FORMULA ONE/Australian Grand Prix: After all the pre-season hype, Formula One's drivers are finally getting down to business. Justin Hynes assesses the chances of the main contenders ahead of Sunday's season-opener in Melbourne.

Two days before the new Formula One season starts and it's gone. Like a haze of grey exhaust fumes dissipating in cold air, the exuberant confidence displayed at pre-season launches is giving way to guarded caution.

Yesterday in Melbourne, on the eve of the day when the 22 drivers who make up the grid will exercise their new machinery in anger for the first time, the main championship contenders were all playing down their strengths.

Four-time and defending world champion Michael Schumacher, the sport's greatest winner with 53 victories to his name, came over all coy when asked whether he'd bet his last $50 on himself or rivals David Coulthard and Juan Pablo Montoya to win on Sunday. "If I had the the last $50 in the world? I'd put it back in my pocket," he said cagily.

Coulthard, expanding on the question of whether he felt himself to be a better driver than Schumacher or Montoya, said Formula One wasn't a sport of hyperbole. "It's not like boxing or WWF," said the 30-year-old Scot, who this year has taken over from Mika Hakkinen as team leader at McLaren.

"Clearly you have confidence in your own ability and each of us has won a grand prix. Obviously Michael has won a few more than Juan or myself and it's a bit unfortunate to be racing in a period against a guy who has won more grands prix than anyone else in the history of the sport but there you go, that's the challenge and it's one I relish."

The battle for supremacy between the three drivers has been widely tipped as the key to this year's championship, but it is the machinery at their disposal which has come under most scrutiny in pre-season testing.

And most of the attention has been focused on Ferrari's new F12002 car. The much-vaunted new project, which features a revolutionary lightweight integrated engine and gearbox set-up, has suffered with reliability. Delivery of the new machine has been pushed back until at least the San Marino Grand Prix.

Until then, Schumacher will pilot last year's F12001 model which brought nine wins last year. "It does upset me to some degree," he said. "That's the situation, but it's good that we have a back-up solution. We pushed very hard, everything to the limit, which might pay out later, even if it didn't pay out initially. How much we suffer from that, well, that's the big question mark."

It's a question Coulthard is praying he has the answer to. This season represents his best chance to take the world title. With Hakkinen on a leave of absence from Formula One, with Ferrari fielding old technology and with pre-season testing revealing this year's McLaren MP4/17 to be much stronger than last year's fragile car, Coulthard could be the pace-setter.

"Certainly we've done the most test kilometres we've ever done since I joined McLaren and statistically that shows on paper that we've got a better chance of getting both cars to the finish here," he said. "The car seems to be a step forward over last year's, but none of us really knows what the performance is going to be until we get out there and race."

Coulthard's stumbling block may ultimately turn out not to be Schumacher or Montoya, but new team-mate Kimi Raikkonen. The youngster came from Sauber at the end of last season on the back of a string of stunning performances for the Swiss team and was given the imprimatur of departing countryman Hakkinen who, on the signing of Raikkonen, quipped: "if you want to win, get the Finn."

Raikkonen has lived up to the promise he displayed in taking nine championship points last year and in pre-season testing has pushed Coulthard to the limit, constantly running at the head of a test pack that not only contained his team-mate but the Williams of Ralf Schumacher and the highly rated new Sauber C21s of Nick Heidfeld and his replacement at the Swiss outfit, Brazilian rookie Felippe Massa.

Coulthard is under no illusions as to his new team-mate's talent. "The fact is Kimi is quick and on that basis it would be unlikely to think I'll be in front of him all the time. It's not like he's just learned how to walk, he's been racing for a number of years. I think the experience I have over him is sometimes only successful in drawing on information from the past and from different situations in grand prix events. But you have to remember that Kimi now has a full season behind him."

Montoya too has a team-mate whom he must put away this year. Last year began in stuttering fashion for the rookie Colombian as he stunned the establishment with an audacious overtaking manoeuvre on Michael Schumacher in Brazil but also as he pushed his machinery too hard and sustained a number of non-finishes. Montoya redressed the balance as the season came to a close, taking three pole positions and claiming his first win at the Italian Grand Prix.

If the close of the 2001 season marked a sustained rise in his performance, it was also notable for the slump his team-mate Ralf Schumacher suffered. Despite winning three grands prix, the younger Schumacher appeared to have no response to Montoya's pace and power in the latter races and it is believed that this year Montoya will translate his off-track personality clash with Ralf into on-track demolition. If he can put away the younger Schumacher in the opening races, a tilt at the regular contenders could be realised.

To effect that though, the new Williams FW23 must be good straight out of the box and so far, despite mechanical niggles in testing, Montoya believes the package is good.

"We know the car is more reliable than last year and that's a big thing. Still, we don't know where we are. I don't think anybody knows until we go out there in qualifying."

However, Formula One's real battles are fought on Sundays. And even the result of the minor skirmish of Melbourne will not reveal much. The title race begins at San Marino and the start of the European season and if Schumacher is then armed with the F12002, who'd bet against the German once more treading heavily on the dreams of his rivals?