As I mentioned a couple of days ago, Ferrari have raised eyebrows by choosing to speak the truth about the new teams in Formula 1:

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…

Earlier this year I wrote about the great job the BBC were doing covering Formula 1. It was the Corporation’s first time broadcasting Formula 1 since the sport left for ITV in 1997.

When ITV got the rights, it was widely accepted that they raised the bar of F1 coverage. The challenge for the BBC was to raise the bar further. And I think we can all agree that they haven’t disappointed. The team have had half a year to bed in, so it is a good opportunity to assess just how well the BBC is doing.

However, I have ended up gabbing on about it for far too long — so I have split it up into four articles, of which this is the first.

The pre-race build-up

The quality of the pre-race show was probably ITV’s greatest accomplishment. In this respect, the BBC had a lot to live up to. But unquestionably the BBC has succeeded in vastly improving the show.

On ITV, almost an hour’s worth of build-up felt too long, and frequently they reverted to a steady template of Lewisteria. Frankly, a lot of it was missable.

Now, the BBC has ensured that the build-up hour is almost as unmissable as the race itself. They do a great job of bringing the fans to the heart of the action. You can tell that a lot of effort is put into the features, although one problem is that "the formula" features have been repeated from time to time.

The biggest difference between ITV’s and the BBC’s pre-race show is that the BBC’s is clearly more dynamic. ITV just stood outside the McLaren garage and yapped on for an hour, only ever interviewing the usual suspects. The BBC will actively explore the pitlane, and they will interview a much wider variety of people than ITV ever did. I can think of interesting live chats with the likes of Adrian Newey, Stefano Domenicali, Pat Symonds — the sort of people who would seldom be seen on ITV. The fact that the BBC will regularly talk to people even more obscure than the likes of Pat Symonds says it all.

Perhaps my favourite moment was in the build-up to the qualifying session for the Turkish Grand Prix. They were interviewing Giancarlo Fisichella live, and absolutely ripped into him about his record at the race, complete with action replays of all his first-corner failures. It was a hugely entertaining piece of television that you would have never seen on ITV. It was a risk, but it paid off because luckily Fisi took it in good humour.

Post-race and analysis

Despite his role as talking head of choice on the news channels, Eddie Jordan did not seem very comfortable in front of the camera at the start of the season. He didn’t exactly come across as nervous, but he did seem uneasy and generally looked out of place.

The situation wasn’t helped by the fact that he is not particularly articulate. While he may sometimes have interesting points to make, he seems to start his sentences without having first thought about what his point is going to be. So he just meanders on and on going down several alleys until he stumbles upon a conclusion.

Ironically for someone who has such trouble reaching a conclusion, EJ is a total motormouth. The points he does make are often contradictory, and you get the sense that he says most of what he says just to make a big splash and get a reaction.

The good news is that this was almost certainly all the BBC wanted him for anyway. David Coulthard is a tad wooden, but his debates with EJ have already gone down in legend. Even though they supposedly have a lot of respect for each other, they are constantly tweaking each others’ tails. It might not always make for great analysis, but it does make for great entertaining television.

Now, halfway through the season, I think I would probably miss the EJ–DC partnership. The thing about the BBC’s coverage is that it immediately felt like a breath of fresh air compared to ITV’s stale coverage. It is not difficult to see that one of the biggest differences is in the post-race chats. Mark Blundell was as bland as they come, seldom had any interesting points to make, and perhaps worst of all he had no other pundit to bounce off. The BBC’s pundits completely reverse all of these bad points of ITV’s post-race segment.

Whether the second pundit needs to be someone quite as obnoxious and inarticulate — but entertaining — as Eddie Jordan is not clear. He was absent for the Chinese Grand Prix so instead we got Mike Gascoyne, who in my view was a revelation. He came across as surprisingly comfortable on camera, and I very much valued his contribution on technical matters, particularly his explanation of diffusers. Maybe he could be the BBC’s Steve Matchett — let’s hope so.

James Allen suggested on his blog recently that Gasscoyne is interested in pursuing media work if F1 work dries up for him. Even after just that one race as a pundit, I do hope he finds a role. A bit like Anthony Davidson, I would love to see him get a regular role on television if he is unable to participate in F1 itself.

As for the anchor, Jake Humphrey, what a guy. A lot of people questioned whether he would be up to the role, but I always found him very personable whenever I saw him on television before. What surprised me was just how comfortable he was at talking about F1 straight out of the box. Either he is a very passionate F1 fan like the rest of us, or he spent his winter doing serious amounts of research.

Jake Humphrey is a lot less stale than Steve Rider and Jim Rosenthal. Although (perhaps unusually) I quite liked both of ITV’s anchors, there is no question in my mind that Humphrey is even better. He asks all the right questions to the pundits, and his interviews with other F1 figures are equally good.

A recent blog post of his highlighted just how difficult his job is when he posted a video of a post-race show including his talkback. Of course, it was the same on ITV. But the BBC’s programme is noticeably more complex than ITV’s, so I would assume that Humphrey’s job is more stressful than that of the ITV anchors. Plus, Humphrey’s job isn’t over when the BBC One programme finishes…

Brawn GP have had about a month in the spotlight. With their Lazarus-like rebirth, their fairytale Melbourne victory and the diffuser controversy, no-one has been able to stop talking about them. The dominance of their performance in Melbourne led many to suspect that Brawn would have at least the first few races completely wrapped up.

But already in Sepang there were signs that the Brawn supremacy was not quite as large as it had seemed. Although Jenson Button won the race, Rubens Barrichello rued his 4th place finish. Then in China Brawn had to make do with a 3-4 rather than the 1-2 they will have been aiming for.

It is easy to write this off as a temporary blip. The Red Bull is clearly an awesome car in the wet. We saw this also in Sepang, when Mark Webber absolutely flew once it started to rain. This has been a trait of Red Bull cars for a few years now, and it even continues in spite of the radical changes to the technical regulations this year.

Fuel-corrected qualifying times show that Brawn still had the advantage over one lap in the dry. But nonetheless, Red Bull’s pace must be giving Brawn cause for concern. The car is also nifty in the dry, as we saw in Melbourne where Sebastian Vettel was running in 2nd for almost the entire race until his crash with Robert Kubica.

What’s more, Red Bull are now hard at work creating a double diffuser which will probably be on the car come Monaco or Turkey. There is already a question mark over whether Brawn will have the resources to continue to develop the car. Red Bull have a big area that they still haven’t exploited, yet they are already in a position to win races.

So congratulations to Red Bull, Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber. What a transformation from last year’s damp squib. To think that there were rumours that Christian Horner was going to get the sack. Not any more!

Red Bull are among the most likeable teams, and Seb and Mark are two charismatic drivers. It has been noted before that this year’s press conferences are much better now that there are personable, chatty drivers finishing in the top three.

At the opposite end of the grid, an equally novel presence — Ferrari. Although the Scuderia can seek solace from the fact that Massa was running quite well until his retirement, the fact is that Ferrari are currently dogged by reliability problems and are not in a position to win races, never mind the championship. Now they have failed to score a point, though they have at least leapfrogged Force India. Nonetheless, this their worst start to the season since 1980. Ominously, that was the start of a 21 year long Championship drought for Ferrari.

Once again I must make the point that this makes McLaren look as though they are having a great season. Lewis Hamilton was racy in the first half of the race in China, no doubt using his kers to good effect. But later on he dropped off, constantly falling off track and spinning. This seems to be a return of his trait of poor tyre management.

In the end, the steadier Heikki Kovalainen leapfrogged him while he was off-track — the icing on the cake of a lacklustre race for Hamilton. 4th in the Constructors’ Championship is not quite the unmitigated disaster this season promised to be for McLaren. It seems as though the car is dire over one lap, but its race pace is not so bad.

One of the teams that McLaren has unexpectedly outshone so far is Renault. I feel deeply sorry for the way Alonso’s race unfolded. Renault opted for a bold and aggressive strategy by filling Alonso light. But this unravelled as the race was — unnecessarily, in my view — started behind the safety car.

This gave Alonso no chance to build up a gap as intended. Indeed, matters were compounded by the fact that Alonso took a pit stop at just the wrong time. This meant that effectively Alonso started the race from the back, rather than second as intended. The fact that Alonso made it back up to 9th by the end of the race is to be applauded.

Alonso’s team mate Nelsinho Piquet provided an excellent demonstration of just why he is not Formula 1 material. It is difficult to guess which F1 driver will get the sack first. There are two other prime candidates in my view.

First is Giancarlo Fisichella, who rumour has it is beginning to try the patience of the Force India team. Fisichella has been largely anonymous so far this season, apart from the moment where he forgot where his pit box was, to much embarrassment. In comparison, Adrian Sutil was running a highly credible 6th on merit when he aquaplaned off the circuit in Shanghai. Had he finished, it would have caused major embarrassment for Ferrari, who would have been the only team yet to score a point.

The third driver who must be hoping to improve soon is Sébastien Bourdais. I thought he should have been given another year to properly assess his abilities. The Frenchman promised he would be better on slicks. Well, now we have slicks — and he has failed to up his game.

He is being totally outclassed by this season’s only rookie, Sébastien Buemi. He showed moments of serious talent in Shanghai, including a bold overtaking move on Kimi Räikkönen. In the end, Buemi could not stop himself from having the occasional off, but he still managed to finish 8th.

Not many suspected that Buemi would be a star of F1 based on his GP2 performances. Mike Gascoyne (who, incidentally, was excellent on the BBC this weekend — could he be our Steve Matchett?) said something to this effect. I was first seriously impressed by Buemi after watching him in last year’s GP2 sprint race at Magny Cours. During that race he ploughed his way through the field, making Bruno Senna look a bit ordinary. That was also a wet race. Is Buemi therefore a wet weather specialist, not unlike his fellow Red Bull protégé Vettel?

Final word — what on earth happened to Toyota’s pace? And Williams for that matter. So much for the advantages of the double decker diffuser!

I want to bring attention to a podcast that I think somehow passes under the radar of many F1 fans. I certainly did not pay much attention to it until recently. But the editions I have heard have been A-grade stuff.

The Formula One Inside Line With Maurice Hamilton and Ian Phillips

Okay, so it’s not the catchiest title, but the podcast itself is excellent. I assume it is similar to The Guardian’s F1 podcast which was also fronted by Maurice Hamilton and Ian Phillips. For whatever reason the newspaper isn’t responsible for the podcast any more, but it lives on independently.

Maurice Hamilton and Ian Phillips are well-known voices to listeners of BBC Radio 5 Live’s coverage of Formula 1 races. I can tell you, ‘The Inside Line’ is not an exaggeration when it comes to this pair. They certainly know what’s what in the paddock.

The Canadian GP podcast contains everything I have come to expect from this podcast — an incisive review of the race’s major events, and an insider’s take on the paddock gossip. Here, the experience of Maurice Hamilton’s decades writing about F1 and Ian Phillip’s journalistic background combined with the insider knowledge attained in his role as Force India’s Director of Business Affairs comes into its own.

This podcast contains the clearest explanation of the simmering war between Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley I have heard yet. There is also an explanation that every team in the paddock and everyone else involved wants a Concorde Agreement except the FIA. And the threats of a breakaway are quite real. And Luca di Montezemolo did mean to say that Max Mosley should step down. Ian Phillips explains why very well, and I’d recommend you go and listen to the podcast for the full explanation.

Then Maurice Hamilton’s connections allows him to bring us the fact that Bernie Ecclestone and Luca di Montezemolo were spotted having lunch together in New York. It’s pretty clear now that something is happening, and the discussion in this podcast has made that more clear than anything else I have read in the past few weeks.

This isn’t the first time The Inside Line podcast has come up with the goods. Of course, this year’s Monaco Grand Prix will always be remembered for the rotten luck that Adrian Sutil encountered. Who better, therefore, than Ian Phillips to get literally the inside line on the race’s top story? And being stationed in the Force India garage meant that they got a good interview with Adrian Sutil as well.

That podcast also contained a pretty trenchant criticism of Max Mosley’s letter that was sent out in the run-up to the Monaco Grand Prix. To top it off, Ian Phillips had more information on the controversial press conference that was perceived to be rigged in Max Mosley’s favour, with Gerhard Berger reading out a prepared statement.

Clearly, the star of the show is Ian Phillips. But even when he was away, the podcast still came up with the goods. Because the person who stood in was no less a person than Mike Gascoyne, Force India’s Chief Technical Officer. He was surprisingly good in his analysis of the Turkish Grand Prix as well.

That weekend Maurice Hamilton got the credit for the “one car teams” theory that was beginning to emerge. That was because he repeated it on the Chequered Flag which is heard by more listeners. But listening to The Inside Line podcast, it’s clear that the theory actually originated with Mike Gascoyne.

If there is one problem with the Inside Line podcast is that it’s clearly recorded a bit too early for a full analysis of the race to take place. Often mechanical problems will be glossed over as it is still unclear why a driver retired. Some more time may be needed to allow the dust to settle. But there are probably time constraints as no doubt everyone involved in the podcast has other commitments to wrap up, flights to catch and so on.

However, by my reckoning there really is no better way of getting a feel of what’s really happening in the paddock than this podcast. It doesn’t have the same backing that the Chequered Flag gets from the BBC, so The Inside Line is not so well known. But it deserves to be heard by as many Formula 1 fans.

Well thank goodness for that — the second good race in a row. Just what the doctor ordered to let us forget about all the politics going on in F1 at the moment. So where to start?

First of all, hats off to Lewis Hamilton who drove a great race despite banging into the barrier early on in the race. I was a bit worried about McLaren’s prospects following qualifying. Ferrari are usually poor at Monaco and the fact that they had a 1-2 in qualifying (seemingly with reasonable fuel loads as well) spelled potential bad news for McLaren. So far most of the tracks can be reasonably considered ‘Ferrari tracks’. But if McLaren can’t win at Monaco, it will be difficult for them to win anywhere.

But while qualifying was bad, the race turned out to be fine. Despite Hamilton’s bang, he otherwise drove a pretty flawless race to take the chequered flag. Hamilton has described it as the best win of his career, and it’s hard to argue with that.

But he was helped out by some good luck. He was lucky that his bash on the barrier didn’t cause any long-term damage to his car. And after the race there was the revelation that he had developed a slow puncture on his slow-down lap. Had the race gone full distance (instead of hitting the 2 hour limit), it might have been a very different story.

Hamilton was also helped out by Ferrari’s lacklustre race. Felipe Massa was surprisingly solid early on. He dislikes the Monaco circuit and he is known to be poor in the wet. But somehow Felipe Massa has just started to make it all click, and he has been performing superbly well after his embarrassing first two races of the year.

At the start of the race he built up a pretty dominant lead representing an astonishing two seconds per lap! But eventually the conditions got the better of him. An off at Ste Devote meant he had to pass the lead on to Kubica. A late change to dry tyres put an end to his race. Not Ferrari’s finest strategic moments.

Ferrari also made a major error by not having Kimi Räikkönen’s tyres on in time before the start. Immediately the Finn had a drive-through penalty. His start was also incredibly poor, as though he wasn’t paying attention to the lights. He gifted Hamilton second place before even reaching the first corner.

During the race Kimi had a big off at Ste Devote, damaging his front wing in the process. He was also completely off the pace for the duration of the race, and never looked in contention for the win. The final nail in the coffin came after the safety car period where he failed to account for his cold brakes towards the Nouvelle chicane (the fastest part of the circuit), lost control and ploughed into the back of poor Adrian Sutil.

Is this really the 2007 World Champion? Räikkönen has been distinctly patchy all season. It really makes you wonder. Since winning the Championship has he lost motivation? He has been known to have off weekends before, but they are now coming at a rather alarming frequency. I think if he had been driving like this while he was at McLaren, he would never have got a drive at Ferrari. No wonder the red team has supposedly signed up Fernando Alonso for 2010.

As for the victim of Kimi Räikkönen’s poor form, Adrian Sutil, you have to feel sorry for him. I’m not the greatest fan of Sutil. He’s never really shown before why he deserves the hype that some people give him. But his Monaco GP was a stormer, and he was running on 4th on merit, in between the two Ferraris. No wonder he was in floods of tears after Räikkönen drove up his backside.

However, had that not happened the story could well be different. After the race it transpired that he overtook three drivers under yellow flags. In the event he was warned as to his future conduct, but had he finished the race he could well have been penalised.

I also thought it was a bit much for Mike Gascoyne to complain to the stewards about Räikkönen. He said:

as I said if that had been someone at the back, a young guy doing it, they would get a penalty. But it doesn’t seem to happen the other way around.

Of course, a lot of people were saying the same thing about Fisichella’s tangle with Nakajima in Turkey. Had it been Nakajima flying over the top of Fisichella, I am sure the Japanese driver would have faced a ban. Ho hum.

In Monaco, Fisichella himself was celebrating his 200th race. But apart from that he had little to celebrate. He was thoroughly outclassed by his team mate and ended up having to retire in the pits.

Heikki Kovalainen’s run of bad luck continued. A stall on the grid at the start of the formation lap meant he had to start from the pitlane. He spent the entire race in the midfield, but I suppose he should be given credit for managing to finish 8th after gaining two positions right at the end due to Räikkönen’s tangle with Sutil.

Apart from Sutil, one other driver stood out as flawless — Robert Kubica. At one point, after Massa’s off, Kubica looked quite good for the win. It was not to be though as Hamilton ultimately had the pace to outclass him. But this is yet more evidence of Kubica’s talent behind the wheel. Not many drivers can say they didn’t make a mistake yesterday, but Kubica is one of them.

Nick Heidfeld must be wondering just what has hit him. Quick Nick does not look so quick any more compared with his team mate. Sure, he wasn’t helped by a hit from Alonso. But the German was off the pace all weekend, and it’s continuing a disappointing season. Kubica, meanwhile, appears to be ultra-committed with his seemingly extreme diet. I hope soon he is in a car good enough to win a race, because he certainly deserves it now.

Sebastian Vettel had a storming drive. At first it was not looking so great. They were all at sea during practice, unable to make head nor tail of their new car. And because of that new car he started 19th on the grid thanks to a gearbox penalty. But all this did not deter him as he moved up to eventually finish 5th. Great result for the Toro Rosso team.

Mark Webber had a fantastic race. He excels at Monaco but has not always had the luck. But this marks his fifth consecutive points finish — a personal best for Webber. After a career tainted by bad luck, his patience is finally paying off and he sits pretty in 7th in the Championship.

The team mates of those two Red Bull drivers both had to retire within seconds of each other on the same spot of the track. Seemingly a river had formed at Massenet, Coulthard lost control and hit the barriers. Yet another poor showing from David Coulthard, whose appearance should actually be applauded following his scary accident in qualifying which he described as the hardest hit he’s had in his entire career.

Toro Rosso driver Sébastien Bourdais followed Coulthard into the barrier after hitting the same river. We are now waiting for Bourdais to show what he is made of. I don’t follow American motor racing too closely, but I thought they had a few street circuits over there, so I was hoping that Bourdais would be able to show what he’s made of at Monaco. It wasn’t to be. After a strong showing in Australia, he has done little to impress since.

Fernando Alonso was another victim of that river at Massenet. He got away just like Hamilton did though and recovered following a tyre change. He was looking good for a period and made a stunning move on Mark Webber at Mirabeau. Unfortunately Alonso must have become too confident after that because a few laps later he tried to pass Heidfeld at Lowes in a move that was never really on the cards. That only had one conclusion: crunch. Alonso never recovered from that.

At least Alonso doesn’t have the heat on him like his team mate Nelsinho “Junior” Piquet Jnr. Clearly the team have lost confidence in him because they would not let him change to dry tyres until they saw what Alonso could do on dries. But the time they let him come in, his extreme wets were well past their sell-by date and he had a swarm of cars all over the back of him and beginning to get past. However, Piquet didn’t help his case by binning it almost as soon as he got onto dry tyres. More ammunition for his critics.

Another rookie who disappointed was Timo Glock. He had no fewer than three spins during the race and I have to say that it increasingly looks like he is not F1 material. Trulli wasn’t much better, it has to be said, with an anonymous race at a circuit he’s supposed to be good at.

Barrichello finally broke his duck. A points position has been beckoning for a while, and he has finally got it. Button should have done more. He excels in the wet, but was unable to show it in Monaco this year. An early tap with Nick Heidfeld basically put paid to his chances.

Kazuki Nakajima provided yet more evidence that he is not just another crash-happy kamikaze pilot from Japan. Monaco will have provided ample opportunity for him to stuff it in the barriers or something, but he had a solid, if fairly anonymous, drive to 7th. Meanwhile, his much-hyped team mate, Nico Rosberg, was not so impressive. He looked set to score some points until getting it all wrong through the Swimming Pool. A big crash resulted.

All-in-all, a great race at Monaco with plenty of talking points. What a relief — the Monaco GP is often a boring procession, but the wet-dry nature of the race ensured much mayhem.

Next up is Canada which is often a good race. The track suits the McLaren and Hamilton won there last year, so they will be hoping to capitalise on their Championship lead. It’s a surprise that Hamilton leads the Championship. Thanks to the patchy form of both Massa and Räikkönen, Hamilton might be able to grab an authoritative lead. Don’t underestimate Robert Kubica as well, who remains just six points away from the head of the table.