OK, so with a little over a fortnight* to go before the Australian Grand Prix, which means probably a little less than a fortnight** by the time we've finished writing this, we thought it would be about time that we gave you, our reader, a taster of the coming season by way of a preview.
As the dog ate our homework, however, we don't really have much to say that you probably wouldn't have already picked up from Autosprout, which is, after all, where we would have got our information from anyway. So we're going to concentrate on some analysis of how things might go in Australia from the rather esoteric perspective of the sole Official dotdotdotcomma F1 Record™ that might be broken there.
So...,
Trackmeister: Melbourne aka Albert Park
The now legendary Michael StrewthmacherSCHUMACHER, MICHAEL
 Michael expresses his remorse at having dangerously forced a rival off the track. Again. When he wasn't driving people off the road, ramming other cars, parking in the middle of the track or trying to punch David Coulthard, Michael Schumacher displayed a dazzling talent for finding new ways to disadvatage his team-mate. We're being slightly churlish, of course, but Schumacher's reputation as a driver will forever be coloured by the unsporting manner in which he raced. His first break in F1 came with Jordan at Spa in 1991 and his second with Ferrari at Silverstone in 1999, when he fractured a leg crashing at Stowe. His final F1 drive through the field at Interlagos was a reminder of what his legacy could have been if he hadn't been quite so ready to tarnish it quite so frequently. The wanker.
 Oi, Kimi, fancy a pint? Kimi Raikkonen clearly loves his racing but can just as clearly take or leave everything that goes with it. Often electrifying behind the wheel, he sounds so wretchedly bored by the whole affair when he's interviewed that you're left wondering exactly why he carries on. He is, to borrow Martin Brundle's memorable phrase, extremely low-voltage. Raikkonen entered F1 with Sauber in 2001, despite only having competed in 23 car races in his life. He'd won 13 of them but the FIA still needed convincing that he wasn't going to be a danger to himself and others before they issued his superlicence. They needn't have worried: Kimi scored a point in his debut race, having reportedly been asleep only half an hour before the start. When Mika Hakkinen retired from the sport, Kimi was snapped up by McLaren, where they need to have a Finnish driver to prevent the fall of the Tower of London or something, so Raikkonen found himself paired with David Coulthard, during a season that once again turned out not to be the Scot's year. Several seasons of poor reliability led Kimi to sign for Ferrari from 2007 and it turned out to be a good choice, since he won the title in his first season with the team, overcoming a seemingly insurmountable 17-point deficit to rookie Lewis Hamilton in the final two races. It has, however, been Kimi's extra-curricular activities that have generated the most column inches. He has had contretemps with photographers, out-stripped lap-dancers, won snowmobile races under the pseudonym "James Hunt", been thrown out of nightclubs with his inflatable dolphin, raced powerboats dressed as a gorilla and and married a model. After an electrical fire led to his retirement from second place in Monte Carlo in 2006, the TV cameras followed Kimi as he stomped through the streets, helmet still on, and straight onto a yacht (presumably his own) floating in the harbour. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to imagine him subsequently drinking it dry. The yacht, that is, not the harbour.
All of which will, of course, depend on whether the Finn can be arsed at all.
* That's two weeks if you're reading this in America.
** Roughly half a fortnight, in fact, as it turns out.
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