WORLD champion Damon Hill saw his season get off to a dismal start early this morning with the campaign less than eight laps old. Hill was forced to pull-off the circuit early in first practice for the Australian Grand Prix when his Arrows-Yamaha car developed technical problems and suddenly started to slow down.

The 36-year-old, in his first outing for his new team, trudged back to the pits as pre-season fears about the car's reliability were realised. The mechanical glitch is the latest in a sorry list of problems encountered by Hill since he signed for Arrows in a £4.5 million deal after being ditched by Williams.

Benetton's Jean Alesi was fastest this morning, just over a 10th of a second ahead of Ferrari's Michael Schumacher, with title favourite Jacques Villeneuve third in the Williams-Renault. Ralf Schumacher finished a promising fourth for Jordan in his first outing in a grand prix car while Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Hill's replacement at Williams, was fifth fastest.