F1 diary 2012: Australian Grand Prix Today's event is strikingly different from what lies 10,500 miles ahead. It's a British Automobile Racing Club sprint, one car at a time against the clock, and the entry features a marvellous cocktail of ancient and modern - everything from 1930s Austin 7s to contemporary single-seaters via a Ford Anglia and a sprinkling of Minis. It's the essence of no-nonsense motorsport infused with glorious sunshine. March 12: It's probably time to shake dust from luggage, check whether I have enough matching socks to last a fortnight and start transferring shower gel from industrial vats into more manageable travel vials. Once the season is under way, packing becomes a matter of routine - something that happens without thought. The first trip of the year requires more considered assessment, but I'm soon stepping into the mysterious world of Croydon Tramlink, where the voice of teenage Britain holds sway: "So I was like and she was like and they was like and we was like, 'Never'." Something along those lines, anyway. A 15-minute train ride from East Croydon later, I drop my bag at the Emirates counter and saunter to a lounge that provides insulation against the spending-spree madness outside. Has anybody ever won a Lamborghini in an airport raffle? Tony joins me after a while and we enjoy complementary pasta smothered in blue cheese sauce and washed down with Pouilly-Fumé - one of the privileges that accompanies frequent flight with the same carrier. There are worse ways to commence a campaign. March 13: Touch down in Dubai shortly after 6am and head straight for yet another Emirates lounge, this time for coffee, scrambled eggs and hash browns. Mark soon completes the set, having flown in from Manchester, and he and I head for the service desk: almost every day for the past month, I've been logging in to see whether I could cash in some air miles for an upgrade, but each time I've been spurned. The business cabin is fairly full, but we're told to report back in a few minutes and by then they've conjured a couple of free seats. We get beds at 37,000 feet for one of the year's longest slogs, which means reaching Australia early on Wednesday in the slipstream of what should be a good rest. March 14: Home for the next week will be a modest hotel room with two proper beds, a camper and a kettle. It's about 25 minutes from the Formula One paddock on foot, but administrative duties must first be completed. Seasonal passes are distributed from a hotel close to the track, but the office is closed when we arrive so we repair to the breakfast terrace. where we find about half the media room ordering cappuccinos and poached eggs to complement the wait. Accreditation procedures eventually complete, we head off in assorted directions and I spend most of the afternoon at the circuit, renewing familiar acquaintance and pausing by the adjacent lake to see whether it contains much of interest. A few pied cormorants flit across the surface, but there's no sign of the pelicans that occasionally add comic proportion to the landscape. In the evening we head for a Red Bull beach barbecue in nearby St Kilda, but reigning world champion Sebastian Vettel and local newspaper magnet Mark Webber combine to create a media feeding frenzy. We watch from afar for a while, before deciding to slip quietly away in a quest for food. We take refuge in an unpretentious nearby Italian that might once have been regarded as inexpensive. We used to get three Australian dollars to the pound, however, and the exchange rate is now about 1.5, so even cheap and cheerful now equates to downright bloody expensive. March 15: It's about 7.15 when the piercing sound of a grand prix car pierces the matinal calm. It sounds as though joyriders have nicked the keys to the McLaren pit, but the reality is more prosaic: former grand prix driver Zsolt Baumgartner is giving passenger rides in a Minardi F1 two-seater - one of the Australian GP's perennial features. Basically, a key element of the Hungarian's job description is to waken Melbourne for four days per annum. With hotel breakfasts costing about £20 (for a fry-up) or £15 (for a couple of croissants), we head around the corner and find a small café that serves coffee and toasted egg sandwiches for less than a fiver. Result. Mark and I stroll to the track, but Tony works from the hotel and says he'll catch up at the traditional Mercedes pre-season lunch. I eventually give this a miss, partly because I have to arrange meetings with people who might offer me work, partly because I want to watch practice for the historic touring car race. I've always found Mazda RX-7s, Ford Capris and suchlike irresistible. I receive an email from the hotel I've booked in Malaysia, telling me that it now wants pre-payment in full for the cramped triple we book annually. A form is attached for the purpose, but it's tricky to complete and return because I tend not to travel with printers, scanners and so on. I reply to point out that the room was booked in accordance with the terms and conditions printed on their website, but at the time of writing a response has yet to materialise so we might end up sleeping in a hired Toyota Yaris. We also receive emails from the Chinese media visa authorities: the Shanghai Foreign Affairs Office has approved our applications to be able to make an application to be allowed in. March 16: I've arranged to sort out my Chinese visa in London and Mark has done so in Manchester. Tony has applied in Melbourne - a practical solution, given the schedule - but when he turns up his name is not on the list (despite what Shanghai told him). Furthermore, a new rule stipulates that you can only apply for a media visa within 15 days of scheduled departure, so all those applying through Melbourne are out of luck. It is becoming ever more difficult to get somewhere that the sport doesn't really belong... The weather fluctuates between miserable and slightly less so, with the result that it's impossible to deduce anything from the first two practice sessions of the season. Spanish entrant HRT remains unerringly consistent, though: in its third year as an F1 team, it fails to be properly ready on the opening day and one of its cars manages just a single installation lap after the team rushes to complete assembly in the pit garage. March 17: Little happens at the circuit until early afternoon, but force of habit lures me towards the track before its gates open to the public. Working days in Australia feel longer than most, but seasonal rust makes it difficult to capitalise on the available time. Words eventually begin to trickle out, but I'm not sure they all make sense. I spend final free practice watching at the final sequence of corners, where Fernando Alonso remains a paragon of commitment. The Ferrari might be a bit rubbish, but he's not: he looks as fast as anybody, simply because he's having to drive so hard to compensate for the deficiencies of the kit at his disposal. Team-mate Felipe Massa isn't quite so impressive: the first time he looms into view, he's facing backwards. Lewis Hamilton takes pole position by a whisker, from McLaren team-mate Jenson Button, and it's well beyond nightfall by the time the teams' media conferences conclude. There are high spirits at Toro Rosso, where Daniel Ricciardo has qualified in the top 10 for his first F1 race on home soil, and Caterham, where Heikki Kovalainen is tucking into a plate of pasta that's almost as big as he is. The Finn has been seen practising his golf swing almost everywhere - including the pit lane. "D'you play golf?" he asks (I don't, because I'm with Mark Twain on this one and consider it a good walk spoiled). "Well," he continues, "if you did, you'd realise it's second nature - and there's never a bad time to practise. You can't do enough. When he's not busy driving Caterham's fledgling F1 car, Kovalainen is involved in a series of sporting challenges against team owner Tony Fernandes. Their competitive palette includes squash, tennis and golf. "I played him at squash quite recently," Kovalainen says. I'm obviously fitter than he is, but didn't really know the rules. He just sort of stood in the middle of the court, belting the ball in all directions while I chased it. I think I scored a point, though... Technically this is Caterham's maiden grand prix, but it's an oft-forgotten fact that South African Brausch Niemann raced a Lotus 7 - progenitor of the current Caterham range - in the 1962 Rand GP, a non-championship race at Kyalami, South Africa. Niemann stripped his car to the basic necessities, fitted a suitable engine and took on some of the period's leading lights - including future world champion Jim Clark, who won at the wheel of a Lotus 25. Niemann? He finished 10th, a few laps in arrears, but boundless ambition on that scale remains essential to the Caterham cause. Australia has one of the more user-friendly press services, with an endless coffee supply and frequent deliveries of egg-and-lettuce sandwiches - a usefully inexpensive alternative to venturing anywhere else. It's no excuse to remain beyond midnight, but we do. March 18: Small clusters of humanity are starting to form by the gates as we reach the circuit, where the security checks follow a predictable routine. Got any alcohol in that bag? Why not..? It's all very jocular, but punters aren't actually permitted to bring their own booze (although there's no shortage sold on site). Mark's laptop packs up during the morning, but an engineer manages to coax it into life for long enough to enable him to work through the day. A replacement will be required before Malaysia, though. I amble down to Turn One to watch the historic parade - a collection of lovely old cars lapping at what is supposed to be a controlled speed, although most drivers back off to create space for a decent run through some corners - and another race for historic touring cars, but the urgency of composition finally hits home and by mid-afternoon a few feature ideas are taking shape, aided by umpteen pints of coffee. The main race is the latest in a series of Jenson Button masterclasses - an illustration of faultless, astute race management. It isn't just a matter of beating Lewis Hamilton away from the line: he is quicker at critical moments of the race and makes his Pirellis last longer, too. Hamilton looks spectacularly sour about it afterwards, but can have no complaints. He is vanquished fairly and squarely. Once again, the late start dictates that we're stalking drivers and team principals long after darkness has descended and it's almost 22.00 by the time I contemplate a race report. March 19: Mark and I depart the press room at 1.45am, a couple of hours later than Tony, but many a straggler remains. I'm about two paragraphs from the finishing line when fatigue suspends all creativity, but time is on my side. It's about 2.30 by the time we reach the hotel, but sleep is as easy as it is welcome - for the five hours until the alarm sounds, at least. Tony and I start knocking our final few pieces of the weekend into shape, while Mark nips out to buy a laptop so that he can do likewise. The weather looks as good as it has since we arrived, but I'm trapped on the seventh floor of a hotel writing about tyre degradation and suchlike. The objective is to finish writing while there's still enough sunlight to permit pelican photography, assuming I can find some.