Platinum Pass

Each new season, as the Formula One circus rumbles into Melbourne for the traditional opening weekend of the calendar, the championship outsiders arrive with the hope that Australia may prove to be their most rewarding race of the campaign.

With the favourites still adjusting to new technical regulations and pushing the envelope to gain a flying start to the championship, technical failures and driver errors always threaten to thin out the field rapidly.

For the sport's minnows, it's a platinum pass to earn rare championship points, and an opportunity that may not be repeated all season. Alas, the leading teams' emphasis on year-long reliability has left slim pickings for the also-rans in recent years.

We have to go back six years, to 2002, for the last time that less than half the field made it to the chequered flag in Melbourne. In that extraordinary Australian Grand Prix, only three cars finished on the leading lap - race winner Michael Schumacher in his Ferrari, Williams's Juan Pablo Montoya, and McLaren's Kimi Raikkonen.

As the benefits of Ferrari's clockwork reliability hauled in title after title for Schumacher, the field responded by boosting their own reliability, peaking in the 2005 event, which saw just three retirements (two by collision) from the field of twenty.

There was every reason to believe that Sunday's race would, if anything, build even further on that record of reliability. McLaren's Lewis Hamilton was among the first to stress the importance of turning each race opportunity into championship points.

The bulk of the front-runners may have approached the weekend with the same intent. But, if the spirit was at least willing, the flesh and the machinery were all too fallible.

Perhaps it was the record late-summer temperatures in blistering Melbourne, the banning of traction control, teething problems with the new universal Electronic Control Unit, or a combination of all three.

Whatever the cause, the combatants dropped like ninepins all afternoon long, taking us instantly back to the heady days of 2002. The Australian Grand Prix of 2008 became not an observation of who had done the best development work during the off-season, but of which teams and drivers had the grit and endurance to haul the car to the finish and claim the precious early-season points prize.

Ultimately, only five drivers overcame the challenge. For each, the race was a triumph for different reasons.

BMW's Nick Heidfeld may feel increasingly threatened by the sheer pace of teammate Robert Kubica. But the German still has superior ability and experience to grind out a full race-long effort, and his eventual second place was just reward for one of the calmest and canniest heads in the field.

Despite all the talk of renewed competitiveness by the team, Williams's Nico Rosberg must have been resigned to fighting for the minor points finishes all year. His podium finish not only kept his rising star very firmly in the spotlight, it's also added an edge of maturity to his youthful pace and aggression.

Fernando Alonso and Nico Rosberg battle for position © LAT

Like Rosberg, Fernando Alonso entered the 2008 campaign with very limited championship ambtions. However, Alonso already has two titles. Repairing his battered public image is arguably and temporarily more important than winning more races. At Melbourne, he showed again just how impressive he can be when he is not distracted by off-track politics and can let his driving do the talking.

Heikki Kovalainen may have had cause to feel dismayed when his solid race effort was marred firstly by the timing of the safety car, and then by accidentally activating his pitlane speed limiter, handing the hard-fought position he'd just won straight back to Alonso's Renault.

Kovalainen should instead remember back to his disappointing F1 debut at the same circuit twelve months ago, and take stock of just how far he's come in one year. In just his second year in the formula, he has legitimate title prospects and a seat in the joint-best team.

Which brings us to Kovalainen's teammate Lewis Hamilton. It's hard to compare his race effort to the other finishers (let alone the also-rans) because, for most of the afternoon, he seemed in a completely different league.

Starting from pole position is always a huge advantage in incident-filled races like Melbourne. Nevertheless, having a healthy lead periodically wiped out by the emergence of the safety car is an experience that frustrates and tests the concentration levels of the best driver.

It's no longer surprising that Hamilton copes so effortlessly. However, it will be surprising (to him) that his Ferrari challengers were so charitable in handing him a healthy head start in the championship.

Both Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa have been quick to state their confidence in the team resolving the engine reliability problems that plagued both cars. What they should be doing is stating their commitment to keeping the car on the racing surface. For, while the engine failures may have been the official cause of retirement, both drivers had already ruined their race chances with driving errors.

Three times over the past six years, Massa's Australian Grand Prix effort has been derailed by first-lap incidents. That was acceptable during his wild and woolly early years with Sauber, but Massa can no longer afford such incidents. This season, just as in 2007, he will be forced into playing catch-up again.

Raikkonen looked the part of the determined reigning champion early on, fighting back from a dismal starting slot of 15th on the grid to run in a podium position for a while. Then came the overtaking attempt on countryman Kovalainen. The best that can be said of the move is that it's probably not in Raikkonen's own playbook, but was learnt instead from an ex-teammate.

However, where there is despair in one camp, Formula One balances it with elation in another. The driver with the best reason to grin after Melbourne wasn't Lewis Hamilton, but Scuderia Toro Rosso's debutant Sebastien Bourdais.

All four of the 2008 new arrivals have been set an extremely stiff challenge. After Melbourne, Williams's Kazuki Nakajima, Toyota's Timo Glock and Renault's Nelson Piquet will already have felt the sting of having Nico Rosberg, Jarno Trulli and Fernando Alonso respectively as their teammates and automatic performance benchmarks.

Nelson Piquet and Sebastien Bourdais © LAT

After qualifying, it looked as though four-time Champ Car title winner Bourdais would suffer a similarly deflating maiden Grand Prix experience. Although teammate Sebastian Vettel is barely more than a rookie himself, he has shown a turn of pace in the Toro Rosso that none of the team's other drivers to date has been able to match. After Vettel qualified a full four grid rows ahead of Bourdais, the trend looked set to continue.

But Vettel succumbed to the first lap incidents, while Bourdais survived. Then, just as debutant Mark Webber had done during the chaotic Australian Grand Prix of 2002, Bourdais used the attrition rate to snatch his platinum pass.

It doesn't matter that both Webber and Bourdais rate among the most experienced and best-prepared Formula One rookies ever. Nor did it matter that both ran towards the rear of the field for most of the race. Even the precious and unexpected championship points, earned to the delight of their employers, is not the most significant factor.

Instead, the platinum pass for both Webber and Bourdais lay in gaining Formula One respectability in their very first race. For any new driver in the lower half of the field, that respectability and the attention that goes with it are career currency.

However, Bourdais would want the career comparisons with Webber to end there. For, six years later, Webber's fifth place finish in a Minardi on debut still stands out as one of the luckless Australian's very few career highlights in Formula One.

Unlike Webber, Bourdais didn't have the satisfaction of taking the car all the way to the finish, a blown engine with just three laps to go ending his controlled and resilient effort. Still, his two points for the team, and the experience of keeping two world champions (Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso) behind him for almost half the race, will provide an instant sense of fulfillment.

Bourdais will barely have time to savour the attention from his performance. The Sepang circuit in Malaysia will throw up another new challenge this weekend, and he cannot expect teammate Vettel to keep retiring from races.

Likewise, Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen must expect the Ferrari duo to come back hard at them in Malaysia. As long as Hamilton can stick to his commitment of scoring points at each race, he should leave Malaysia as the championship leader. In what is expected to be a long, closely-fought and grinding season, that will be good enough.