When the 1999 Formula One World Championship opens in Melbourne's Albert Park circuit next Sunday the 'experts' are all tipping another dual between last year's winners McLaren and 1998 runner- up, Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro, for this year's race and Championship titles.

The McLaren team have shown impressive form during the off-season testing sessions with their latest McLaren-Mercedes MP4/14 chassis considerably improved from last season. So too is the new Ferrari F399 chassis, with which the team has been avoiding showing their hand before the first race by doing most of their testing at their home Fiorano and Mugello circuits.

What has emerged from the testing during the off season is that even though the front runners for this year will probably be the same, the competition between them looks like being much closer. Development of last year's cars and engines have seen the performance gap between the teams shrink, while the biggest single factor is that all eleven teams will be running the same Bridgestone tyres following the withdrawal of Goodyear at the end of last season.

"We have made considerable improvements since last year with our new car, but then so too has our opposition. Just how we stand in relation to them nobody can be sure until the first qualifying session of the season on Saturday afternoon in Melbourne," says Marlboro World Championship Team driver Michael Schumacher, who is hoping to clinch the title for himself and Ferrari this year after taking spot the past two years.

"For sure, running the same tyres as McLaren this year will take out a lot of the variables we faced last season and hopefully the points deficit we started out with last year as Goodyear tried to catch up with tyre development. Melbourne was also my only non- finish of the season for mechanical reasons," he added.

"It is going to be important to finish pick up as many points as possible in the early races where reliability is often a problem with all the teams running new cars and parts. So far we have been pretty reliable during Winter testing. Reliability will be as important as speed this season," predicts Schumacher's team- mate Eddie Irvine.

The sinuous Melbourne circuit can be hot and demanding on both the cars and their drivers. There is little time for the drivers to relax around the constantly twisting circuit which is notorious for being one of the hardest of the season on the cars' brakes.

While the McLaren and Ferrari teams are fielding the same drivers as last season, there has been a lot of changes in the remaining teams of which several look like racing wheel-to-wheel on the heels of last year's top two. It might be another McLaren Vs Ferrari scenario for the top honors in Melbourne, March 7th, but it looks as though neither team will have the room for the smallest error if they are to keep ahead of the pack all the way the checkered flag.