Expectation, though, can sometimes turn out to be a bit of a burden, because it builds up steadily from the moment the previous season has come to an end. Once everybody had slapped Jacques on the back and had their moan about Michael's tactics in Jerez, there was not a lot else to talk about except what would happen in 1998. It didn't matter that there were precious few facts to work from.

There was one thing that the Press were intrigued about as the new season loomed and that was the identity of my new team-mate - Michael Schumacher's brother, Ralf.

It wasn't just the journalists who were interested in this particular confrontation, either. After all the battles I have had with Michael over the years, I was as unsure as anybody as to how my relationship with Ralf would pan out, even though I made a point of saying, from the start, that I didn't expect any problems. In fact, I wasn't sure what to expect. The only-thing I did know was that Ralf had the reputation of being fast.

He had shown in 1997 that he could be quick and, going into his second season, he was regarded as a talented new boy, one of the best of the new generation. His one problem was in getting round the track for the first lap, where he had made a few mistakes and ended up in the gravel. That was the classic mistake for a young, keen driver to make, and, other than that, he looked good.

Ralf had somehow earned a reputation for arrogance and being a difficult person to get on with. He had obviously had some problems forming a decent working relationship with Giancarlo Fisichella over the course of the previous season, because the two of them had a public falling-out early on in the season and never got over that hurdle. Their problems looked to me to be the result of a couple of talented, quick drivers who were desperate to get the upper hand - but there were plenty of people saying that Ralf would give me a cool reception as well. It all made for an interesting brew, but I wanted to find out about my new team-mate for myself. Like everything else in Formula One, the important rule is to make up your own mind and follow your instincts. There are always hundreds of people telling you what to say, do and think, but you have to be your own man. As far as I was concerned, Ralf and I would start with a clean slate.

I took the view that the Jordan drive would be a challenge and one of the first tasks was to establish myself in the team and with Ralf. Gerhard Berger's retirement at the end of the previous season meant that I would be the oldest driver in Formula One and here I was, pitting myself against the best of the young drivers. It was a risky move, but at least I would know how I was faring with getting older. If Ralf ended up blowing me away, the hint would be there that it was time to call it a day.

As challenges go, it was one that I liked. I was putting myself and my reputation on the line, but there was a strong possibility that we could do well and, if I could win the team's first race, there would be a place in the record books waiting for me. It all looked great, but, even after a few weeks, there was just one problem: whatever I did, I found it hard to overlook the fact that my team-mate was a Schumacher.

I considered the situation where I might be racing against Michael for track position or even challenging him for the lead. Ralf would be privy to confidential information about our car and race tactics, and that is not the sort of material that you want to see passed on to a rival. Michael and Ralf are brothers and I found it hard to stop worrying about him passing on our secrets. Would he do that? Would Michael cajole information out of him? I didn't know and that worried me. In Spa, for example, I qualified ahead of Michael at a crucial point in the championship for him and that must have created a test of loyalties for Ralf - does he confer with his brother to help him towards the title, or does he withhold information from Michael to protect Jordan's chances?

On the face of it, I shouldn't have worried. Ralf was honest and fair as well as being fast. When he came up against Michael on the track, most notably in Austria, he battled him and didn't give an inch, which was great for everyone to see.

From the first time the car ran, it was clear we had problems to overcome. It wasn't so much the team's fault as a product of the circumstances they had found themselves in, but it was to hurt us enormously.

Our main problem was that, coming into the start of the year, we simply had not done enough testing. There had been some big changes, with Honda replacing Peugeot as the engine supplier, and that always causes some disruption. On top of that, there were also some unusual rule changes covering the design of the cars and the sort of tyres we would be using, and they made a big difference to performance. On paper, we should have been able to cope as well as anybody, but Formula One has a habit of not following the script, and here was a prime example.

Honda could not supply us with their new engine until the start of the year and Peugeot, Jordan's former supplier, had taken all their engines off to Prost. It meant that Jordan had no way of running a car. That meant the team had no way of coming to grips with the implications of the new regulations. And that meant we had problems.

The 1998 regulation changes were bound to have a huge impact, so every team on the grid knew it was important to get ahead of the game. Williams had been testing since the previous summer with a narrow car fitted with grooved tyres, which they could do because they would be using the same Renault engine from year to year. We didn't have that advantage so, while Villeneuve and Frentzen were getting in their preparations, we were left twiddling our thumbs.

In any case, I had been banned from doing any testing by Tom Walkinshaw. My contract with Arrows didn't expire until the end of the year, but I was hoping that he would tear it up as soon as the season was over-not a chance. Instead, he held me to the letter of the contract and told me that I was not allowed to do any work for Jordan. After I had finished the last race of the year in Jerez, which finished with my car breaking down again, I walked away from motor racing and didn't drive a racing car again until I got into a Jordan when they had their first test in February. In other words, I didn't do my first test with a narrow-track car fitted out with grooved tyres until a matter of weeks before the start of the season. That hurt me for sure.

I was sorry about the way things finished with Tom. The way he stopped me testing for Jordan was a bit of a snub, but it wasn't the whole story. Before any of that, he tried to infer that I had been sacked from his team, which was as far from the truth as it's possible to get.

I had done very little testing with Arrows over the course of the season, because so much was new in the team that it was hard enough getting the car from race to race without worrying about getting down to testing. Then, when it started running more reliably, we were in the period when I was thinking over my decision of whom I would drive for, and I was stopped from testing altogether. I was basically turning up for the races and nothing more. That's not enough driving to keep you in the groove so, by the time I got into a Jordan, I was out of practice.

With any skilled discipline, like golf or driving or playing a musical instrument, you have to practice, so I had been training, and go-karting. I had been left-foot braking in my road car because I thought it would be necessary this season. I was doing everything I could to try to stay sharp and that was why I was keen to do as much testing as possible to try to get on top of the new regulations and become familiar with the team. I needed to get myself back up to speed.

First of all, we had the long wait to get a car running on the track in 1998 trim. As soon as that happened, though, we came across a problem that I knew was going to rear its head - who gets to drive the car.

To be as successful as possible in Formula One, it can be an enormous advantage to be the number one driver in a team. That's a fact, not an opinion, and it's a fact that is reinforced each season. However, according to our contracts, Ralf and I held equal status within the team - what's known as having 'joint number one' drivers. That's all very well, but to win a championship in Formula One has often meant, in recent history, that you will have to beat Michael Schumacher, who very definitely holds number one status at Ferrari. My argument has always been that in order to level the playing field, any driver would stand a better chance without the added pressure of having to fend off a challenge from the other side of the garage.

There is another aspect, which Jan Lammers, the Le Mans-winning sports car driver, put quite well when he used the analogy of having one watch or two. With one watch you know what the time is, even if it's out by a few seconds, but with two watches, you're never sure which one to believe. It can be the same with drivers in a team.

If everything is focused on what one driver is trying to achieve, it is sometimes easier for the team to give that driver what he needs to enable him to give his best performance. When Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard were fighting each other at every race for the first half of the season, Michael was there to make the most of the situation.

Compare that with the set-up at Ferrari, where Eddie Irvine will do whatever it takes to help Michael. At Suzuka last year, Eddie somehow managed to get himself into the lead of the race and then sacrificed his own chances so he could orchestrate things from the front in such a way that Michael ended up winning. That's the difference. While Mika and David were having to watch their backs, Michael didn't have to worry.

It's the same problem I had in 1995 when I was having to compete with David at a time when I should have been focusing entirely on trying to beat Michael. David could not win the championship, but he was still there at every race, trying to beat me or overtake me just at the time when I needed to concentrate on beating Schmacher. Talk about having to cope with the enemy within! I don't intend this to be construed as something personal against Michael -it is merely a tactical observation.

That's what I would have wanted and that is what I think would have given me the best chance of getting to the front again. If a team like Jordan could focus all their resources behind one quick driver, they could certainly turn out to be consistent challengers at the front of the field. Unfortunately, though, the number one status eluded me. I tried to persuade Eddie, but I had no luck. Ralf already had an agreement that guaranteed he would be a joint number one, and there was no way I could get around that.

The problem became evident at the start of the year when we did not have enough engines. That, in itself, was a bit of a surprise, and not something I expected from an organised, committed company like Honda. I had to share track time with Ralf, which meant that at a time when we needed desperately to get some testing done, I was compromised, he was compromised and the team was compromised. Neither of us had enough time and both of us were testing the same things. Frustration abounded.

I had already had a run on Bridgestone's grooved tyres while I was at Arrows, but that was my only experience of 1998 regulations. It gave me an inkling of what it would be like, but I didn't get a good idea until February, just a month before the first race. I had a lot of catching up to do and I was rusty.

It wasn't a case of forgetting how to drive or feeling badly out of shape, but you know when you are not right. There is a point when everything is working together and, whatever the state of the car, you know that you are pushing it, as well as yourself, to the limit. I didn't really get there until the San Marino Grand Prix in Imola, the fourth race of the season. Up until then I was struggling to turn in the quality of performance that I knew I could, and should, be producing.

You can go for a month away from a car without losing too much, but I had not driven for more than three months, the longest period I had been away from a racing car since I started. In a racing car, you are dealing with tiny nuances and when you have been away, it is hard to put your finger on any one thing. You don't extend yourself as much, you think about it more instead of going by the seat of your pants. It is all mechanical instead of being flowing and instinctive.

On top of that, the car didn't feel good, which was a lot to do with the tyres. The first time I drove it, my immediate reaction was that it was great to be back in a Formula One car. Then, after a bit, we looked at the lap times and saw where the other guys were and we realised that we were a long way from where we wanted to be. I was horrified.

There is an old saying in Formula One that if a car is quick out of the crate then it is going to be competitive all year, but this car certainly was not quick out of the crate. While there are an awful lot of things that can be done to a new car, the real indicator is how fast it is when it first runs. And ours simply was not fast enough.

There were so many problems with the way the car was handling that we had plenty of things to work on and we knew that if we could sort those out, then the car would go a lot faster. That gave us a chance to stand back and think about how we could improve the situation, and in times of crisis, you tend to look for any silver lining. The worst thing must be when you are happy with the handling, happy with yourself, and then you look at the times and see that the car is still miles off the pace. That is when you really need to worry.

I didn't like the way the car felt. It was too inconsistent and not very sensitive to changes in set-up and so I had to set off on the sensitive task of working to improve the situation. That's not an easy task for a new driver in a team and you have to tread carefully during the early days, building a sense of trust with the mechanics and engineers.

For years, they've been trying to beat you and now here you are, walking into their team and telling them what they've been doing wrong. When you're new to a team, it can be easier to make enemies than friends unless you are careful and considerate.

You have to build confidence in the team through what you do in the car. It's a catch-22 situation - until you take the car out and put in some really good lap times, they are not so sure about how much weight they should attach to your comments. The problem is that, unless they have confidence in you, how do you get them to change the car so you feel comfortable enough to put in those good times?

Fortunately, I have a good track record and it gave me a period of grace, but that only lasts a certain length of time before the questions start. It can go either way-you should hear some of the things I have heard mechanics say about a driver behind his back - but I was lucky. They wanted to hear what I had to say and they were sensible about it. We were able to get down to some work early on and that was vital because, even though I was cautious about the way I phrased it, it was obvious to me that there was something not right about the car.

The problem for me was that I didn't know how much was down to the tyre and design changes, and how much was down to me. I was experiencing a new mix of sensations, which was hard. I had to be careful what I said about the car, because for all I knew every other team was going through the same problems. When you add to all this the fact that I was a bit rusty, I was working hard to get the picture. That's why I needed as much testing as I could get and that's why it was so frustrating when I found myself sitting and watching when I wanted to be behind the wheel.

Testing is how every driver and every team work out every problem. It's something I have always enjoyed and always been good at, and I didn't see any reason why that pattern should change at Jordan.

The way it works with me is that I become familiar with everything that goes on in the car and how it responds in different situations. There is only one way to do that, and it has to come down to the driver. It's no good for the engineer or even the designer to tell you how the car is going to behave, because you have to work it out for yourself, step by step. You become intimate with the car, but you can only do that by driving it over and over again.

Look at it this way - you can't get an orchestra to play a piece of music in one go. The conductor has to work out when the violins are too strong in one section, for example, or when the music should be slowed down a little and played a little more smoothly. It's like that with a racing car. There are so many components that you have to learn how the various parts of each new car interact with each other. Only by making a lot of changes can you familiarise yourself with each component and the effect it has and, over a long period of time, you can work out which ones perform in what way. It is a laborious process, full of shifting sands, but it is the only way that works.

At the time, Jacques was complaining that the cars were feeling numb and I began to wonder if all the problems were down to the tyres. Then McLaren turned up with their car in Barcelona.

We did most of our testing in Barcelona, as did a lot of the other teams. We would watch our times and we would be okay and do a good time occasionally compared to, say, the Saubers. I was not comfortable though. We could do a good time at a certain moment in the day in certain conditions and that would look great on paper. But when you looked at the trends through the week, building up a picture and a pattern, I was less convinced. Formula One always comes back to the single, overwhelming need for people to be honest with themselves, rather than putting on a show, and if we were honest, we had to admit that a good few teams were looking quicker than us.

If that was bad enough, imagine our feelings when Mika Hakkinen turned up with his McLaren one day and, at about 5 p.m., goes out to do a few laps and is promptly 2.5 seconds per lap quicker than we had managed. He did five laps and then parked it and walked away, but that was when the reality was brought home to us, like a punch in the gut. The prospect of trying to close that gap in performance seemed daunting. On top of that, I realised exactly what I had decided to turn my back on. That was the car I had been trying to get into and all my guesswork about its potential had turned out to be true. Emotionally, it was a little difficult to recover my equilibrium after that. I went back to my hotel room and just stared at the wall, gobsmacked. It was, all at once, impressive and enormously depressing, because it looked like Adrian had built a stonking car. I was secretly impressed, but I wasn't going to let anybody see that. Next day, it was back to work as if nothing had happened.

By now, of course, I had mentally committed myself to being at Jordan, but I didn't want to run the season being completely uncompetitive, because that can sap your morale. My experience had taught me that this was a situation that was shaping up to be tough and strenuous on everybody. The likelihood of us being able to win a race had been greatly diminished by the appearance of that McLaren, because you could be sure that Williams and Ferrari were also going to turn out decent cars.

Up until the first time I drove the car, I had been telling myself that we would be in the position to challenge and to win some races, but I couldn't help but reassess the situation in the light of Hakkinen's times. There was no use in pretending that everything would just sort itself out come the first race, so all we could do was come to terms with a new reality. But there was nothing to be gained by moping - I just had to get on with it and try to make things better.

And we did. We tested away, found some improvements and made progress, but before the first race we knew we were in the same boat as everybody else - a long way from beating McLaren. We put McLaren out of our minds, which is what most people did. We focused instead on looking at what was feasible, and that meant beating teams like Ferrari and Williams, who were also on Goodyear tyres. It was impossible to say what the Bridgestone advantage was, if anything, so you had to look at the teams who were on the same tyre as you, to give you a clue as to where you were.

Expectation sits on your shoulders all the time when you are driving a Grand Prixcar; it's just that some people have more of it than others. I have sat on the grid in the last race of the year with the sole task of winning the world championship, and when you do that, you can't avoid the feeling that everybody is looking at you, willing you on, expecting you to fulfil their desires. Once you've put up with that, most other things seem a lot easier to take.

To some extent, I understand the fans' expectations because I have been there myself. I suspect I am unique as a driver because I spent most of my twenties being a fan of Grand Prix racing rather than ever taking part in it. I remember getting up at 3 a.m. in the hope that Nigel Mansell would become world champion on the other side of the world, and then watching him crash out with a puncture. I understand that tension and hope, and, since that night, I understand the disappointment as well.

I watched Nigel's first Grand Prix win from Paddock Hill bend at Brands Hatch. During every lap, I was holding on to the hope that it would work out right for him and that he would finally come home first and get to see that chequered flag. He was just ahead of Nelson Piquet and, because he had had a few moments in the past, we just stood there and hoped it would work out for him, that he would hold on. When he won, the feeling was as if I had taken my first breath of air since the start of the race. It was a sensation of complete elation.

It was the same feeling as when Arsenal won the FA Cup Final, a match I was delighted to be able to get to. I've supported Arsenal since I was a kid and it was great to be there to see them achieve something historic. Then, when I walked out of Wembley, a group of fans saw me and started chanting 'Damon is a Gunner'. They're right, so it was nice to be noticed!

Even before I won the championship, much had been expected of me and I have been lucky enough to have a lot of fans look out for me. It's flattering and, at times, it's a lot of fun, but this year I felt like saying to people, 'forget me for the moment because I am not in the frame. If I get up there, we'll all be happy, but. . .' I went to Monaco and met fans and they were asking, 'Are you going to win?' What could I say? I didn't want to say no and disillusion them, but at the same time I realised there was this great expectation that could not be satisfied at that moment. It was always going to take time with Jordan, but events like Canada just fuelled the situation and made it worse. A lot of fans tend to overlook the reasons behind a result. In Canada, I was running second because eight cars had, somehow or other, obliterated themselves.

Even in Canada, where you might imagine the support for Jacques and Michael would cut down on the Hill fans, I get great support. It's heart-warming and a valuable reminder that many fans still see our business as a sport.

To have that support is great, but the battle has to be fought by you alone. Once you get in the car, there is nobody else out there who can help you. Nobody can - not your friends, your family or your fans. You are on your own and, once you get over the nerves, it's a wonderful feeling to be in charge of the situation and in charge of your destiny. It is like the feeling you have when you have passed your driving test and you are allowed out there on your own, free of guidance, free to do what you want.

There are times when the sheer weight of support can still play its part though. Nigel used to tell people that driving in front of the Silverstone crowd was worth a second per lap to him, and although I think that's a bit of an exaggeration, it is a wonderful feeling to be out there, in front of people cheering your name and waving their flags. My first win at Silverstone was one of my greatest memories in motor racing, and I still remember so well the number of fans who urged me on through every lap.

People ask me why I've had all this support, and I've wondered too. I still don't know the answer. I try not to distance myself from people by putting up a facade, I try to be honest, and I think people appreciate that. If the simple act of being honest has endeared me to the fans, then it has brought me something that I did not expect. Looking back, though, I don't think my honesty has helped my career.

If you try to act in an honest, honourable, straightforward way, it affects the impression you give to the people who make the decisions, the people who assess you - team owners and journalists. Formula One is not about being pleasant and helpful. It's not about being decent and honest. In this sport, it helps to be a hard-nosed bastard. Believe me, I can do that bit when I need to, but I don't necessarily enjoy it.

I think I have learnt to survive the hard way. I wore my heart on my sleeve in my early career and, while this may have shown my human side, it possibly gave the impression of a vulnerable character. When things did not work out in 1995, and I lost the title after giving everything I could, I was totally empty, drained of all my fight. I was a loser for all the world to see.

Nobody could have expected me to fight back from that. But I did. In fact, I won the last race of that year, in Adelaide. Nobody expected that, particularly Frank Williams and Patrick Head, who had already signed up my replacement.

You can't always have it both ways. Either you come across as being hard as nails, and maybe a little difficult to like, or you look human and perhaps expose your vulnerability to competitors and team bosses. Even if people like you, the general rule is: 'Everyone loves a winner.'