MPH: Next F1 megastar could emerge in days thanks to season start in Melbourne

Next week in Melbourne we’ll see the F1 debuts of Kimi Antonelli, Gabriel Bortoleto and Isack Hadjar, all fresh from race-winning F2 seasons (and in Bortoleto’s case, the title).

The Albert Park track is a more formidable place to be doing that than might be imagined. Unlike Sakhir (the other common season-opener of the last few years), there’s plenty to hit when you get it wrong. Which is quite easy to do on the low-grip public road with its big difference in grip on line to off and the thread-the-needle element to some of the faster corners. It requires confidence and commitment. With three one-hour sessions to build up to it before you’re into qualifying.

Looking at some of the notable Melbourne rookies of the past just underlines how critical are the competitive circumstances in determining the driver’s impact. Jacques Villeneuve’s grand prix debut here in 1996 with Williams must stand as the most impressive, at least superficially: pole position, leading the race until the late stages when a broken oil pipe forced him to back off, handing the victory to team-mate Damon Hill. That cannot be argued as anything other than a sensational performance. Yes, he was well prepared with many thousands of testing miles, he was in what was by a considerable margin F1’s fastest car and this was everyone else’s first time at Albert Park too. OK, but it’s no small thing to perform in that manner under the spotlight of a debut and team-mate Hill was by then an established, multiple grand prix-winning driver.

By 2000 Williams was nowhere near the force it had been in ’96, but Jenson Button, 20 years old and off just a single season of F3 and very little testing mileage, was making waves. Infamously clinching the drive after a late showdown test, which he’d got off the back of out-pacing Jean Alesi in a Prost test, there was a buzz around him. Just as there had been on his way up, with notables in the karting world proclaiming him as ‘the best since Senna’. Everything was going well in Melbourne until he dropped it in a big way in practice, just underlying how the circuit can bite. Thus compromised, he started a long way back, made good progress in the race before a mechanical problem intervened.

A year later Kimi Räikkönen, with just a season of British Formula Renault under his belt, made his debut with a sort of provisional superlicence, the FIA saying it would withdraw it if after a few races he was not deemed to be ready. So it was important he just kept his nose clean in Melbourne and demonstrated competence. Which he duly did. He qualified the Sauber a few tenths slower than sophomore Nick Heidfeld, ran comfortably in the pack and finished in sixth place (seventh on the road) a couple of places behind Heidfeld. The team had needed to wake him up from a nap to take part in the warm-up.

Räikkönen’s debut made for an interesting contrast with that at the same race of Juan Pablo Montoya, the Indy 500 winner and CART champion arriving at Williams full of confidence and gung-ho but getting involved in two first lap skirmishes which dropped him down the field before retirement. Fernando Alonso was also making his debut but in a hopelessly outclassed Minardi. He was 3.8sec adrift of pole (and 1.7sec off Räikkönen’s Sauber) but still around at the end, having imbued the team with the absolute certainty he was a future champion.

It was another Minardi rookie making the headlines a year later as Mark Webber took a massively attrition-aided fifth place in what would come to be his typical gritty style, putting not a foot wrong and maximising his opportunity.