The weight of expectation is on Mark Webber at this weekend's Australian Grand Prix - and he has to deliver.

There are two reasons why it is imperative Webber performs at his absolute best over the next two days.

• He made a mess of the season-opening GP in Bahrain two weeks ago and a repeat blemish would not be looked on kindly his Red Bull Racing team now that it is a consistent front-running team with what is widely regarded as the best car in the sport.

• The Australian GP needs a Webber success on home soil to keep breath in an event that even its strongest supporters now admit has a death rattle.

Lost amid the build-up to Melbourne's GP has been that Webber, uncharacteristically, seriously underperformed in Bahrain.

He qualified only sixth there in a Renault-powered RB6 car identical to that which his 22-year-old German teammate Sebastian Vettel put on pole position and commandingly led the race in until a faulty spark plug robbed him of power.

Under this year's rules, forbidding refueling during races and thus limiting the strategic options open to teams, GPs will only be won from sixth place, or the third row of the grid, in miraculous circumstances.

Webber's starting position in Bahrain was made worse when he lost two places on the opening lap, not necessarily through any fault of his, and from there he was always going to finish eighth - which he did - or thereabouts.

Still, he is a man - and a race driver - not to be under-estimated.

He endured the heartbreak of endless mechanical letdowns and the cynicism of the Australian sporting public for seven years until the triumph of 2009 when he scored his two GP wins. (He was mobbed by the Fanatics, pictured above, at the Albert Park track today.)

Now Webber is in a better car than he could have hoped - designed by a genius, Adrian Newey, creator of so many successful McLaren cars.

With this comes the expectation that Webber must produce results worthy of such brilliant machinery.

His teammate Vettel will deliver the goods because he is one of those very few born to be a superstar - a talent in the league of Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher at his best.

As much as Webber must be admired for his perserverance, and now achievements in F1, of the eight drivers in the four top teams this year - Red Bull, Ferrari, McLaren-Mercedes and Mercedes (which last year was BrawnGP) - he is, in this author's estimation, No. 8.

Apart from Vettel, the other six are Ferrari's Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa, McLaren's Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button, and Mercedes' Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg.

Whatever other problems F1 has, it is awash with great driving talent at the minute.

There are one or two others in the field this author believes to be better than Webber, although they now don't have the machinery to do them justice - Robert Kubica at Renault and Rubens Barrichello at Williams.

But Webber is in the best car - and he has to produce results in line with that.

He may not beat Vettel, but if not he has to be right behind him.

He needs to qualify on the front row of the grid Saturday, so no room for an error as he made in Bahrain.

From the front row he would give himself the best shot at becoming the only Australian to win the Australian GP since it has been an F1 world championship race in the mid-1980s.

From any further back there is much greater risk of him getting caught up in carnage that often comes on the opening lap of a GP and, even if he survived that, overtaking is well nigh impossible now.

Despite continual speculation that Red Bull has 2007 F1 world champion Kimi Raikkonen, who was paid out by Ferrari to make way for Alonso this season and is now competing in the world rally championship, in the wings, Webber is rock solid in the Red Bull camp for the time being.

Even the greatest of drivers make mistakes when they are always on, so close to, or over the limit, but the best of them are just that because they make mistakes less often - and not when it matters most.

Vettel might, probably would, have become F1's youngest world champion last year if not for four mistakes over the course of 18 races.

Webber undoubtedly will foul up again during the course of this season, but it won't want to be this weekend.

Back-to-back blemishes would greatly diminish his hard-earned high standing with Red Bull Racing and F1 more generally.

Victory, on the other hand, would be the most special moment to celebrate after a quarter of a century of F1 coming to Australia annually.

And how Melbourne's GP needs something like that.

The event now carries so much excess baggage from its accumulated financial losses - almost $120 million from the taxpayer coffers in the past three years.

Melbourne's top-rating morning talkback radio host Neil Mitchell has long been a cheer leader for virtually anything Australian Grand Prix Corporation chairman Ron Walker does or says.

But now, in a column in the city's Herald Sun newspaper, Mitchell has declared that the GP "has all but run its race".

"Nobody will admit it yet but after this weekend it is not even certain that Victoria will host the remaining four races allowed under its contract," Mitchell wrote. "The strongest supporters have surrendered any hope it can be retained after 2014."

For this year the organisers have hauled back Alan Jones to be lauded with a parade lap in honor of his world title 30 years ago - the last in F1 by an Australian.

It has taken some fence-mending as relations between the Australian Grand Prix Corporation and Jones have long been severely strained (he stayed away last year), even though he was a board member for many years.

Absent for the second year though, unless there is a last-minute development, will be Australia's triple world champion Sir Jack Brabham.

The Brabham camp has been deeply hurt by the AGPC's treatment of this living legend over the years.

A Herald Sun report this week said Brabham was staying home on the Gold Coast for a giant 84th birthday party and was unable to change those plans.

There was no mention of that when this author bumped into a close Brabham associate a week ago. He was still fuming at the lack of acknowledgement at Melbourne's Albert Park last year of the 50th anniversary of Sir Jack's first world title while it was celebrated so widely in many other places.

In the past few weeks, Brabham has attended motor racing events at Orange, NSW, the Bahrain GP, and Victoria's Avalon Speedway and the Phillip Island circuit.

Despite his age and deteriorating health, there's nothing he would rather do than attend the F1 GP in his own country.

But he's been made to feel unwelcome - not by the motor racing community, which worships him, but the event organisr.

AGPC chief executive Drew Ward told the Herald Sun: "We were so keen to get him along ... we were intending to make a real fuss. At least we've now cleared the way to get him involved in coming years. We're already looking ahead to 2011.''

Except that by then Sir Jack will be 85, or about to be - depending on the date of next year's GP.

It is a shameful situation, and no spin from Ward can pretend otherwise.

Brabham not only won three world titles, he is the only driver to win the championship in a car of his own construction - the 1966 Repco-Brabham.

He is to Australian motor racing what Bradman was to cricket and Bart Cummings is to horse racing.

Imagine those sports treating those icons with anything less than the greatest reverence.