either underpowered or underdeveloped they spent every season suffering through chronic unreliability. When it was good, witness Raikkonen's storm of emphatic race wins in 2005, but when it was bad, it was, well, plain horrid.

This year the team has arrived in Melbourne in better shape.

"Our target is to win the championship and we will be disappointed if we don't do that," said the team's chief executive, Martin Whitmarsh, yesterday. "We're going to the first race with possibly more knowledge about this car than we have ever had going into the first race of a season.

"We launched the car when we intended to, we very quickly had two cars available, we've completed good mileage and the overall reliability has allowed us to make good progress."

And in Alonso they have a driver designed to make the best of that knowledge. If anything characterised the Spaniard's two championship title wins over Michael Schumacher it was his ability to race a sensible race, maximise his chances and play the percentages, even when in a lesser car. That asset will go a long way in making McLaren a potent force again.

Many have been quick to write an Alonso-less Renault off but like Ferrari, the consistency of engineering thought running through the tight-knit and largely unchanged factory means they will still be in the shake-up for race wins during the season, a likelihood enhanced by the team's bulletproof reliability over the past two seasons.

When push comes to push harder, however, it looks a straight fight between Alonso and Raikkonen, between McLaren and Ferrari. Others will influence the proceedings but as the first start of the year heaves into view in Melbourne, there aren't many predicting a surprise champion by the time the season ends in October.

It doesn't mean it won't happen. A gambler would put his money on the raw pace of Raikkonen. A real risk-taker though might hedge that punt with a side-bet on his team-mate Felipe Massa. After all, in the post-Schumacher era, it's open season.