By now, all racing enthusiasts would have heard that Barry Sheene, the famous British motorcycling champion, has died. It was ironic that he eventually succumbed to cancer of the throat and stomach, having cheated death so many times at the race tracks. There is an amazing footage of Barry stepping off at 170 mph on the banking at Daytona after his engine seizes. Bike and Barry hurtle into the infield doing cartwheels together and eventually he is shovelled into the ambulance with multiple broken bones, arms legs, pelvis, etc. Just before they closed the door, he waves, saying that he would be back in 6 weeks - and he was! As well as being a fantastic rider, he was just a truly nice chap. Sorely missed.

BMW 330

For the past week I have been running round the countryside with a BMW 330 sedan. I have always been impressed with the new Beemers, and after a week it was very difficult to give it back. It is almost the ‘perfect’ car in my books. I will give a full report on it next week, but if you are going to the Bangkok International Motor Show (March 28-April 8), it is worth going and having a look at the BMW stand. There will be the new V12 BMW 7 series there too. Almost 500 bhp of ultimate technology. I have been promised a fang in one of the new 7 series soon. I am definitely looking forward to it.

Juan Pablo Montoya

Unfortunately that was not quite the true facts. Even Coulthard admitted that he did not pass anybody on his trip to the front! His own team’s designer, McLaren guru Adrian Newey said on the British BBC Sport website, “Melbourne was a good race on TV, but that was because of the weather, not the rules.”

The driver who should have won was the fiery Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya, who saw his grasp on the top step of the podium slip away when the field got bunched up again in safety car periods and then he really threw it away with a spin with only a handful of laps to go.

Montoya is a fairly direct and uncomplicated character, and I think you will agree after reading this transcript of the post-race press conference. He was asked what he thought of the race and he replied, “I think it was a pretty disastrous race. We took the right tyres, I had a 16-second lead, and everything was going my way. Then the safety car, then we went again, I had like 10 or something like that second lead and safety car again, so I pretty much got screwed twice. Even like that, after the second pit stop I had the lead and, I don’t know, I went into turn one and picked up the throttle, the car turned ends on me, so just my fault.”

Q: “In that second pit stop, you didn’t change tyres, it looked as if you hit the lollipop as you left as well. Was the not changing of tyres in any way a factor in the spin?”

JPM: “Probably yes and no, because the previous run on new tyres the pattern was a disaster and on old tyres I had a much better balance, I was more competitive, so I decided not to change tyres and I thought it was the right thing to do. And I still think it was the right thing to do; I would have been even less competitive if I would have changed tyres. So it was just, basically sh*t happens.”

Q: “Juan, it seemed in pre-season testing for a lot of the time you were struggling with this new car, but suddenly it seems a lot better. Was it just circumstances or did finally some breakthrough come about?”

JPM: “No, if you look at the lap time we did in Jerez, look at the lap time we did in Valencia, the only place we kind of struggle a little bit at the moment is Barcelona and everywhere else we have been competitive. I think it’s just the press, because day one the car wasn’t quick and everybody will tell us day one is going to break the lap record around Barcelona, everybody said the Williams sucks but it doesn’t. It’s true. It needs a lot of work the car, the car’s got a lot more potential, I think there’s a lot more things coming through aerodynamically to make the car more competitive during the race. As you saw today, our lap time yesterday wasn’t on low fuel. I think a lot of people thought we had quite low fuel and I didn’t and the pace was there so it’s quick.”

Of course, for once, Mrs Schumacher’s eldest boy wasn’t on the podium, so we do not really know what he thought of it all. Undoubtedly he had the potential to win, but after his bargeboards shook themselves to death, he was not going to be in the hunt. Even his team manager Jean Todt was philosophical after the race. With Barichello attempting to prove himself and leave his mark this year, it was ironic that the only mark he left was a big red splodge on an Albert Park wall! Definitely not the Scuderia’s best outing.

What else did we learn? Well, we found out that the BAR team have a problem with communications, with both drivers arriving at the pits at the same time! Jenson Button, in the second car, who was held up for something like 13 seconds was furious, blaming team mate Jacques Villeneuve for deliberately sabotaging his chances by diving pit-wise before him, even though the team had not told him to come in. Team boss David Richards will have had a few unkind words to say before the next race this weekend in Malaysia.