Formula One is commonly likened to a travelling circus, a touring show of carnies pitching tents and bringing high-wire antics and jaw-dropping skills and thrills to parklands, cityscapes, circuits across four continents over eight months each year. Justin Hynes reports.
And, like all the great circuses, the action doesn't take place in just one ring. This is a many-layered extravaganza. Aside from the main showring of the on-track rivalry, there's the ever fascinating sideshow of driver relations, team mates at each others' throats in battles for supremacy within a team - Villeneuve and Button's pit-stop mix-up being the most obvious and verbally tense example.
There's also the extra lesser lit but no less exciting show of the paddock intrigues and financial machinations that keep the teams sinking or floating.
All of those arenas were in full swing in Melbourne as the show swung into town for the season's opening grand prix. On track we had one of the best races we've been presented with for some time, a combination of the new rules, some weird weather and some weirder strategic choices and driver errors, giving us an unlikely winner, no Ferrari on the podium and some eyebrow-raising cameos from Kimi Raikkonen and Juan Pablo Montoya.
In the paddock, though, the fun and games were also kicking off with Eddie Jordan once again at the centre of the action. On Friday morning the paddock was abuzz with speculation over an interview Jordan had given to the Sun newspaper in which the Irish team boss said he would be willing to sell his troubled team.
Jordan subsequently denied the pointedness of a headline which read "I'lll flog my team", saying that all he had said was that, if it were in the best interests of the team's survival, he would be willing to sell his share of the team to an outside investor - if it meant Jordan could get back to winning ways in a hurry.
And then the kerfuffle was promptly forgotten. Except by a few, who went in search of Jordan, who, after suffering through a fraught off-season that has seen him pull together the crumbling pieces of his team for a last-ditch tilt at the championship, told them that, yes indeed, he would be willing to pass on the team and that his main target in this will be Ford.
And it makes perfect sense. Ford's works team, Jaguar, has been a disaster for Dearborn. In three years in the sport it can point to just two podium finishes, both scored by the now-departed Eddie Irvine. Surrounding those two third places is nothing but a sea of bad publicity, confusion, rancour and internal wrangling. And for this Ford had parted with anywhere between $400-$600 million.
This year is looking little better. The team's new R4 was far from convincing in Melbourne, and, while the pairing of Mark Webber and Antonio Pizzonia do come with a cheaper price tag than $12 million Irvine and $3 million Pedro De la Rosa, they didn't set the world alight in their debuts for the Big Cat - although Webber looked the quicker and more secure. Point and respectability will once again come at a premium.
Jordan, by contrast, operates on a paltry budget - this year down to a rumoured $40 million from $100 million last year.
It so far has proved the match of Jaguar, despite utilising last year's Cosworth engine and the team has works well as a lean, concentrated organisation with a tried and tested operating procedure.
It is Eddie Jordan's now admitted target to humiliate Jaguar and present Ford with a inescapable conclusion: Jaguar is an expensive, unsuccessful luxury; Jordan-Ford is a lean, mean successful fighting machine.
But would success in selling the idea to Ford spell the end of Jordan's involvement in the sport? Jordan last week said that he would like to retain some involvement and, as a figure-head, any team could do worse than the likeable, publicity-friendly Irishman.
But he also hinted that should any new owner wish to change the hierarchy then he would bow out gracefully.
The Jordan-Jaguar battle will be one of this season's most interesting and the war between the two in the paddock should be equally fascinating.