Last week when I saw that a German website had written about this, I prepared a simple but telling graph looking at the form of Williams over the years. But I refrained from publishing it in case my conclusions were overly harsh.

But today the team’s technical director Sam Michael has come out and said for himself that the recent performance of Williams is not good enough.

What I would not be happy with doing would be not changing anything – even myself. Even if everyone said everything is perfect, I know it is not. So, I am not happy with the job that we have done as a group. I would review that anyway – including myself. I don’t exclude myself from any of that.

I, as technical director, have chosen the technical team that works for me… They are all people that I have chosen to put in those positions, so if it doesn’t work then it is my responsibility.

This is refreshing honesty. It is no secret that Williams’s form has been disappointing in the last few years. But it has never been properly confronted.

In the light of Sam Michael’s comments, here is the graph. It tracks the Constructors’ Championship positions of Williams throughout its 32 years in Formula 1. Alongside the annual positions, I have added a five-year rolling average to allow us to see the longer term trends.

It is well-known that Williams has always been a highly successful grand prix team. The 1980s were a bit of a rollercoaster. The team mixed hugely successful years with a few more disappointing years. Overall, the trend has been for the team to hover around 3rd place on average.

Then came the mid-1990s, when Williams were truly dominant. This was the period where Adrian Newey was on board. It is almost impossible for the five-year trend to get any higher, as the team strung together an incredible seven consecutive top-two finishes.

It is no secret that Williams have never dominated in this way ever since Adrian Newey left in 1997. But looking at the trend, Williams continued to average around 3rd place in the Constructors’ Championship — if anything, still slightly better than the pre-Adrian Newey years. But in the middle of the 2000s, it begins to change for the worse — dramatically.

In fact, if you look at the trendline, with no other knowledge I think you could actually guess when Sam Michael became technical director. In case you haven’t spotted it, I have added a subtle hint that pinpoints the year.

This could well be a harsh assessment. Sam Michael seems to be well respected among his colleagues at Williams. But from the outside, it has long perplexed me why there hasn’t been more of a question mark over Sam Michael’s role.

The team has made many changes in recent years. They have switched engine manufacturers from BMW to Cosworth via Toyota. They have brought on board hugely experienced drivers (Alexander Wurz, Rubens Barrichello) along with promising rookies (Nico Rosberg, Nico Hülkenberg). And there have been lots of changes behind the scenes with the operation of the business. None of these changes have done the trick.

Now, with Williams enduring their worst start to an F1 season since their very first one in 1978, it is crunch time. They need to face up to their issues properly.

We know the problem is not money. After all, the team keeps telling us they have no money worries whatsoever!

Currently the team languishes in 10th place in the Constructors’ Championship, behind Lotus, a team that is not yet two years old. Indeed, in China, Pastor Maldonado was beaten fair and square by Heikki Kovalainen in the Lotus.

Amazingly, this position is up from the situation after Malaysia, when the team was also behind Virgin in the Constructors’ Championship. Virgin is another team looking carefully at its technical set-up, as Nick Wirth’s CFD-only approach fails to prove its worth.

Here, just for fun, is the graph of Williams’s Constructors’ Championship positions with their current 10th place for 2011 added.

Today, Williams can’t beat Ferrari, so I am rather indifferent about them. But at a time where the majority of the grid is made up of manufacturers — of cars and drinks — even I can see that there is something romantic about Williams. I think it would be good to see them at the front again.

But if I was a fan of the team, I would probably have well and truly lost patience by now. Every year the team says, “just wait — next year we’ll be back”. They spend all winter making positive noises. And then when it comes to the big day itself? They are even slower than they were before.

One of the most successful teams in history

When they last won a Constructors’ Championship in 1997, Williams had won more of them than Ferrari. The record was staggering — nine Constructors’ and seven Drivers’ Championships in just 20 seasons. It was an utterly fearsome record.

At that stage, Williams had won races in all but two of its seasons — its very first in 1978, and a brief drought in 1988 when the team had to make do with inferior Judd engines after Honda jumped ship to McLaren. Even then, Nigel Mansell managed to wring a couple of second place finishes out of it, which is more than can be said for what came after 1997.

Once again, Williams was left in the lurch after the departure of the front-running engine manufacturer — this time Renault. To make matters worse, chief designer Adrian Newey left Williams to join McLaren. 1998 was a year of continuity for Williams, in all the wrong ways — using what were effectively year-old Renault engines and what some said was the 1997 chassis adapted for 1998 regulations.

In 1999 the team faced further difficulties with Alex Zanardi struggling to adapt to F1 after a successful time in ChampCars. While the wins dried up, this difficult spell was thankfully short lived, as in 2000 Williams forged a new partnership with BMW.

2000 was a learning year for all concerned, but successes came between 2001 and 2003, when Williams returned to winning ways. Williams were even strong title contenders in 2003, with four victories and nine podiums, Williams were a strong player in a tight three-way battle for the championship. As unlikely as it seems today, Juan Pablo Montoya was almost a World Champion!

The slide from the top

Unfortunately, things started to go pear-shaped again in 2004. A radical “walrus nose” concept brought little in the way of performance, and a more conventional design was brought out midway through the season. Montoya managed to win the final race in Brazil, but this race remains the team’s last taste of success.

Almost every year since then has seemingly seen Williams slip back a bit further, with the successes of the old days becoming an ever more distant memory. In the past five years, the team has had just four podium finishes. (Barring success in Turkey, that number will reduce to three this weekend!)

The brightest spot has been 2007, when a consistent set of results from Nico Rosberg helped the team bag a commendable fourth place in the Constructors’ Championship (although that was after McLaren’s disqualification from the Championship). Apart from that, Williams have become a fixture at the back of the midfield — if you can call 8th out of 10 teams the “midfield”.

Arrogant enough to believe their own excuses

All the while, the excuses came, and fans were reassured: “next year is our year”. And next year comes and everything is all the same. Even if they trick people into thinking they’re fast by topping Friday Practice times, as Williams did in the first half of last season, people soon become wise to the fact that the car is not truly capable of it.

Before, there was always a positive spin to put on the situation. In 2009, Williams were bad — but at least Renault were worse and BMW weren’t much better. In 2008 people were more concerned with the alarming lack of pace in the Honda. 2006 was regarded as a tough deal for Williams, struggling with apparently sluggish and unreliable Cosworth engines.

It’s difficult to sugar-coat this year’s results in the same way. Although seventh doesn’t sound too bad, in effect the only teams that are behind them are either new (in the case of Virgin, Hispania and Lotus), facing hugely difficult political and financial constraints (Sauber) or have designed their own car for the first time (Toro Rosso). The shocker is that Williams are even being compared to teams like this.

Meanwhile, Force India look a great deal more convincing, and Renault have again leapfrogged Williams and look like potential challengers to the top four teams. Indeed, Toro Rosso even look like they can realistically challenge Williams on the racetrack, particularly with a couple of feisty young drivers who are stepping up to the plate in style, particularly in the case of Jaime Alguersuari. Meanwhile, in China Nico Hülkenberg finished behind the Lotus of Heikki Kovalainen.

It seems as though Williams allowed arrogance to get the better of them. It was always someone else’s fault. But increasingly, Williams have been made to eat humble pie.

Williams lay the blame for their early-2000s dip at the door of BMW. This ended in an acrimonious split in 2005, by which time each party had become convinced that the other side was not pulling its weight. But BMW did a pretty good job when they joined forces with Sauber, the disappointment of 2009 notwithstanding. Meanwhile, Williams became inert — a permanent fixture of the midfield.

Of course, if it wasn’t the engine’s fault, it was the drivers’ fault. I was very interested to see Frank Williams admitting that, in the light of Mark Webber’s recent successes, the team was too hasty to lay the blame at the door of its driver for their average spell in 2005 and 2006.

When we had him obviously our car was a disappointment and we felt he was part of the problem. He probably wasn’t actually, with hindsight. The major point was that the car had problems.

Is there a way back?

I think the Williams of today is a great deal less arrogant than the Williams of four or five years ago. But now the damage has been done. Is there a way back to the top for this proud team? 13 years on from its last Championship success, it’s difficult to see.

Already, there are rumours that Williams are unhappy with Cosworth (just like in 2006). Rumours are linking them to a partnership with Renault. Williams were linked to Renault last year too, and Frank Williams confessed that the prospect of “Williams Renault”, a reminder of the team’s most dominant period in the 1990s, was exciting.

Other rumours link Williams to a partnership with Porsche, with whom they have collaborated on kers. But the problems run deeper than the matter of their engine supply, as surely the lessons of the BMW split show.

Despite all of its history and past successes, Williams have tried and failed to recover for too long now. Sadly, it seems as though this year Williams have to make do with racing against the likes of Sauber, a zombie team that is on emergency life support, and Lotus, a team that didn’t even exist a few months ago.

I hope they can make it. I was privileged enough to be invited to the Williams factory and museum last year. The museum is a wonderful place, brimful of some of the most successful grand prix cars there have ever been. The team only goes back just over 30 years, but it is such a huge part of Formula 1′s history. It would be such a shame if Williams were stuck at the back of the grid forever.

This is the outcome: two teams will limp into the start of the championship, a third is being pushed into the ring by an invisible hand – you can be sure it is not the hand of Adam Smith – and, as for the fourth, well, you would do better to call on Missing Persons to locate it.

This week, that fourth team — USF1 — finally threw in the towel, after weeks (indeed, months) of speculation. And this evening they have been officially removed from the entry list. But I’ll discuss USF1 in further detail later.

However, this news once again shines the spotlight on the new teams, and the FIA’s process for selecting them. Right from the beginning there was controversy surrounding some of the choices. There is also the fact that new entrants were seemingly forced to use Cosworth engines.

It is worth remembering that there were at least two highly credible entries that were rejected by the FIA, to the surprise of many. David Richards and his Prodrive operation has been looking at entering F1 for years, and indeed had a slot on the 2008 grid until the future of customer cars was thrown into doubt. Lola were another highly credible entry with the ability to field a strong car.

So, what’s going on with the new teams? In this short series of articles I will take a brief look at the five main protagonists — Lotus and Virgin (the good side of the process), USF1 and Campos (the bad side) and Stefan (the ugly side).

The good side of the process

The Lotus position: last?

Lotus driver Jarno Trulli openly admits that the team expects to turn up at Bahrain four seconds off the pace. And yesterday Heikki Kovalainen back-pedalled from comments attributed to him that this year’s Lotus is worse than the Minardi he tested in 2003. The Finn claims the comments have been taken out of context.

Nonetheless, for my money the Lotus team has good long-term prospects. The jury is out on Mike Gascoyne’s abilities as a technical director. He is well regarded and appears to do a good job, but critics point out that he has never produced a World Championship-winning car.

Lotus are at pains to point out that they have had just five months to create this F1 car. That is nowhere near long enough to produce a competitive package. In the long term, they could be headed for a respectable role in the midfield.

The driver line-up of Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen is unadventurous, but at least it is credible. Trulli and Kovalainen have both won just one race each, and neither is particularly convincing during the race. But at least they are two established and experienced drivers.

Virgin’s CFD gamble

Virgin — the Richard Branson-backed F1 entry of Manor which has been highly successful in lower formulae — has taken a gamble by exclusively using CFD to design the car, without ever having put the car in a wind tunnel. The car has been blighted by several reliability issues, while typically lapping five or six seconds off the pace. If testing form is anything to go by, there is little for the team to be optimistic about.

On the plus side, they have a credible driver pairing in the former Toyota driver Timo Glock and experienced GP2 racer Lucas di Grassi. Perhaps more important, given the current climate, is the fact that the team appears to have been highly successful in attracting sponsorship. I guess sponsors are magnetically attracted to the golden Virgin brand.

Lotus and Virgin are the two teams that are described by Ferrari as “limping” into the start of the championship. That is the best side of the new teams. The other two new teams, Campos and USF1, have both teetered on the brink of collapse. But that is for the next article…

The French car company was considering whether to remain in the sport with its own team, switch to simply being an engine supplier or quit altogether.

Were Renault to pull out, it would conclude the removal of all of the major manufacturer teams in F1. Honda, BMW and Toyota have all gone in the past year. Renault are now seriously considering leaving.

In terms of manufacturer involvement, that would leave engine suppliers Mercedes-Benz and Ferrari. Both Mercedes and Ferrari are as close to being permanent fixtures as it comes in F1. Mercedes have been involved in F1 uninterrupted since 1993. With their increased involvement in Brawn, they look set to stick around. Ferrari have been in F1 since the beginning in 1950 and were they to leave it would be the end of F1. As such, you can more-or-less exclude both Mercedes and Ferrari from the list of manufacturers at risk of leaving F1.

I have to admit that I am wary of what Renault might do. I always suspected that Renault would be the first manufacturer to leave, certainly since Carlos Ghosn took over there. Now they are effectively the last one remaining. That is a surprise. Does it make it more likely for them to stay in the long run? Or is this the opportunity to join the queue of companies leaving the sport without looking a bit silly like Honda did?

There are more questions. Was Max Mosley right all along to push forward with his anti-manufacturer proposals? His justification was that manufacturers might leave with no warning, so it was wise to slash costs, freeze engines and neuter the sport in all sorts of ways. Now that manufacturers are leaving in droves, it looks like he may have been right.

The alternative possibility is that the changes he has forced through, along with the screeds of bad publicity it caused, have fundamentally made the sport less attractive. The manufacturers could well have preferred a breakaway than live with the FIA’s vision. But the FIA’s vision is what we’ve got. Ferrari certainly have their own views.

The thing is, manufacturers are always fickle. They always have been, and always will be. They will leave at the drop of a hat if it no longer forms part of their marketing strategy. Motorsport is not their core business. At the end of the day, if they won’t sell on Monday, why should they bother trying to win on Sunday?

But it was Max Mosley who originally moulded F1 into a sport dominated by manufacturers. He said that teams like Williams were not his vision of F1′s future. Now Williams is the model of the sort of team that will occupy around half of the grid next year.

In a sense, you can see this current phase as the F1 equivalent of a market correction. The bubble has burst. But while it seems painful now, this process paves the way for a more stable situation.

Throughout its history, Formula 1 has had a healthy mixture of manufacturer involvement and privateer passion. In recent years, the scales had tipped a bit too far towards the manufacturers, which drowned out the privateers to an almost dangerous extent.

F1 had become the plaything of manufacturers and multi-trillionaires. Let us not forget that alongside the likes of Honda and Toyota, businessmen such as Dietrich Mateschitz and Vijay Mallya — who have more money than they know what to do with — have bankrolled F1 teams to success. You will notice that, ignoring the ‘For Sale’ sign outside Toro Rosso (which isn’t very prominent), these teams have remained in F1, unlike the manufacturers.

They are a bit more like privateers in the traditional sense. They don’t want to sell cars, though they may want to sell drinks. But in a way they are in F1 because they are attracted to it as a sport, just as people like Frank Williams and Ken Tyrrell were. Manufacturers just do it because they feel like they should.

Next year there might be too few manufacturers. For there to be just three companies supplying engines would be a situation almost as unsustainable as what has happened up to this year. Cosworth may be crossing their fingers though. Their business model might work if they supply more teams.

But I can see Renault playing a happy role as an engine supplier, even if the Renault F1 team is put up for sale. I am certain that there would be a lot of interest from serious people wanting to buy the team. Despite the turmoil of this year’s scandal, and the fact that the team has gone off the boil for the past few years, this is a team that has the facilities and the capabilities to win World Championships.

I would be upset to see Renault leave the sport. I have a bit of a soft spot for them. Toyota were cold and clinical, on top of being comically bad considering their budgets.

Honda were always a bit of a fairweather presence. They took over BAR more-or-less because there was no-one else to do it after tobacco companies left the sport. Then they set up Super Aguri because they were scared to sack Takuma Sato properly. While many were attracted to Super Aguri for their pluck and while struggling at the back in difficult circumstances, it should never be forgotten that Super Aguri was always a crass and expensive publicity stunt.

Renault, though, have real heritage. They have a history in the shape of their involvement in the sport in the 1970s and 1980s. And the current incarnation of the team has been notably successful, mostly for being the one team that has been able to put up a sustained fight against Ferrari in this decade by beating the Scuderia two years in a row.

Here’s hoping that Renault don’t decide to depart. I am especially hopeful for Robert Kubica, a hugely talented driver who after being put through the wringer at BMW this year does not need this again. But, unlike the other teams, I have a feeling that the future of the Enstone-based squad will be perfectly safe no matter who owns it.

Little wonder it has been known to induce sickness. Drivers are advised that they may want to close eyes if they spin in order to avoid reacquainting themselves with their lunch. Apparently drivers have been known to be sick all over the place while driving the simulator. Come to think of it, I’m slightly suspicious because I remember that the cleaner was leaving the room just as we were entering it. We were told, though, that Kazuki Nakajima is amazing in the simulator and can spend all day in it with no ill effects.

The circuit models are said to be very accurate indeed, albeit some more accurate than others. For instance, someone else has exclusive rights to the best map of the Nürburgring. The maps are constructed using lasers. A van drives slowly around the circuit emitting laser beams at multiple angles, creating a map of millions of dots. This means that every bump on the circuit is accounted for.

An aerial image of the circuit is then overlaid on top of these dots to create the environment. But if you look at the circuit, some of the landmarks are not very accurately reproduced. In fact, some of it looks like bad virtual reality graphics. The idea is to reduce any confusion that might be caused by too many cues. If they don’t think something will give a driver an accurate cue, they won’t implement it.

Some teams have more sophisticated simulators. In some simulators the car will be on a moving platform to give the impression of movement — something clearly lacking from the still Williams cockpit. It is said that some simulators even have belts that tighten up to give you some impression of g-forces. Williams shun such devices, which they regard as off-putting.

I have to confess that I have been slightly sceptical about the Williams simulator in the past. McLaren’s is said to be amazing, but it is jealously kept under wraps from outsiders. Williams have no such qualms however. It is the only simulator that I have seen on television. See, for instance, this ITV video with Mark Blundell and this BBC video.

We were lucky enough to be in the room when occasional Williams tester Daniel Clos was driving it. He was there to acquaint himself with the Hungaroring in preparation for the GP2 races which were being held just a few days later. I have to say he didn’t look very good while we were there, and he even spun at one point. But those must have been his very first laps round the circuit and of course I am in no position to pass comment. In the real thing, he finished 11th in both races.

It is presumably a service that Williams are happy to offer young drivers in the hope of developing them into a Formula 1 star of the future. Whether Daniel Clos is one remains to be seen. But surely on his way to F1 stardom is another Williams tester, Nico Hülkenberg. Simulator Engineer Jeff Calam is adamant that the simulator is a worthwhile piece of equipment to invest in, pointing at Hülkenberg’s highly impressive GP2 results at circuits he hasn’t driven at before. This fact puts to bed my doubts about the quality of the Williams simulator.

Once the factory tour was over, we had a Q&A with Sam Michael. He was largely very open in his responses, and came across very well to me. I was impressed that he took the time out of his schedule to talk to a bunch of bloggers. You can hear audio of the Q&A session over at Brits on Pole once again.

After that, we went for a tour of the fabulous Williams museum. Here, we were expertly guided by Scott Garrett from Synergy, the company that arranged our visit on behalf of Philips. Although he now works for Synergy, he was previously Head of Marketing at Williams and now has links with a number of F1 teams. This makes him a highly knowledgeable speaker on Formula 1, and Williams in particular. It was a real pleasure to have this sort of insight.

For obvious reasons, photography was strictly forbidden in the factory, but we were free to take as many photographs as we wanted in the museum. And boy did we take the opportunity!

The museum is impressive, with a range of cars from the full history of the Williams team’s existence. The first car you see is Alan Jones’s FW06 with its Ford Cosworth engine peering out the back. Cars are displayed, more or less a car for every year, right up to 2007′s FW29 — the very car that the competition winner will be driving.

All-in-all, the museum contains over forty cars. We are told that Frank Williams is a hoarder. The team still owns 106 chassis, while it only makes around six per year. Most of these cars are well looked after and can theoretically still be driven. The main exception is the Honda-powered cars, because they asked for the engines back!

For the most part, the cars are laid out in chronological order, and as you make your way through the museum videos are played telling us about Williams during the period of the cars in the vicinity. The relevant cars are lit up while the video is playing.

Unfortunately, this means that they are plunged into darkness once the video is finished, and you are supposed to move along to the next section. It is a pretty clever device to get us to keep moving and get rid of us quickly, but quite annoying for those of us who would have liked to have done it at our own pace. One person sarcastically remarked under his breath, “you have a lot of great cars, then put them in the dark.” It is for this reason that the lighting is not very good in some of the photographs.

Despite the chronological layout of the museum, there is still a fairly clear centrepiece. Two cars in particular are displayed on a higher plinth — the FW18 and the FW19, the team’s latest two championship-winning cars from 1996 and 1997 driven by Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve.

A great moment of F1 geekery occurred when Mr Garrett pointed out that the FW19 on display is the actual car which Michael Schumacher famously crashed into at Jerez in 1997. Everyone went “oooh” and inquisitively gathered to look at this particularly historic Williams F1 car. The damage is still evident. I had heard that Patrick Head liked the car to be displayed with the tyre mark still there, but it has since been restored and now just looks like a couple of holes have been punched in the corner of the sidepod.

“We never got on very well with Michael Schumacher,” Scott Garrett noted, just in case we didn’t get the clue. This prompted a cheeky question from someone else, “How did you get on with Ralf?”

There is a notable omission. The most distinctive F1 car in the team’s history, the FW26 with the “walrus nose” is nowhere to be seen. It is perhaps not the team’s proudest design.

One unusual design does proudly feature though. Williams were never able to race with their FW08B six-wheeler. It was banned by the FIA before the season started over fears that it would be too dominant.

Go up the stairs, and you will see two cars that are clearly very special to the team. One is Ayrton Senna’s test car from 1994. The other is the record-breaking FW10, in which Keke Rosberg was the first person ever to set a lap at a speed of 160mph in 1985. The record was set at Silverstone and remarkably stayed in place until 2002!

All-in-all, it was an absolutely fantastic day. Although Williams are not among my favourite teams, they have got to be admired for being so accommodating to us. If you ever get the chance to attend such an event, I would highly recommend it. A massive thank you to those who organised it and invited me.

Below is the full slideshow of photographs from my visit to Williams.

This week the ACEA, the European Car Manufacturers’ Association, came out to say that the “current governance of the sport can’t continue”. The FIA’s retort was predictably arrogant and bitter. One thing that particularly interested me was this irrelevant paragraph at the end:

The FIA understands that Porsche did not support ACEA’s Formula One resolution and has instructed the ACEA secretariat to make this clear in response to any press enquiries.

Grasping at straws, this was the one thing the FIA found to attack the ACEA with (and how typical it is of Max to go on the attack with a straw man like this rather than methodically argue their case — probably because their case is filled with holes). It’s odd that they should find the view of Porsche within the ACEA so important. This is a manufacturer which was last involved in F1 way back in 1991, and not very successfully either. They have shown very little interest in returning to F1.

Indeed, a certain revelation last year put paid to any slim chance that Porsche might enter F1 while Max Mosley is in charge. Wolfgang Porsche said last year: “After the affair with Max Mosley and the women it would not be very savoury to get involved (in Formula One) now.”

Funny how Max Mosley didn’t pay so much attention to Porsche’s views then, isn’t it?

It strikes me as odd that Mosley should bang on and on about how the current recession means that the manufacturers must be told how much they will be able to spend. Somehow I think the ACEA is in a much better position to know where than manufacturers stand.

Yesterday, the FIA released to the media a further exchange of letters between the FIA and Fota. Presumably this is again supposed to show Fota in a bad light. But Fota’s letter is conciliatory in tone and the content clearly seeks a compromise. Fota propose solutions in four key areas. Max Mosley’s response? Four doors slammed shut.

On governance, Mosley wants the teams to agree to extend an 11-year-old Concorde Agreement and from that point negotiate forwards. This would involve the teams placing a huge amount of trust in the FIA, and the FIA have shown themselves to be a distinctly untrustworthy organisation. Slam.

On resource restriction, the FIA still contends that “a fundamental problem with the Fota proposal was the absence of a clear figure”. In other words, unless the budget cap is on the table, the FIA will not discuss it. Slam.

On the two-tier system, the FIA confirms that even though it says there will be no two-tier system in F1 next season, the technical regulations will still in fact be rigged in favour of teams running the Cosworth engine which will not have a limit on its performance, as all other engines do. Slam.

Bye-bye compromise. And it’s all thanks to Max Mosley. The letter looks as though it was formulated in order to tweak the teams’ tails. It leaves F1 facing the serious prospect of a breakaway.

It pains me to say it, but I am beginning to find the idea of a breakaway very appealing. By the FIA’s own admission, next year’s budget capped cars will not perform to F1 standard. All of the top teams in F1 currently do not stand on the FIA’s side, and the most promising of the new teams were not given a slot on the entry list last week. As things stand, the FIA Championship will have no teams of a high pedigree.

As for drivers, as things stand the FIA Championship will have no Champions on the grid. Fernando Alonso, Felipe Massa and Mark Webber have all spoken out against the FIA’s budget cap proposals, lamenting the fact that it would bring to an end the notion of F1 being the pinnacle of motorsport. All three drivers would sooner drive in a breakaway series than drive in a budget capped series.

Fernando Alonso:

I prefer to race in any other category before in the new F1. A model similar to GP2 or F3 is not interesting for any driver, for any sponsor or for any circuit or television network. In that case it would be a category without any sense.

Felipe Massa:

…we need to look seriously at what is the best option: as the teams appear to be united, then maybe it is time to look at doing something different that could be better for the sport.

Mark Webber:

Collectively everyone has played a role in trying to help and protect the sport and you just see all that effort down the years being devalued or diluted through some pretty radical ideas.

It’s good to have some stability, to be able to predict what’s going to happen, not have different things going on every six months.

All the drivers share the same view. We want to drive for the best teams and race against the best drivers. If it’s not the FIA Formula 1 world championship, so be it. It’ll still be the most prestigious championship.

Mark Webber’s opinion is particularly useful to pay attention to, as he the most senior member of the GPDA, the F1 drivers’ union, to have a race seat. He therefore has an intimate knowledge of what the drivers are thinking, and he has pointed out that “All the drivers have the same view.”

So the teams are against the FIA. The drivers are against the FIA. And the fans are almost universally against the FIA (see, for example, here and here).

I sense that there are a few journalists who have taken the FIA’s side. However, it is well known that journalists who speak out against the FIA sometimes find themselves having “problems”. After The Sunday Times received a writ for libel from Max Mosley following a column written by Martin Brundle, he had this to say:

I’m tired of what I perceive as the “spin” and tactics of the FIA press office, as are many other journalists. I expect my accreditation pass for next year will be hindered in some way to make my coverage of F1 more difficult and to punish me. Or they will write to ITV again to say that my commentary is not up to standard despite my unprecedented six Royal Television Society Awards for sports broadcasting.

The FIA vets journalists, so they must be seen as another F1 institution that is inherently biased towards the FIA’s point of view. In that sense, it is amazing that a few journalists have decided to speak out. See, for instance, Richard Williams (who I believe does not attend grands prix anyway as Maurice Hamilton is The Guardian’s main F1 correspondent) and Ed Gorman.

Unless the unthinkable happens and Max Mosley capitulates, we as fans (who have been given no say by the FIA, unlike Fota who have conducted proper market research) will have to endure his rotten vision of F1 anyway. At least with a breakaway we will have a choice.

What do we want? Max Mosley’s dungeon dictatorship which, like all dictatorships, will run his playthings into the ground? Or the best drivers racing the best cars at the best circuits? It’s surely a simple decision.

The first thing to note is that all ten currently existing teams are on the list in some form or another. Five of the Fota-aligned teams are at the bottom of the list and have asterisks next to their entries. Conditions are still attached to their entries, so their participation in the 2010 season depends on how talks between Fota and the FIA proceed.

There is a deadline of 19 June for the situation to be resolved. That will no doubt be another big news day as the FIA will have a few extra teams up its sleeve ready to take the place should any Fota teams pull out.

Provocatively, the FIA has entered three of the Fota teams — Ferrari, Red Bull and Toro Rosso — and listed them as unconditional entries. These three teams all signed agreements with the FIA and FOM back in 2005 — the last time a breakaway was on the cards. Ferrari feel that its agreements with the FIA have been broken already, therefore it does not have an obligation to enter in 2010. Ferrari have reiterated that they have no intention of participating in the 2010 season unless its conditions are met.

Meanwhile, Red Bull feel that the FIA has reneged on its assurances that customer cars would be allowed. This is a matter upon which Red Bull’s agreement was apparently based. Red Bull have made clear that they have no intention of taking part as either Red Bull or Toro Rosso as things stand.

No matter what contracts have been signed by whom, you do have to wonder exactly how the FIA intends on forcing teams to participate when they have absolutely no intention of doing so. What is to stop Ferrari or Red Bull from competing half-heartedly in protest, sending out underdeveloped cars and a small team who are uninterested in taking part and fail to qualify, or retire after lap 1?

It wouldn’t exactly do much good for Formula 1′s image. I guess the FIA are banking that such a stunt would be bad for the image of Ferrari and Red Bull too, which would put them off doing it.

The most uncontroversial element of the entry list is the inclusion of Williams and Force India. Both teams were recently “expelled” from Fota as they felt obliged to submit unconditional entries due to previous commercial agreements.

The three new teams are USF1, Campos and Manor. This is a surprise to me. I — and I think most others — expected the three teams to be USF1, Prodrive and Lola.

USF1 were always going to be a dead cert. They had announced that they would enter the 2010 season even before there was a suggestion of a budget cap being in place. Indeed, the team has shrugged its shoulders over the idea of a budget cap. It is perfectly content to participate without a budget cap, which rather undermines Max Mosley’s contention that no new teams will enter without a budget cap.

Campos will probably be a solid operation. The team will be headed up by former Formula 1 driver Adrián Campos, who has been a successful team manager in lower formulae. The original Campos Motorsport won the first three seasons of the precursor to World Series by Renault, winning the championship with Fernando Alonso in 1999. In later years, Campos concentrated on GP2 and became one of the best teams on the grid, winning the 2008 Teams’ Championship. Adrián Campos sold that team which is now known as Addax.

Manor is an alliance between Manor Motorsport and Nick Wirth, two solid names. Nick Wirth was a major force behind Simtek. When the team collapsed, he went on to work at Benetton.

Manor Motorsport has a strong pedigree in lower formulae, having run successful British Formula Renault, British Formula 3 and F3 Euroseries operations. Its Formula Renault team is probably most famous for having run Kimi Räikkönen in the year before the Finn took the unbelievable leap all the way up to a full F1 race drive. It also housed Lewis Hamilton when he won the British Formula Renault championship.

All three of these new teams are pencilled in to run with Cosworth engines, although James Allen believes that USF1 is considering switching to Toyota. The use of Cosworth engines is no surprise. Max Mosley’s threatened standardised engine was the Cosworth lump, and their engine which was used by Williams in 2006 is more-or-less up to date with the current regulations.

I find it highly surprising that Prodrive have not been given the nod. The last time the FIA invited new teams to enter F1, Prodrive was the team that succeeded in gaining the place. However, when the FIA decided to ban customer cars, Prodrive were unable to take that slot which has remained vacant ever since. David Richards knows what he is doing, and had a long-term aim to bring the Aston Martin brand to F1. It seemed to be everything the FIA was wanting, but seemingly that is not the case.

Lola also must have felt pretty confident about getting an entry. Although their last foray into F1 in 1997 was an unmitigated disaster, there were commercial reasons behind it and there was no reason to suggest that they would repeat the mistake. Lola is a classic name which fans of motorsport recognise. And unlike ghostly entries using the names “Brabham”, “March” and “Lotus”, this classic name is the real deal.

It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if Prodrive and Lola are options for the FIA to fall back on in case talks with Fota fail. The ever-present threat that a manufacturer may pull out without warning is also there.

Another notable aspect of the entry is that Red Bull, Toro Rosso and Brawn are all currently without engine deals. But with the manufacturers threatening to jump ship, it probably doesn’t mean much anyway. But it does add further credibility to the idea that Red Bull is angling for Mercedes engines for next season.

Cutting costs has been the biggest issue in Formula 1 for years, and not just from the FIA’s perspective either. Beforehand, though, the approach was to institute ever more barmy technical restrictions which, it can be argued, have adversely affected the racing. All the while, teams still spent the same amount of money simply trimming off weight and having their CFD systems create increasingly alien aerodynamic tricks.

Ideally, I would think that F1 teams should be free to raise however much money they like and spend it as they see fit. But just now it is clear that this is an untenable situation. So we must make a choice. As an F1 fan, given a choice between strange technical restrictions (18,000 RPM limit on the engine? Why? To prevent faster cars catching slower cars?) and a budget cap, I would opt for the budget cap any time. F1 is, after all, supposed to showcase the best technology. F1 teams can still do this with a limited budget so long as they have the freedom to innovate.

But it is the FIA’s motives behind the budget cap that concern me. Alongside the budget cap comes a raft of other proposals that hint towards a complete U-turn in FIA policy towards new teams.

For the best part of a decade-and-a-half, the FIA have made it difficult for new teams to enter F1. The main form this took was in the entry bond. Following the Mastercard Lola debacle of 1997. Under pressure from the title sponsors, the Lola car was rushed out a year earlier than originally intended. It went to Albert Park having done almost zero testing. The cars were a dozen seconds slower than pole position during qualifying. Before round two in Brazil, Lola went bust.

After that, new teams had to pay a $48 million entry bond in order to demonstrate that they were financially stable. That is why the trend has been for new teams to buy old teams rather than start from scratch (which only Toyota and Super Aguri did while the bond had to be paid). The entry bond was dropped a couple of years ago in recognition of the dwindling grid.

Now the FIA seems determined to welcome back smaller private teams, having spent the past decade driving them out, keen to avoid another Lola. Now, they will welcome any new interest with open arms — including Lola! There is also apparent interest from Prodrive / Aston Martin, not to forget USF1 which launched earlier this year.

A number of GP2 teams are also bound to be eyeing an entry to F1. iSport have dropped a heavy hint, while ART, Campos and Racing Engineering are also said to be interested. In March, Joe Saward believed that five new teams were in the pipeline. That number will have surely increased since then.

It is unusual because there probably haven’t been so many teams seriously considering entering F1 since the early 1990s. And it is not as though the small grid is a new problem. For several years there has been space on the grid for 24 cars. F1 has not seen more than 22 cars enter a race since 1995 (excluding the ill-fated Lola in 1997 for one race). Indeed, for four of the last seven seasons there have been only 20 cars on the grid.

Not only have the FIA introduced budget cap proposals in order to attract new teams, but FOM have agreed to actively make it easier for new teams to enter. This will come in the form of free chassis transportation and free air travel for employees. Plus, far from having to pay a $48 million entry bond, new teams will now be paid $10 million per year to enter! I’ll buy two please!

All of this is on top of the plan to increase the maximum number of cars that will be allowed to enter the championship. The grid could now potentially increase in size from 20 cars this year to 26 cars next year, the first time in recent years the FIA have countenanced such an idea.

Why does the FIA have a sudden interest in swelling the size of the grid? Could it possibly have something to do with that pesky Fota organisation that is giving the FIA a bit of well-deserved heat just now?

All ten Formula 1 teams are presenting a united front at the moment. Despite their considerable differences, the ten teams have just about managed to put them aside in order to stand up to the FIA and Bernie Ecclestone, who find it difficult to credibly counter such unanimity among the teams.

It is difficult enough for the ten teams to remain so friendly with each other. It would be awfully helpful if the FIA could make it eleven, twelve, thirteen teams that have to get on with each other. To make those extra new teams be teams that are on the same page as the FIA — as the new teams naturally would be — that would be a stroke of genius. All of a sudden, Fota would not be quite so credible.

The new teams are joining specifically because of the new budget cap, and they will be happy enough to plug an FIA-supplied Cosworth engine into their cars. They will be happy to acquiesce to the FIA’s mad plans for years to come.

Most fans like to see larger grids, and many of us love to watch a small team take on the big guns. But Fota is the best chance there is for the future of Formula 1 to be mapped out in a way that is fan-friendly.

The budget cap may ostensibly be a way of securing the future of Formula 1. But the new teams could be the biggest threat to the chance of actually improving it.

I, for one, applaud this news. I have always been perplexed by the way Liuzzi was sidelined and shunned by all teams. That goes especially for Force India, who have possibly the two most easily-dropped drivers on the grid.

Giancarlo Fisichella — never the most exciting of drivers — is well into the waning phase of his career. Meanwhile, Adrian Sutil has precious little to show for his two full seasons, besides a one-off good run in Monaco which he partially attained by illegally overtaking under yellow flags. The only way you could construct a rustier partnership with current F1 drivers would be if you paired Rubens Barrichello with Nelsinho Piquet.

But why Liuzzi?, I hear you ask. Quite simply, he hasn’t had a proper chance to demonstrate his considerable talent in F1.

I say considerable talent, because that is what he has. Look back at the 2004 Formula 3000 season. Liuzzi was not only the last-ever F3000 Champion. He utterly dominated the field.

Granted, the field wasn’t the most exciting. The only other drivers to win a race that season were Enrico Toccacelo (whose career path fell off the edge of a cliff after that season), and Robert Doornbos and Patrick Friesacher, both of whom got a drive in F1 with disappointing results.

But someone who wins seven out of ten races and finishes second in two of the others in one of the most important feeder formulae needs to be seriously talented. Indeed, at one point he was supposedly destined for a role at Ferrari.

Unfortunately for him, he ended up getting tied up in the overly political world of the Red Bull driver development programme. In his first season as a Red Bull F1 driver, he was forced to share the seat with Christian Klien (another person whose career was left on the scrapheap). Even then, it was not exactly a fair share. He ended up racing just four times, as the Red Bull management clocked that having two drivers with limited experience was not as good as having one driver with solid experience.

For 2006, Liuzzi was offloaded to Toro Rosso where he partnered Scott Speed. It was the first year of the team’s existence, and an outdated and (deliberately) underpowered Cosworth engine did not help matters.

2007 should have been better, and things did begin to look up towards the end of the season. If we believe what we read, the atmosphere within the team was very political, and neither driver saw eye-to-eye with the management. Scott Speed left the team after allegedly being physically assaulted by team boss Franz Tost. After that, Speed came out and said that Franz Tost and Gerhard Berger were “pushing like hell to get rid of me and Tonio.”

Nonetheless, Liuzzi, unlike Speed, saw out the season. He was partnered by a certain young Sebastian Vettel. Today people note what Vettel has gone on to achieve, and how Liuzzi’s performances in the same car show the Italian in a more favourable light — as the Grandprix.com article highlights. This is perhaps slightly unfair. Vettel’s F1 career was just a few races old. By the end of 2007, Liuzzi had 39 races under his belt.

Nonetheless, you cannot avoid the fact that Liuzzi has not yet had a fair crack of the whip. He has never had decent machinery, nor has he ever had a favourable political environment to let him get on with the job.

Now his relatively large amount of experience would make him an ideal candidate for an F1 drive. This is especially the case now that (thanks to the ever-ingenious Max Mosley and the FIA) young drivers can’t get enough testing mileage to get proper experience before being thrown in at the deep end.

Tonio Liuzzi has played a canny move by taking part in the Speedcar series. Apparently his performances have turned heads. It certainly ensures that he won’t get race rusty.

I, for one, hope he makes it back into F1, if only for him to get a proper chance to show what he’s made of. A race seat at Force India is not exactly the Ferrari that seemed to be his destiny four or five years ago. It’s the least he deserves.

McLaren Mercedes

Last year people were saying that Fernando Alonso had made a big mistake by signing for McLaren while Renault were undoubtedly the strongest team. It’s amazing how a few winter tests can change the world topsy-turvy.

The McLaren is said to be right up there at the top. What a turn-around after 2006 being McLaren’s least successful Formula 1 season for at least a decade. Alonso at least looks almost certain to win races this year. Relief for all at Woking after a victory drought last year.

Barring any serious mishaps, I would guess that Alonso is once again in the running for the Championship this year. Even if the McLaren turns out to be a bit of a turkey, if anybody on the grid can win with a mediocre car it is Alonso.

I am more worried about Lewis Hamilton. The poor guy has never even entered a Formula 1 race, and already the British media is shining a powerful spotlight on him, hyping up his chances. We are already sick of the tedious, clichéd references to “the Tiger Woods of F1″ and the fact that he is Formula 1′s first ever black driver when he isn’t.

It is surely a bit much for a young débutante to take. Remember what happened with Button. He had so much hype that his entire career ended up being an albatross around his neck. Let’s hope the same thing doesn’t happen with Hamilton. Some people are saying he can win a race this year. Maybe he can. But I hope he doesn’t get criticised too much if he fails to do so in what is, after all, his first ever season in an F1 car.

Renault F1 Team

This is probably the year where is all starts to go wrong for Renault. Winter testing hasn’t looked too hot. Renault boss Carlos Ghosn’s is lukewarm towards Formula 1. Despite the belated announcement of future commitment to the sport, it wouldn’t surprise me if things start winding down for Renault if results are average this year.

It was the uncertainty over Renault’s future in Formula 1 that has left them with a hugely unimpressive driver line-up this year. A team that has won back-to-back world championships shouldn’t struggle to get the best drivers, but it managed to lose Fernando Alonso (whose own manager is Renault’s director!) and failed to lure Kimi Räikkönen.

As such, Renault are left with the increasingly unimpressive Giancarlo Fisichella as its lead driver and the untested Heikki Kovalainen as his team mate. Rookie Kovalainen might turn out to be really good, but as things stand the driver line-up definitely lacks the superstar status.

Remember just how badly Fisichella did compared with Alonso in the past two years. Fisichella struggled to win more than one race per season. If they were to rely on him, Renault would have been screwed. Now they are relying on him, and it seems as though the car isn’t up to scratch compared with its rivals.

This will probably be a disappointing season for Renault. We’ve seen it happen before to the same team — two back-to-back championships were scored by what was Benetton, thanks to a certain Michael Schumacher who promptly went off to a mid-field team in desperate need of a resurgence. The parallels with Alonso’s move to McLaren are almost uncanny.

Scuderia Ferrari

If you were to ask me four months ago, I would have said that Ferrari — and specifically Kimi Räikkönen — would have run away with this year’s title. Now I am not so sure. Ferrari still look like the strongest team, but McLaren will probably give them a run for their money.

And the usual questions about Räikkönen have to be asked. Every so often somebody comes along and claims that he is not interested or determined enough, that he doesn’t communicate well with his engineers and that he drinks too much.

As such, this is probably a make or break year for Räikkönen’s career. If he fails to impress this year, in a Ferrari, then he probably never will. As things stand, it is uncertain whether Räikkönen is really to blame for his poor record as of yet, or if it was his slow and unreliable McLaren.

But Räikkönen’s début was in 2001, and within a year he was being touted as a future World Champion — before Alonso started truly turning heads. Since then Alonso has won two titles, and Räikkönen has won barely a handful of races.

Räikkönen is indeed impressive, most often when the odds are stacked against him and he has had to start from the back of the grid (Spa 2005) or the time when he had to go out first in qualifying for the 2005 Hungarian Grand Prix. But we have yet to see if he can be a world champion. He has never had a better chance than the one he will have this year, so he had better make the most of it.

It is almost the reverse case for Felipe Massa. A year ago he was seen as an unsafe pair of hands, and his signing to Ferrari stank of nepotism more than anything else. He also made some clumsy errors at the start of the season.

That all changed by the end of the season. He matured immensely to the stage where he could win grands prix in his own right. His performance at Turkey was very impressive. He will win races this year, and Kimi Räikkönen will be an interesting barometer for his talent.

But while it is fathomable to imagine Massa beating Räikkönen, and Räikkönen has a good chance of winning the championship, it still feels a little bit wrong to talk about Massa as a potential world champion. I could be proved wrong though!

Honda Racing F1 Team

Apparently Honda’s testing has been going pretty badly. Even the Honda team themselves — known for unrealistically hyping themselves up right back from the days of BAR — seem pretty subdued about their chances.

Moreover, Button’s belated début win doesn’t seem to have lifted the pressure off him. In fact, people are now asking him to win regularly, as his Hungarian win was a little bit of a fluke.

It’s difficult to know what to really expect of Honda this year. By the looks of things, they won’t be visiting the podium as regularly as they might hope, and that second race win will be as distant as their first always seemed to be (remember, their first win was a fluke).

BMW Sauber F1 Team

BMW Sauber is a team to be really excited about. Mario Theissen is clearly determined to make the team a success, and they look to be on their way to becoming a regular front-running team.

Even last year, BMW were seriously impressive, to the extent that they were possibly the second-fastest car at Monza, a true speed circuit. This year BMW have been turning heads during winter testing.

BMW is also associated with some very strong up and coming drivers. Robert Kubica is clearly an exciting talent, and people will be expecting a lot from him this year. Kubica was brought into the team mid-season last year after impressing as a third driver. He replaced world champion Jacques Villeneuve.

Now a BMW’s new test driver, Sebastian Vettel, is also putting in impressive performances. Nick Heidfeld had better watch his back!

Toyota Racing

The most unromantic team. A corporate juggernaut, nobody seems to like Toyota. They just throw money at F1 and are never able to achieve results, and their aloof image makes them highly unpopular with fans.

Their driver line-up is also less than inspiring. Jarno Trulli and Ralf Schumacher may be established names and proven race winners. But they are also a pair of over-rated and overpaid dinosaurs. Ralf Schumacher’s recent claim that he is the third best driver in F1 was notably laughable.

Moreover, bar a brief successful period at the start of the 2005 season, Toyota have constantly unveiled mediocre car after mediocre car. It just isn’t good enough for a team with a budget that dwarves all the others. If it really is the case that Toyota are only in F1 to sell cars (and it certainly looks that way), then it is highly embarrassing that “the car in front” is actually the car behind.

The smart money appears to be on Toyota pulling out of Formula 1 before too long. They have already made a step in that direction by deciding to supply engines to Williams. Williams may have had a bad spell recently, but it is a name that you don’t mess with, and they are on the resurgence.

Many are tipping that Williams-Toyota will beat the actual Toyota team. That could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and leads to the end of the Toyota F1 team as we know it. They wouldn’t be missed.

Red Bull Racing

It’s not looking good for Red Bull. They brought superstar designer Adrian Newey on board, and Newey has produced a car that bears his distinctive hallmark as seen at McLaren over the past few years.

Unfortunately, he has also brought with him the unreliability issues that have dogged McLaren over those same years. It begs the question — are Newey’s designs the cause of the failures? His tight chassis is said to be causing cooling problems in the Red Bull.

Moreover, the drivers are complaining that they cannot squeeze into his tightly-sculpted car. This is a theme we are familiar with from McLaren — particularly when Alex Wurz couldn’t race because the car did not have the capacity for his tall frame. An F1 car is no good if you can’t fit a driver into it.

Even worse, the uncompromising chassis design doesn’t even seem to be particularly fast. It can’t be the engine’s fault — they have the world champion’s Renault powerplant in the back. Maybe Newey should be designing yachts after all.

There is also the question of where Red Bull’s driver programme has gone. David Coulthard has been there for the past two seasons, but now he is joined by Mark Webber. For a team with such a youthful image, Red Bull has the oldest driver pairing on the grid this year (an amazing feat when you consider Toyota’s drivers).

Webber knows the team well from back in his Jaguar days, so this is something of a homecoming for him after a period of false hope at Williams. But Williams are turning the corner, and this year’s Red Bull car is disappointing — he’s jumped ship and chosen the dinghy with a puncture in it (albeit a very nice looking dinghy).

The team itself is actually ten years old this year, having begun life back in 1997 as Stewart Grand Prix. Over the years, the team has occasionally shown great promise, particularly in its amazing 1999 season, complete with race win and 4^th in the constructors’ championship.

But otherwise — whether it felt strong or not — the team has resolutely refused to finish higher than 7^th in the championship. By the looks of things, unless their fortunes drastically improve, they look set to retain their mid-field reputation.

Williams

The dark horse this year? Williams have had a shockingly bad few seasons. This once great name of Formula 1 has been languishing ever further towards the back of the grid. The much-trumpeted partnership with Cosworth was doomed as the car proved to be both unreliable and slow.

You would assume that there are some serious long-term problems somewhere in Williams. I get the impression that during the BMW years they were too busy pointing the finger at anyone but themselves instead of actually getting round to fixing the problem. Perhaps the team was too arrogant to believe that it could be their fault?

Anyway, there are signs that Williams have finally taken action to stop them from falling even further back. And a Toyota engine should propel them further than the Cosworth was able to.

The Toyota deal is interesting. As many people have noted, it is entirely possible that the Williams-Toyota could beat the actual Toyota team. In that case, it could be curtains for Toyota’s team. That could open the door for Toyota to develop a long-term relationship with Williams as an engine partner. Both Williams and Toyota would probably be able to achieve more this way.

As for the drivers, Nico Rosberg showed great promise at the start of last season but started to make himself look a bit silly for the rest of the season. It was almost the reverse of what happened to Massa.

This year will be vital for Rosberg. If he doesn’t impress this year, that could be that for his career. Personally, I think he has the potential of someone along the lines of a Heidfeld. But not an Alonso. Probably not even a Coulthard. But we’ll see.

The choice of second driver, Alex Wurz, is very interesting. I always felt that Wurz never got the chance he deserved in F1. His height (and therefore weight) didn’t help matters, and he was notoriously unable to fit into his McLaren when required to stand in for injured Montoya a couple of years ago.

Wurz exploded onto the F1 scene ten years ago now, but most of his experience since then has been as a test driver. He might be a bit rusty at racing. Then again, when he (eventually) stood in for Montoya, he was no slouch. But Wurz is undoubtedly in the twilight years of his career.

Scuderia Toro Rosso

Okay, there is no avoiding the issue now. Customer cars. Essentially, the Toro Rosso is alleged to be the main Red Bull car with a different paint job. Cue hysteria from other teams — most notably Williams and Spyker, who risk being the worst team of the year (and would thereby receive no prize money whatsoever).

I’m not sure what to make of it yet. At the moment, I am prepared to tentatively support the Toro Rosso design. After all, Sauber’s (alleged) copycat Ferrari was never properly investigated, and Ligier’s copycat Benetton got away fairly lightly. So there is a precedent here.

It also provides a juicy chance to directly compare the Renault and Ferrari engines. The Red Bulls will run with Renaults, and Toro Rosso (being Italian) will race with Ferraris. These are probably the two best engines in Formula 1, and it will be fascinating to compare them in two near enough identical cars.

The problem with Toro Rosso’s approach is that the Red Bull could well prove to be a turkey for all the reasons discussed above. In that case, they might have been better off just quietly designing a cheap and cheerful car, rather than risking the controversy and ultimate failure of the Newey design.

Toro Rosso keep the same drivers as last year. It’s difficult to know what to make of Liuzzi and Speed. Liuzzi shows occasional glimpses of promise, but not often enough. Speed is mostly good for the comedy value. He did provide the funniest moments of last year including:

• Sweary-poos incident at Australia with kind-of team mate David Coulthard in the steward’s office
• “…last night, I had a boner — this big!“
• “Someone’s head is gonna roll!”
• “I definitely think we should go onto dry tyres very soon.”

Spyker F1 Team

There doesn’t seem to be much to say about Spyker. They are pretty much destined to be at the back of the grid. Mike Gascoyne is a big name designer there, but nobody seems to think he’ll be able to pull them around.

To think that not so long ago this was the Jordan team. In 1999 they were just spectacular. For a brief period it looked as though they were capable of winning a championship. Ever since then, it has been a depressing, terminal decline to the point where they are the worst team in the field.

At least Spyker has a little bit of a better image than Midland did!

Super Aguri F1 Team

Hats off to Super Aguri! They did ever so well last year having only been invented mere months before the beginning of the championship, and with a four-year-old Arrows car that wasn’t even that good four years ago.

Then they built their own car and it got to the stage where Sato drove a convincing race to finish in tenth place in Brazil, ahead of all the Red Bulls and Midland / Spykers. Now they have what is supposedly a Honda car, they ought to be punching at that sort of level on a regular basis from now on.

The driver line up is not to be sniffed at either. They have ditched their pretensions of being an all-Japanese team after finally realising that Japan has no good drivers. Takuma Sato remains, but his team mate is now Anthony Davidson. Just a few years ago, it was conceivable that this could have been the actual Honda line up. So it’s not bad at all.

Davidson will also be relishing the chance to finally get a full-time F1 drive. Sato has his moments. He appeared to calm down a lot last year after an unforgivably erratic time at Honda. If they can pull their act together, Super Aguri might well end up scoring the odd point this year.

Conclusion

So, here are my final predictions:

World Champion: Kimi Räikkönen. But if the McLaren is half good (which it seems to be), then Alonso could give him a run for his money. What a mouth-watering prospect!

Constructors’ Championship:

1. Ferrari
2. McLaren
3. Renault
4. BMW
5. Honda
6. Williams
7. Red Bull
8. Toyota
9. Super Aguri
10. Toro Rosso
11. Spyker