Feature: Formula One Counts Down to Melbourne

The countdown to the Formula One season entered its final month on Sunday with Jos Verstappen and Heinz-Harald Frentzen chasing the last place on the Melbourne starting grid.

With Prost placed into liquidation last week and Australian Mark Webber confirmed as Minardi's second driver, the rest of the jigsaw has more or less slotted into place ahead of the March 3rd Australian Grand Prix.

We know now that there will be 11 teams lining up for the start, the same as last year, with Toyota making their debut and France's four times World Champion Alain Prost failing to secure the funds to keep his operation on the road.

Arrows are the only team left with a driver vacancy, although they have two men signed up, with Dutchman Verstappen waiting to hear whether he is staying or making way for Germany's Frentzen.

The team - no strangers to announcing a driver change at the last minute - confirmed Brazilian Enrique Bernoldi last month and Verstappen last year.

But Frentzen's availability now Prost have gone has complicated the picture and the German's manager Monte Field has been negotiating with the team since November.

Jordan will launch their EJ12 car, which has seen track action already, in the last week of testing starting on February 18th, while Ferrari will pull the wraps off their 2002 challenger at Maranello on Wednesday.

Minardi, who struggled to get to Melbourne with two cars last year after narrowly avoiding a similar fate to Prost's, have for once come out ahead of Ferrari.

The Anglo-Italian-Australian team got their revamped PS02 car running in tests last week, joining the likes of McLaren and Williams. They will have a formal car launch in Malaysia before flying on to Melbourne.

Ferrari will need their new car up to speed as soon as possible after World Champion Michael Schumacher and Brazilian Rubens Barrichello inflicted heavy damage on their old F2001s in testing crashes in Spain last week.

For Barrichello, Wednesday's Barcelona accident was the second big smash in the space of a month.

The World Champions are among the last teams to unveil their car, although Jaguar have found that an early launch is no guarantee of smooth running: they have already been forced back to the drawing board with the R3 suffering from front-wing problems.

Three newcomers, apart from Webber, have been putting miles under their belts as they prepare for their grand prix debuts - Japan's Takuma Sato at Jordan, Brazilian Felipe Massa at Sauber and Scotland's Allan McNish at Toyota.

The controversies have already started, with McLaren principal Ron Dennis raising doubts about the legality of an unnamed rival's car, and the usual flurry of rumours already about likely driver moves ahead.

Melbourne, whose race was marred by tragedy last year when a marshal was killed by a flying tyre after Jacques Villeneuve and Ralf Schumacher collided, has still officially to be given the green light for this year's Grand Prix.

The race has an asterisk alongside it until a coroner's enquiry publishes its findings, but Australian Grand Prix chairman Ron Walker expects that to come this week.

"We have taken certain steps to rectify what is perceived to be a problem by some of the experts and the coroner is aware of this and has applauded what we have been doing," he said.