Force India’s Adrian Sutil after his car ran off the track during qualifying in Melbourne on Saturday. (AFP)

Melbourne: It’s survival under a Bernie Ecclestone-generated cloud, but Albert Park is still attracting fans by the hordes. As the pressure mounts on the organisers to convert the Australian Grand Prix into a night race, the aficionados are not willing to miss a slice of what could be history post 2009.

The countdown to Sunday’s showdown hasn’t had all the big guns firing. The conditions weren’t to everyone’s liking, the higher temperature on the track and the strong breeze making things difficult for the drivers.

McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton took pole position for the season-opener on Saturday after Kimi Raikkonen’s Ferrari suffered an early breakdown.

The world champion, winner in Melbourne on his Ferrari debut last year, was eliminated after the first qualifying when his car coasted to a halt with a fuel pressure problem. The Finn will start in 16th place.

Hamilton (1:26.714) overcame Poland’s Robert Kubica, who will be making his first appearance on the front row for BMW Sauber. Heikki Kovalainen, in the second McLaren, qualified in third place with Ferrari’s Felipe Massa alongside.

Spain’s double world champion Fernando Alonso, now back with Renault after a turbulent year alongside Hamilton at McLaren, failed to reach the final 10-car shootout for pole and will line up 12th on the grid.

Force India’s Giancarlo Fisichella, a winner here with Renault in 2005, will start 17th. Fellow driver Adrian Sutil will be two places back. While the former had a timing of 1:27.207 in the qualifying, the latter finished with 1:27.859.

Both drivers completed three runs in the first segment — increased from 15 to 20 minutes this season — but couldn’t reproduce the strong laps of this morning’s practice which saw Fisichella record the ninth quickest time.

Sutil spun on his final lap, which ultimately ended his hopes of getting into the second qualifying session, while Fisichella had to lift off due to the resulting yellow flag.

“A very disappointing qualifying session for us. Unfortunately on his final lap Adrian lost the car and sadly that yellow flag meant Gaincarlo had to back off… But as we showed this morning, we have a car that is very close with the midfield group and the odd tenth can make a big difference… We have to look to pick up more places tomorrow,” said Mike Gascoyne, Force India’s chief technical officer.

“There was a lot of graining on the tyres and I lost at least three tenths. But we know we are there and we are improving,” said Fisichella, who has been running temperature for the last couple of days.

For the record, the last of Fisichella’s three wins came in Malaysia in 2006. But as always a new season always brings in new hopes and fresh ideas.

It is only expected that Raikkonen and Hamilton will bring a new flavour to the Grand Prix rivalry. What will be missed though is the drama Hamilton and Alonso provided but it won’t be long before a whiff of team rivalry comes up somewhere else.

To many this is more of a social event, a major factor in the entertainment budgets of many in the corporate sector. A quick round of the corporate boxes will reveal that even when the action is at its hottest, a lot many are engaged in striking and networking deals.

Having started of as a weekend dedicated to noise, speed and international driving heroes, it has now also become a sort of festival not many can stay away from. Time to bring on the ear plugs and the race to begin.