Two weeks ago in Melbourne, the traditional first leg of the "build 'em, break 'em and fix 'em for Europe" opening to the Formula One season saw all but one of the major forces clap a shaking hand to a fevered brow as one or other of their cars blew up on the way to the chequered flag.

Both McLarens, both Jordans, the Jaguars of Eddie Irvine and Johnny Herbert, one Williams, a couple of Arrows and a bunch of others limped, or were carried, back to the pits leaving designers and engineers scratching heads and avoiding the daggered glances of team principals.

This weekend, in Brazil, it all goes off again. Welcome to the phoney war - round two.

As the teams assemble at Sao Paulo's Interlagos circuit, again the talk is the tough stuff of Melbourne. Of profitable troubleshooting exercises, of solutions not problems, of points and podiums.

The truth is that while the teams know what Sao Paulo is likely to serve up - a bumpy ride, in dust and sweltering heat, around a "wrong way" circuit that travels in an unusual anticlockwise direction - what their own machines are likely to do will still leave them scratching their heads.

Unlike most other races, Brazil doesn't afford the teams time to get their cars home and into the nut and bolt analysis that the European will allow. The cars will arrive direct from Australia, problems in-built, solutions a couple of all-night stints away.

What has been done is testing. Since Melbourne, spare cars have been hurled around Silverstone with abandon, race distances have been met, niggles ironed out, gremlins despatched. Or, at least, that's the theory.

Jaguar, whose R1 was cruelly exposed as ill-prepared and, thanks to oil system difficulties, just plain ill in Melbourne, are swearing they've now got it right. Brazil will be kind. They're back in the hunt.

Their number one driver, Eddie Irvine does not sound so optimistic. "My qualifying performance in Australia showed that the R1 has a good turn of speed, but it still needs to improve in terms of reliability. Interlagos doles out a serious mechanical beating and will provide us with a stern test of how much progress we've made."

Jaguar, still in the honeymoon phase of entry to F1, can afford a little leniency in their approach to the opening races of the season. Jordan, by contrast, will be desperate to right the wrongs of Albert Park. While the EJ10 showed itself more than capable of keeping pace with the top two, it was all too brief as, first, Jarno Trulli ducked his car into the gravel traps, halted by exhaust problems, and then, just as Heinz-Harald Frentzen appeared to have done enough to secure second place, a disastrous pit stop and, a few laps later, hydraulic problems saw the German pull over and retire.

The failures were made worse by the rock-solid performance of the team's Honda rivals, BAR. As the Jordans sputtered and died, Jacques Villeneuve swept past to take the newly Honda-fitted BAR002 to fourth place and the team's first ever points. Teammate Ricardo Zonta sneaked in to claim sixth.

The Japanese overlords smothered the team in congratulations, and sparked an almost Jordan-like bullishness at BAR. Chief designer Steve Farrell, borrowing a line from the Eddie Jordan book of confidence tricks, spoke of the team's high hopes. "We'll be playing the reliability card again in Brazil," he predicted, "aiming to capitalise on the probable misfortune of others."

The "probable" misfortunes he clearly expects to come from the same outfits taken out in Australia - Jaguar, Williams and, particularly, Jordan.

Jordan though, have been at pains to insist that they are on the right track and having traded, as Eddie Jordan admitted in Melbourne, speed for reliability, the team is now back on the trail of the solidity that was their hallmark last year.

"The problems we had in Australia turned out to be reasonably trivial, which was frustrating," said chief designer Mike Gascoyne. "But ultimately it's good to know they aren't insurmountable."

However, Gascoyne added: "We need to work on the cars throughout Friday and Saturday. We weren't able to do that in Melbourne because of reliability problems. "Overall Brazil is a very trying weekend, but we hope things run more smoothly than in Melbourne and that both drivers will have time to work on their set-up."

However Jordan will be conscious that by the end of Interlagos weekend last year they already had 10 points to take to San Marino. If this weekend proves as fruitless as Melbourne a fortnight ago then what the early-season faraway phoney war could all too quickly become a European firefight.

Ferrari, meanwhile, will arrive in Sao Paulo with an air of smug confidence. Not only can they now match the McLarens for pace but the one-two in Melbourne proved the bullet-proof reliability of last year has been carried through to the new F12000.

The only doubt in the mind of Sporting Director Jean Todt will be whether he can keep Rubens Barrichello in the "1B" box he has marked out for the Brazilian.

The former Sewart driver was razor sharp in Australia, matching Schumacher beat for beat around the Albert Park circuit and could have stolen pole in qualifying had a wandering Arrows not baulked him at the last turn. On home soil, Barrichello is likely to be even more fired up.