Raikkonen on rampage

Each year in March, Melbourne is transformed in to a carnival as thunderous roars of Formula One hits town. The world's fastest cars and off-track entertainment comes together to offer a four day carnival for the 'Formula One Australian Grand Prix'. Proudly sponsored by the commercial giant ING, the Australian Grand Prix gets all the approvals from the Melbourne City Council as it prepares to welcome best Race car drivers from all over the world and many other celebrities. With expensive tickets on sale and some souvenirs sky rocketing prices, a massive crowd of 301,000 gathered at Melbourne's Albert Park for the four day carnival held between 15-18 March.

Twenty two of world's best Race car drivers from all around the world started arriving at Melbourne since weeks ago. This included current World champion Fernando Alonso from Spain. Australian Grand Prix is a place where world's number one Michael Schumacher won the championship seven times. Since his retirement, the 2007 Grand Prix is the first ever held without him and therefore, made everyone anxious to see who would become the next world number one. The 27 year old young champion Kimi Raikkonen from Finland was selected to replace Schumacher's shoes for the legendary Ferrari Formula One team. While the world's best arrived from Finland, Spain, England, Italy, Germany, Brazil, Japan, Poland, USA and Australia itself, the main attraction that rose everyone's' heartbeat were the Formula One cars. The ultimate speed machines represented Ferrari, McLaren, Williams, BMW, Renault, Toyota, Honda, Super Aguri, Red Bull Racing, Spyker, and Toro Rosso. Throughout four days there were spectacular events like, Formula One Qualifying race, Celebrity Challenge, Formula 3, GP Karts, Cleanevent V8 Ute Race, GP Rally Parade, Aussie Racing cars, Historic Demonstrations and many more.

A massive crowd of 105,000 started arriving since seven in the morning at the Albert Park on the last day Sunday. Celebrities like Kylie Minogue and Dannii Minouge, legendary Formula One figure Sir Stirling Moss, actor Eric Bana, Shane Warne, model Megan Gale and many more were seen around Honda, Ferrari and Red Bull section pits.

Finally, the moment arrived at two o'clock in the afternoon for the 2007 Australian Grand Prix. As the twenty two power machines lined up on the track and created a picturesque view for any camera, crowd cheered like thunder. Upstaging all the entertainment, some stunt jets put on a hair rising show in the air bringing entire Melbourne in to a halt. When their thunder-like sounds started to fade away, there started the sounds of Ferrari, Honda, Renault, BMW and rest of the Formula Ones When they started circling around the 5.3 Km Albert Park Circuit with a beautiful Lake in the middle, everyone could see even the sea gulls and ducks at the Lake getting confused to the roaring unbearable sound. Fifty eight laps on the 5.3Km circuit is not an easy task for anyone, as the laps were winding up, there were a few mechanical failures, and one massive collision between two Formula Ones. Scotsman David Coulthard's Red Bull went over Australia's Alex Wurz's Williams car narrowly missing his helmet. While such dramas were unraveling all over the circuit, Kimmi Raikkonen was gracefully leading his first time Ferrari towards the finishing line. The Raikkonen rampage saw his Ferrari complete 58 laps of the 5.3Km circuit in One hour 25 minutes 28.770 seconds, reaching a blazing 296 Km per hour. Reigning champion Fernando Alonso was only seven seconds behind him while the young rookie Lewis Hamilton was 18 seconds back, both for Team McLaren. Nick Heidfeld from Germany (BMW-Sauber) came fourth; Giancarlo Fisichella from Italy (Renault) came fifth while Kimmi's Ferrari team-mate Felipe Massa from Brazil came sixth. Team Williams, Toyota, Renault and Honda also followed up till 11th place and there were five cars that could not complete the race due to mechanical failures and accidents. Every year hundreds of thousands of sports fans looks forward to this day- and this moment, and while only in a few countries where Formula One sees day light, I was glad to be there.