New year, old fears over Schumacher

The late Juan Manuel Fangio would have been the only man who could have appreciated how Michael Schumacher is feeling going into the new Formula One season next week. Not since 1957, when the Argentinian legend faced his final full season, has any driver stood on the threshold of a fifth world championship.

The 2001 season saw the German create a new record with 53 grands prix victories, and he is favourite to boost that score further and to equal Fangio's record of five titles. But there's more. Ferrari don't just have the fastest car, they have the fastest two cars, if pre-season testing can be believed. The champion constructors are in such a good situation, in fact, that they are not even going to take the 2002 car to Melbourne for the Australian Grand Prix which opens the season next weekend. Confidence doesn't come much more forcefully expressed in a sport where the margins of victory at times in 2001 were expressed in tenths of a second per lap.

"Our motivation is still unchanged, and our targets are still the same," Schumacher says by way of warning. "We want to once again win both world championships [the drivers' and the constructors'], and there is nothing nicer than winning with Ferrari." If anyone is going to beat him, they had better come equipped with a big arsenal.

It's not yet clear whether Juan Pablo Montoya and Ralf Schumacher have one with their BMW-engined Williams cars, or David Coulthard and his new team-mate Kimi Raikkonen with their McLaren-Mercedes. Formula One is a cyclical game, and Ferrari are at the top of their form. It's hard to see chinks in their armour, while there have been questions over the Williams in fast corners, and McLaren's horsepower.

The British teams will undoubtedly address such issues, but as everyone lines up at Albert Park the smart money is still on Schumacher and his red rocket. The Ferrari F2001 was the best car last year, and when Williams or McLaren beat it (nobody else came close) the defeats were usually narrow. That car has a more powerful engine, and the 2002 car bristles with clever engineering solutions that may keep it at the fore when Ferrari's boffins finally feel like giving it a run.

Both Sir Frank Williams and Patrick Head habitually downplay their hopes at Williams at this time of year, but they are winners and they have winners' expectations. Yet arch-pragmatist Head warns that nobody should expect any surprises. "It'll be the usual suspects, won't it?" he ventures. The more he understates things, the more you know he has been impressed. It's the engineer in him. He and Williams admit that the first runs of their FW24 car were disappointing, but improvements are already in hand.

"McLaren seem to have produced a pretty useful car, and obviously Ferrari have been good quickly straight away with their new one," Head says. "And, as they have pointed out a number of times, last year's car wasn't too foul. It's difficult to see from the test times, but obviously Ferrari and McLaren are going to be in good shape. Although there were a couple of slightly negative comments early on I suspect that we will be reasonably competitive as well. The Sauber is also one to watch. It looks pretty useful." That is Headspeak for "those guys in Switzerland have done a damn good job on a relatively small budget".

British interest will inevit-ably centre on Coulthard, and whether he can finally win a title now that he doesn't have to race in Mika Hakkinen's shadow. Chez Renault, Jenson Button has new management, new determination and a much better car, while Allan McNish finally makes his F1 debut for Toyota. Jaguar, meanwhile, have as much chance of pulling off a surprise as anyone in Britaingetting the trains to run on time. It's long past time that the circus came to town again.