Analysis: Fast Five to Take On Schumacher

Eight current Formula One drivers are past race winners, but only a handful can hope to beat Ferrari's Michael Schumacher this season.

McLaren's David Coulthard, Williams combative Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya and Schumacher's younger brother Ralf make up a foursome with Ferrari's Brazilian Rubens Barrichello.

Add to their ranks one young gun without a win, Finland's Kimi Raikkonen at McLaren, and you have the fast five that World Champion Schumacher needs to worry about when the action starts in Melbourne next Sunday.

Coulthard and Ralf were the only drivers to beat the Ferraris last season while Montoya, with seven pole starts in 2002, has hunger and aggression after failing to win since Monza in 2001. All should have cars capable of winning.

Others have the talent but must rely more on circumstances to have a hope of becoming the first winner from outside the ranks of Ferrari, McLaren or Williams since 1999.

Britain's now-retired Johnny Herbert, driving a Stewart at the rainswept Nurburgring in September 1999, was the last such winner.

Canadian Jacques Villeneuve, the 1997 World Champion, Germany's Heinz-Harald Frentzen and France's Olivier Panis are others who know what it is like to be first past the chequered flag.

All have now moved to teams that have yet to triumph and none of them has stood on the top step of the podium for years.

Villeneuve's last win dates back to his Championship season with Williams, two years before he joined BAR, while Sauber's Frentzen was last a winner in 1999 with Jordan.

Panis, now at Toyota, has just one freak victory in the wet with Ligier at Monaco in 1996 to savour.

Team Orders

Barrichello, who started on pole in Australia last year before being shunted off at the first corner by Ralf, is the last driver to beat Schumacher and should have a chance of another win or two in 2003.

He won four times in 2002, three of the victories served up on a plate after Schumacher had won the title in record time in France in July.

Team orders are now banned but Barrichello knows that Schumacher remains the real number one and that his best chance of success will be if fate plays into his hands.

"I've never been as good as I am now," he said. "I'm getting older but I'm getting happier and I'm not getting slower, so it feels good. We will have to see how the season develops. People say the number two will never win, but..."

Coulthard, with 12 wins and starting his eighth successive season at McLaren, is Schumacher's most experienced rival and remains the only non-Ferrari driver to beat the F2002 introduced after Ralf's win in Malaysia.

Last year he arrived in Melbourne full of confidence in the new McLaren, only to find soon enough that Ferrari were racing in another dimension. He soon realised that the title race was over, even if he was an impressive winner in Monaco when he managed to keep Schumacher behind him.

This season he has reason to be more hopeful.

McLaren, third overall last year, expect to compete in at least the first three races with a development of last year's car but Coulthard has been encouraged by the times at tests Ferrari have also attended.

"If the car is up to the job, I'm capable of delivering," said the Scot.

Ice Man

Coulthard will have to work increasingly hard to keep ahead of his teammate, with Raikkonen gaining in experience to add to his undoubted speed.

The 'Ice Man' secured a first front-row start in Belgium last season and would have won in France had he not skidded on oil while leading in the closing stages.

The Finn is one of the coolest drivers on the grid and the new single-lap qualifying could play into his hands. He outqualified Coulthard 10 times out of 17 last year but was less consistent in races.

"We thought Mika Hakkinen was cool but we didn't know Kimi then," McLaren boss Ron Dennis said recently. "I have no doubt that if the car is up to it, Kimi can get the job done for us."

Montoya and Ralf aim to be snapping at Schumacher's heels but there are doubts about how the new Williams, hailed as a Ferrari beater for the Championship runners-up when unveiled in January, will fare initially.

"At the moment the new car is as quick as the old one, perhaps a tad faster but that is not good enough," Ralf told Germany's Bild am Sonntag newspaper last month.

"We will not be also-rans in Australia but we might as well forget any thoughts of winning the first couple of races. We lack too much to aim for a win."

Bluff or realism? Sunday will reveal all.