One Last Time

One of the odd things about life as a professional sportsman is that, as you hit your early 30s, just as your contemporaries in more pedestrian walks of life might be finding their careers shifting into gear, your own professional life will be beginning to head inexorably downhill. Depending on your sport, your level of physical fitness and, to be blunt, how much you really want to do it, you might go on into your late 30s, but, goalkeepers and golfers aside, there are very few sports stars the far side of 40.

The trouble is, what do you do next? If you're one of the special few who were amongst the very greatest of your generation at your chosen sport, there is every chance that you won't have any financial imperative to work, but putting your feet up for the next forty years is not going to appeal to everyone - and certainly not the kind of highly driven, motivated people who reach the highest echelons of professional sport. But at the same time, there must be the nagging fear that, whatever you turn your hand to, you are unlikely to be as successful, as exceptional, as you were at whatever it was that had brought you such fame and success in your youth. Yes, there are exceptions - Kenny Dalgleish has been as successful as a football manager as he was as a player, but the experience of four time World Champion Alain Prost with his hapless F1 team was perhaps closer to the norm for sports stars going into team management or similar such ventures. As a recent Guardian article noted, an awful lot of sports stars struggle to work out what to do with their lives after retirement.

It is a problem which I rather suspect Michael Schumacher has been wrestling with since he retired at the end of 2006. I wondered at the time whether he might simply walk away from the sport and never been seen or heard of again. He never gave the impression, while he was racing, of having any great, all-consuming passion for motor racing, as opposed to for competing. Yet as it has turned out, he has been a regular presence on the pitwall at Ferrari since his retirement. Quite what was his actual role there was never terribly clear to me. Mentor to Felipe Massa? Tactical adviser? Or simply a highly decorated hanger-on? It left the impression that he had realised, in retrospect, that he had walked away from the sport too soon, and without a clear idea of what he was to do next.

The aborted comeback last year to stand in for the injured Massa added to my belief that, while he might be behind the pitwall, really he felt his place was still behind the wheel. But at 40, and with Fernando Alonso offering his services to Maranello from 2010, he was not the future as far as the team which had once been his own, Ferrari, was concerned. It seemed that Michael would simply have to learn to live with his decision to retire - the F1 world had moved on, and team bosses, or at least those running cars capable of winning Grands Prix, were now more interested in children of the 1980s - Hamilton, Vettel, Alonso, Kubica, than in giving a man in his early 40s a chance to relive his glory days.

But then, of course, Jenson Button unexpectedly walked away from his drive with title-winners, Brawn, to join Lewis Hamilton at Mclaren, and Mercedes, the team who had paid for Schumacher's first F1 drive, all the way back in the late summer of 1991, bought the team from Ross Brawn. It is widely rumoured that Mercedes are angling for Sebastian Vettel in the long term, but with Barrichello having already left the team for Williams, that left a vacant seat alongside Nico Rosberg for 2010. With all the very top drivers, aside from Kimi Raikkonen, having already been signed up for 2010, it was an ideal opening for Michael. The Mercedes car will be based on the machine which won the title for Button this year and, while they probably won't enjoy the kind of advantage they had in 2009, there is every chance that they will still be front-runners. A chance to come back for one last go, to reunite with Ross Brawn, and to show the new generation of F1 stars that he can still perform...

But can he? Some question whether a man in his 40s can have the physical fitness to be truly competitive in F1, perhaps recalling Nigel Mansell's rather embarassing comeback with Mclaren at the age of 42 in 1995. Myself, I doubt this will be a problem. Schumacher was always amongst the very fittest drivers on the grid, and if Lance Armstrong can run competitively in the vastly more physically demanding Tour De France at the age of 39, Schumacher ought to be able to cope with the stresses of racing an F1 car.

On the other hand, I do wonder if he can overcome the race-rustiness that must have set in during his three year break from the sport. We saw just how badly this affected Luca Badoer when he stood in for Felipe Massa at Ferrari last summer, and while Badoer was never a driver in Schumacher's class, and he had been out of racing for a much longer period of time, I still think that he might struggle to find that last few per-cent of performance that he was able to access before his retirement. He is fortunate in that, in Nico Rosberg, he has a good barometer for his performance - Rosberg is quick enough that Schumacher will need to be reasonably near the top of his game, but not so quick that, if he really is still as quick as he was at his peak, he would cause him any trouble.

Those who have been reading this blog for a while will know that I was no great fan of Michael Schumacher. He was undoubtedly a huge talent, but I felt he resorted to tactics and gamesmanship which were unbecoming of one with his enormous natural ability, and I was never impressed by the fact that, it is widely reputed at least, that he had it stipulated in his contract that his team mates could not race him. On the other hand, I'm looking forward to seeing him back in F1 this year, not so much because I've missed him over the last three years, but because I'm genuinely curious to know whether, three years out of the sport, and now in his early 40s, Schumacher still has what it takes. Hamilton in a Mclaren, against Alonso in a Ferrari, against Schumacher in a Mercedes. Oh, and Vettel in a Red Bull. 2010 just mught be very special indeed.

Button: 10th Champion at the 10th Attempt

About the first piece I ever wrote on the subject of motorsport, for the now long-defunct Parc Ferme Magazine, was an article asking whether the young Jenson Button had been catapulted into Formula 1 before he was really ready, and if in the long term, his early stardom might do more harm than good for his career.

It was a long time ago, now that I think about it. I remember having a rather long debate about what I had written with a guest at the launch party for a dotcom start-up I had become involved in - so yes, for all that it doesn't feel that way to me, Jenson Button's been around in F1 long enough that his entry into the sport coincided with the dotcom boom.

Ten years later, Button had become the tenth British driver to win the Formula One World Championship (unlike the aforementioned dotcom, which went the way of all flesh about a year and a half on from the launch party). Whether that was far more than I ever thought he would achieve, or whether he took far longer to nail the title than he might have done, I can't quite make my mind up. So did history prove me wrong when I said he came into the sport too early? Or did my younger self have a point?

Truth be told, Button's first season in Formula 1, at Williams, went rather well, all told. Team mate Ralf Schumacher scored more points, but had the advantage of being in his fourth season in the sport. Button, who had just a single season of F3 to his name before he got the call from Sir Frank, was usually slightly shadowed by the younger Schumacher, but what was interesting were the flashes of exceptional pace that he showed. The third place on the grid at Spa, or his third row start at Suzuka, a circuit he had never been to before in his life (and this, remember, some years before advanced simulation tools would make life rather easier for newcomers).

Then it all went wrong. Jenson got the drive at Williams, at least in part, because the team had precipitously parted with Alex Zanardi, had Ralf Schumacher on long-term contract, and Juan Montoya lined up to join them in a year's time. In short, they needed a driver for one year and one year only - and they hired the relatively unknown Button for because none of the established stars would be interested in such a deal. The next year, he wound up with Benetton, which was in the process of being taken over by Renault, and the 2001 Benetton was possibly the worst machine ever to have come out of the Enstone factory.

And Button floundered. Given a good, quick car, he showed well in 2000, but it seemed he simply lacked the experience to know where to begin with the desperately underpowered 2001 Benetton, which was running the earliest iteration of Renault's extreme-wide-angle V10. In consequence, he was completely outpaced by team mate Giancarlo Fisichella, and his head appeared to go down. His hurried elevation through the junior ranks just hadn't equipped him to deal with a difficult and uncompetitive car.

His relationship with team principal, Flavio Briatore, appeared to be holed below the waterline, though it always struck me that there's something a tad absurd about Briatore writing anyone off as a 'playboy'. Physician heal thyself... He fared much better in 2002, with a now much more competitive Renault (running, for the first time, as a 'Renault' rather than a 'Benetton', though the sale had actually taken place some years earlier) but never quite matched new team mate Jarno Trulli, and when it became clear that the team really wanted to get their impressive young test driver, Fernando Alonso, into one of their cars in 2003, it was Button whose contract was up, and for a time, it seemed if Button, who had arrived in F1 with a bang in 2000, would be leaving with a whimper just three years later.

He was saved by Dave Richards, who had taken the helm at BAR. Bernie Ecclestone had apparently advised against hiring the Briton to partner Jacques Villeneuve but Richards saw things differently and threw Button, still only 23 years old, a career lifeline. Older, and perhaps wiser, than he was when he went to Renault, he seized it with both hands. He was at least as quick, perhaps actually a shade quicker, than his former World Champion team mate, and when the team took on Takuma Sato in deference to engine-supplier Honda, who wanted a quick Japanese driver in one of the cars, it was Villeneuve, rather than Button, who was shown the exit door.

From there on in, Button's fortunes were tied to those of BAR/Honda. In 2004, when Mclaren and Williams stumbled, BAR came good, and Button led the team to second in the constructor's championship, taking ten podium finishes along the way, establishing himself as the clear team leader. 2005 didn't go so well for the team, with a poor early season and exclusion from two Grands Prix for an irregularity in their fuel tank but Button did no harm to his own reputation, scoring two podiums and picking up all but one of the 38 points BAR scored that year. The following year, the team again started slow, with the car proving almost embarassingly off the pace for much of the first part of the season. In a peculiar premonition of what was to come, at Silverstone Honda and Button were so hopeless that the British press all but gave up on Button and switched their focus to a young chap called Hamilton who was doing amazing things with a GP2 car in the support race. In the second half of the year, though, he finally broke his duck and won his first Grand Prix, at his scored more points than either eventual World Champion Fernando Alonso, or runner-up Michael Schumacher. In the process, he established his superiority over a new team mate with rather more of a reputation than Sato, in the form of Ferrari refugee Rubens Barrichello.

With Honda going into their second year as a full works team, with Button having gotten
the monkey off his back in winning his first Grand Prix, it seemed that 2007 might be his year. Instead it was the start of a precipitous decline. Honda's second F1 car was just possibly the most disappointing racing car to appear on the F1 grid this decade. Outpaced by just about every other team on the grid, including Super Aguri, which was essentially nothing more than a bunch of ex-Arrows personnel running the previous year's Honda - designed for Michelin tyres, on Bridgestones, and with drivers passed over by the works operation. In '07, Button actually had some moments of real inspiration, most notably, somehow dragging the car into the top 5 in the rain in China, but as the British press were rather more excited by a young hopeful parachuted straight into Mclaren, it seemed like he had been written off by many as a might-have been.

When Honda produced another clunker in 2008, it seemed Button's will to get the best out of it finally went out of the window. For the first time in the three seasons they had been paired together, it was Barrichello who usually got more out of the hopeless RA108. Then came the news that the Japanese carmaker were pulling the plug, and with almost everyone else having their drivers in place for 2009, it seemed that Jenson Button's F1 career was effectively over. There was the outside possibility of a drive with Red Bull 'B Team' Toro Rosso, but that aside, it looked like the Somerset man was looking at a future in sportscars. With the global economy having tanked, it seemed unlikely that anyone had the resources required to do anything with the remains of Honda, who, after all, hadn't done anything in the previous couple of years to suggest that their unfinished 2009 car would be a particularly competitive proposition.

If the Button story had ended there, what would we have made of him? A talented driver, smooth in the vein of Alain Prost, easy on his equipment, who had a knack of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and who perhaps lacked the killer instinct necessary to be a World Champion. What might he have done at Williams alongside Montoya in the early part of the decade? If Flavio had kept him on instead of Trulli, how might he have fared against Alonso as the Spaniard went for his two titles in 2005 and 2006? Given the chance, we might have wondered, would he have seized it with both hands, or would he have let it slip through his fingers?

Against all expectations, though, 2009 gave us the chance to find out. The Brawn BGP001 was the best racing car Honda never made. Not dominant in the way that the 2002 Ferrari or the 1988 Mclaren was, but on balance, probably the best car on the grid over the course of the season - though a case could be made for Ross Brawn's old nemesis Adrian Newey's Red Bull RB5. And Button hit the ground running like a man who had been leading Grands Prix from the front for his whole life - winning six of the first seven races. It seemed he was taking up where the last man to partner Barrichello in a team run by Brawn left off...

Of course, things were never quite the same after Turkey. Button hasn't won a race since, and some have suggested it was down to nerves, or a loss of form. Well, perhaps, in part. More likely, it was simply a combination of the Brawn's loss of competitiveness relative to Red Bull and Mclaren in particular, and the fact that Button could afford to play the percentage game, nursing a huge lead in the drivers table, while his rivals were forced to go for broke. A few small but costly errors in qualifying aside, he didn't make any real mistakes, and to some extent his relatively paltry points total subsequent to Turkey was down to his inability to get the best out of the tyres over a single qualifying lap and the sheer difficulty of overtaking in a modern F1 car, rather than any greater failing.

There have been mutterings in some quarters that Button somehow isn't a worthy champion, but to my mind that's nonsense. Of the drivers who found themselves at the wheel of potentially race-winning cars, he did a better job over the season than anyone else. And that is what you need to do to be a World Champion. Occasionally, a driver overcomes the odds to win the title in a car not truly worthy of the prize - Alonso in 2006, Schumacher in 1994 and 1995, and Prost in 1986, are, for me, examples of years where the best driver triumphed over a better car. But that's rare and while I'm not sure Button is in quite the same league as Alonso or Hamilton, who for me are still the outstanding talents in the sport right now, that is true of many who have become World Champion down the years. After all, was Barrichello really any closer to him on pace most weekends than he was to Schumacher, back in their days together at Ferrari?

Finally, though, what is the answer to the question I asked at the beginning? Did Button come into the sport too early? Might he have been World Champion many times over by now had his career been better managed? Maybe. But maybe not. Undoubtedly, his lack of experience led him to sully his reputation considerably at Benetton/Renault, and maybe had he spent a couple more years in F3 or F3000, he would have been better equipped to deal with the awful 2001 Benetton. But on the other hand, who's to say that he would ever have gotten his break into the sport in the first place? An F3000 title is no guarantee that you immediately will be picked up by one of the F1 teams - Ask Bjorn Wirdheim, Jorg Muller or Bruno Junquiera. Had Button had the luxury of having his career carefully planned in the way that, say, Lewis Hamilton's was, he might not have chosen to debut as early as 2000. But the vast majority of drivers just have to seize what opportunities come their way. And Button did that in 2000 when he signed for Williams, just as he did this year when he became the 10th Briton to join the pantheon of World Champions.

Resurrection Man

So, from four, it looks like we are down to just two realistic contenders for the driver's World Title following the Italian Grand Prix. I had expected Red Bull to be right on the pace at Monza. Their car, after all, had been the class of the field at the very fast Silverstone race earlier in the year, and on balance, it appeared quicker than anything else around Spa - another very fast race track - a fortnight ago.

At Monza, it just didn't work out. Vettel looked to be seriously struggling for grip all afternoon and was lucky to score a single point after Hamilton committed hara-kiri on the final lap, trailing Nick Heidfeld's hitherto unfancied BMW Sauber. Mark Webber didn't even manage that - punted out by Heidfeld's team mate in a silly little accident at La Roggia on lap one. There was nothing, though, to suggest that he would have been any quicker than his young team mate on Sunday afternoon. If anything, Vettel had looked the faster of the two over the course of the weekend.

With Vettel now trailing Button by a massive 26 points with just 40 left on the table, and with both Red Bull drivers struggling for engines to go the rest of the season without grid penalty, there is now no way that either Red Bull driver can win the title. It is, I suppose, not quite beyond the bounds of possibility that Brawn could contrive to lose it - but as both Barrichello and Button would have to screw up, I doubt Ross Brawn is losing any sleep over the possibility.

It's all but certain that one of the two Brawn drivers, Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button, will be World Champion by the year's end. A Brazilian up against an Englishman, for the second year on the trot. If you'd told me this time last year that it would end up that way, I wouldn't be too surprised - but I would have been rather taken aback if you then went and told me that Felipe Massa was out of action in hospital, while Lewis Hamilton lies a distant 7th in the title race, with not even a mathematical chance of retaining his crown.

Barrichello is the in form man, two wins from the last three races, quiceker than Button more often than not since, well since Button's remarkable winning run came to an end at Silverstone, back in early June. Button is the hunted, Barrichello the hunter, and it's no mystery that the latter is the psychologically easier position to be in - nothing to lose, and everything to gain. On the other hand, I'm sure Barrichello would happily sacrifice any psychological edge he might have for the 14 point cushion that his team mate is sitting on. In theory, all Button has to do is follow Barrichello home closely over the final four races and the title is his - providing nobody gets between the two of them.

Whichever of Barrichello or Button ends up World Champion, it will be quite a story. Let's not forget, after all, that at the beginning of the season, neither of them were certain of having a drive in F1 at all this year. Honda had unexpectedly pulled out of the sport, and at the height of the world economic crisis, it seemed unlikely that anyone would put up the cash to enable the hitherto unsuccessful squad to continue. After 9 years in the sport, Button was staring career oblivion in the face. A man whom, it seemed, had the talent but thanks to - what? a lack of killer instinct? simple poor timing? had never been in quite the right place at the right time and with but a single win to his name, it appeared that if the Honda squad didn't survive, he was more than likely bound for sportscars and a year on the sidelines. Nearing 30, there was serious chance his career would never recover from such a blow. Then, of course, he went and won six of the opening seven races of the year. He might not have won since, but it might still be enough to bring him the World Title. And how many would have bet on that during the Christmas holidays?

In a way, though, it would be an even bigger story, even more of a comeback from seemingly the point of no return, if Rubens Barrichello were to clinch the title. It seems he's been around forever. And he has been around for a very long time. He was racing back in the days of the original Lotus F1 team... and he might just hang on to see the new Malaysian-based team of the same name take its place on the grid next year.

Sixteen years ago, I was stood on the bank in the rain at the Craner Curves for the European Grand Prix. Everyone remembers Donington for Ayrton Senna's outstanding opening lap. But he was not the only Brazilian who put in a remarkable performance that day. Like Button he came into the sport young, and at the age of 20, he was set for a podium in only his third Grand Prix at the wheel of a Jordan Hart, until the fuel pump failed a few laps from the end.

It would be another seven years before he found himself at the wheel of a potentially race winning car - replacing former Jordan team mate Eddie Irvine at Ferrari. Unfortunately, he came into a team entirely built around Michael Schumacher, and while he was able to match, and even outpace him on occasion (more than can be said for most who were paired up with the German) he was never more than a number-2 at the team. To fail to win the title in five years at the team might suggest he wasn't a real first class driver, if it weren't for both his status as an outrider for Schumacher, and the simple misfortune of being paired with the best driver of his era throughout his time with the team.

His move to Honda looked like a bookend to a long career, and even before the Japanese manufacturer pulled out, there was talk that Barrichello's time with the team was up. In November, Honda were testing the young Brazilians, Bruno Senna and Lucas Di Grassi, and were reportedly particularly impressed with Ayrton's nephew. With KERS placing a greater importance on having a light driver at the wheel, and with Rubens one of the heaviest drivers on the grid (along with Kubica and Webber) it seemed more than likely that he would be dropped by the team.

So it was that Honda's withdrawal, far from ending his career, just might have thrown Barrichello a lifeline. The now-independent team, with little winter testing time, and without KERS, now needed an experienced pair of hands far more than it needed a young hotshoe who might or might not be the next great star, but who would certainly face a learning year. Brawn and Barrichello had worked for years together at Ferrari - Ross knew that Rubinho was nothing if not a safe pair of hands.

Nonetheless, in the opening races, it was clear that he didn't quite have the pace of his team mate, Button. At the season's midpoint, Barrichello had not won a single race, while Button had won six. At Barcelona and at the Nurburgring, it all appeared to be getting to him. Reportedly unpaid, he was damned if he was going to turn up merely in order to provide the same service to Button that he had to Schumacher for all those years. But a part of him wondered if Brawn was again, quietly and covertly, subjugating Barrichello's interests to those of his team mate.

After his outburst at the Nurburgring, I half wondered whether he would even see out the season - it seemed like a sad end to a man who could be as quick as anyone on his day. Remember Silverstone 2003 - and remember that the cause of the furore at Austria in 2002 was that he had been plain faster than Schumacher all afternoon. But rather than go away and sulk, he dug in and found his form, just as his team mate, Button, was beginning to struggle with his. And now, with four races to go, he's driving as well as he ever has done, and he has an outside shot at becoming the oldest World Champion since Alain Prost, back in 1993. It really would be some story if he pulls it off...

Tortoises and Hares

Four races in and we're starting to get a picture of where the balance of power lies in this year's Formula 1 championship. After several seasons in which various combinations of Ferrari, Mclaren and Renault have fought it out for the title, this year, it seems at the moment that two teams which had never won a race going into the season are in the strongest position right now.

Brawn GP were quickest out of the blocks at the end of March and Jenson Button has won three of the first four races. However, after looking unassailable at the opening race, perhaps 3 quarters of a second a lap quicker than anyone else, their margin of superiority looked much reduced in Bahrain last weekend. Toyota, benefiting from a decision to run the cars relatively light in qualifying, and from Jarno Trulli's superlative single-lap speed, locked out the front row, but in terms of fuel-corrected pace, it was probably Sebastian Vettel's Red Bull which was fastest in qualifying. Had he not got stuck behind Lewis Hamilton's Mclaren early on, which subsequently left him boxed up behind Jarno Trulli's Toyota while it lost time on the harder compound tyres during their second stints, he might well have been able to take the fight to Button. Certainly, Brawn no longer appear to have the kind of advantage that enabled Button to run away from the field at Albert Park and it seems that Red Bull and, to a lesser extent, Toyota, are leading the charge.

It seems that already at both Red Bull and Brawn, a kind of unofficial Number 1 driver appears to have emerged. Rubens Barrichello generally looked quicker than Button at Honda last year, but has been unable to match him in the opening races of this season. As has long seemed the case, in a bad car, like last year's Honda or the 2001 Renault, Button is usually outclassed by his team mate, but in a good car, he's hard to beat. Whether this is down to a lazy streak in his nature, as Flavio Briatore seemed to hint back in his Renault days, or whether it is simply that his smooth, unfussy style gets the best out of a good car, while leaving him floundering with a poorly-sorted car that requires a more improvisational approach, is hard to say. He's certainly getting the best out of Ross Brawn's latest creation though.

Over at Red Bull, it has been the young Vettel who has led the team's charge. His advantage over Webber in terms of pure pace is small, if he has one at all (he has generally looked a mite quicker in qualifying) but Webber's year has been beset by small misfortunes. The first-lap collision with Kovalainen which left his car compromised for the afternoon, the race stoppage just as things were beginning to turn his way in Malaysia and the contre-temps with Adrian Sutil in qualifying at Bahrain which left him with an impossible task on Sunday. I'm not sure that Vettel is really any quicker, but his win at Shanghai and strong second place in Bahrain (he would have had a podium in Australia had he not collided with Kubica too) mean he's the man with the momentum behind him, and will surely be getting priority for any new parts and first call on strategy and fuel loads. Mark Webber's bid to be the 21st Century's Chris Amon continues unabated...

So will it be a straight fight between Vettel and Button for the World Title in 2009? I doubt it. Behind the battle between the Virgin emblazoned Brawn of Jenson Button and 'Kate's Dirty Sister' (I can't help feeling there's a good one liner in there somewhere) Toyota have been looking very racy. The Japanese team have been around for the best part of a decade, sometimes near the front of the midfield, sometimes nearer the back, but rarely really threatening the front-runners. In the opening races of this year, though, it looks as if they might have turned the corner. Had they got their strategy right in Bahrain, rather than running the slower hard compound tyres in the middle stint, handing Button track position, they might well have taken their first win.

Over the season as a whole, they might be a better bet than Red Bull or Brawn, too. Those first two teams are private, customer-engined teams and while they appear well-funded, they don't have the kind of financial resources that the world's biggest car maker can bring to bear if it chooses. In past seasons, Toyota haven't been quite close enough to the front for that to make any difference, and the front runners, particularly Ferrari and Mclaren, have had equally great resources. 2009, though, just might represent the team's best chance for the team to achieve some kind of return on the massive investment they've made - though they're going to have to be sharper than they were in the race at Bahrain.

So, will the 2009 season be a battle in which the leaner and more nimble Brawn and Red Bull teams have come off the blocks quickly and will fight a rear-guard action against the perhaps more cumbersomely run but ultimately richer and better-resourced Toyota squad? Maybe, but maybe not. The real big guns, Mclaren and Ferrari, have both started the year in disarray. The Mclaren was initially hopeless, utterly lacking in downforce and over a second off the pace. Lewis Hamilton came within an ace of a lucky podium in the opening race all the same, but threw it away by being economical with the truth to the stewards (and I don't care if he was under instructions from Dave Ryan or anyone else in the team - he had the option of simply telling the truth. A week later, this was followed by the firing of Ryan, the resignation of Dennis and rumours that there had been a rift between Hamilton (or his father) and the team. Then came the summons to the FIA World Council meeting today, just in case the team weren't unsettled enough.

It was noticeable that in Shanghai, Mclaren as a team and Hamilton in particular seemed a little out of sorts. He threw the car off the road on more than one occasion and for the first time that I can recall, ended up beaten by his team mate in a straight fight. A week later, both Hamilton and Mclaren bounced back in Bahrain, mixing it with the Toyotas and Red Bulls, his deficit to the front-runners seemingly down to about 3 tenths of a second. If the team can make up that much time that quickly, then one has to wonder how long it will be before they catch, and pass, the three teams at the front.

Ferrari's start to the season might have been less chaotic and unsettled than Mclaren's, but they have been struggling with an unusual problem with their new F60 - unreliability. Mechanical problems eliminated both cars in the first race, Raikkonen in Malaysia and Massa in China. This from a team which in the Schumacher era seemed all but immune to car failures. On top of that, the car has hardly been scintillatingly fast. They've usually been floating around the edges of the top 10, which is hardly what Maranello has come to expect.

Some might wonder whether this is a sign that Ferrari is reverting back to type in the post-Schumacher, Todt and Brawn era. I'd caution against such an interpretation, though. Like Mclaren, they may be suffering from having thrown everything at trying to clinch the 2008 title while others were working on their 2009 cars, and I think that as the season goes on, Mclaren and Ferrari will make up considerable ground,

Enough to put them in contention for the title? Maybe. As with Renault and BMW Sauber, who have also struggled unexpectedly, they are running KERS. Perhaps KERS has turned out to be a blind alley, but it is equally possible that teams simply haven't quite got to grips with it yet and that as the season wears on, those who have been using KERS from the beginning will see things come their way. If nothing else, it already offers a significant advantage away from the line, often enabling drivers to snatch two or three places from non-KERS cars in front. And in spite of moves to improve overtaking opportunities, track position still counts for a lot in modern F1, as we saw all too clearly last weekend.

Quite possibly, the pattern for the year as a whole is one of Brawn coming out of the box very quickly, with Red Bull and Toyota chasing them down over the following races, and with Ferrari and Mclaren - the slow starters - chasing Toyota and Red Bull in turn. Assuming, of course, that BMW and Renault remain stuck in the midfield, which I wouldn't necessarily take as read. It's like a post-modern version of Aesop's fable about the tortoise and the hare. Except that in F1, track position counts for a lot, and given the choice, I'd take a 30 point championship lead and a well-sorted car over a superior engineering base or more money for development parts. It's advantage Button, but there's still much to play for.

Brawn Spring a Surprise

The grid that confronted us in Melbourne wasn't quite the surprise that the qualifying order for the opening race of the 1990 season in Phoenix had been. Nothing quite so downright bizarre as an Osella in the top 10, or Andrea De Cesaris' Dallara ahead of Senna's Mclaren, both Ferraris and both Williams.

Still, a month ago, you'd have got very long odds on the remnants of the old Honda team locking out the front row. In fact, many, myself included, were far from convinced that the team would even be on the grid, and the bookies were offering 100/1 on Jenson Button winning the opening race.

The odds didn't really shorten much when it emerged that Nick Fry and Ross Brawn had brokered a deal to put the stillborn Honda on the grid as a Brawn, with Mercedes supplying the engines. A car with next to no testing, hastily adapted to take a different engine from the one it was designed for, built by the guys responsible for the awful RA107 and RA108? It sounded like it would be making up the numbers and no more.

The picture began to change when the new car started topping the times in winter testing, but still there was a nagging doubt - Was the pace real or were the team running the car underweight to set headline grabbing times in the hope of attracting sponsors? As time went on, the doubters began to change their minds - Alonso talked of the Brawns being the favourites for victory, and ahead of last weekend, the bookies had had a radical change of heart and installed Button as favourite to win.

Qualifying in Melbourne gave us a definitive answer. Sebastien Vettel, in third, was six tenths away from Jenson Button's pole time, despite being fueled lighter. The Brawn appears to have at least half a second on its rivals at the moment, at least around Albert Park. On race day, they brought the cars home one-two, so completing the most remarkable turnaround I can remember seeing in the sport. The word miracle seems inappropriate - there are no miracles in the real world and Brawn's success was down to a lot of hard work from some very clever people in difficult circumstances. Still, it makes for quite a story.

I do wonder, though, whether their very success might make life more difficult for them later on. The sport's financial structure and deal-making remains as opaque as ever, but it appears that Brawn are on the grid only thanks to the FIA, FOM and FOTA having all put aside any differences to make sure that they got there. The FIA agreed to waive the $30m bond required of new teams, FOTA and FOM are thought to have agreed to treat Brawn as being entitled to Honda's share of the prize money and Mclaren waived their right to veto a supply of Mercedes engine for the Brackley team.

They might have been happy to do this when it was assumed that they were ensuring the survival of a team that would struggle at the back of the grid, not giving a helping hand to a team that had stolen a march on all of them in terms of understanding the new regulations and built a car which, at least for now, seems to have every bit as great an advantage over its rivals as Ferrari's F2004 did. And of course, after Robert Kubica and Sebastien Vettel did for each other's weekends and Jarno Trulli picked up a 25 second penalty for passing under the safety car, it was only the two Brawn cars that stood between Lewis Hamilton and a shock victory from the back of the grid! I do wonder, too, how Brawn's success is going down at Mercedes. Sure, the Brawns have the German car-maker's engines in the back, but you'd have to be a fan to know it - there's no Mercedes logos on the cars, and the casual viewer might have had no idea that their engines were actually in the back of all of the podium-finishers' cars.

Can Brawn get by without moral support from FOTA and Mclaren? Perhaps, after all, the deals are done now, but there is still the problem of money. The team are getting by for now with a dowry from Honda, but the Japanese car giant's support was almost certainly a one-time payment, and running a racing team is an expensive business. The more so if the team want to match the likes of Ferrari and Mclaren in the race to develop their 2009 car. The victory in Australia will be bittersweet for the 250-odd employees at Brackley who look set to lose their jobs. Can the team shed a third of its workforce without adversely affecting their performance? Only time will tell.

Fundamentally, the problem the team face is that in these straitened economic times, it may be hard to attract significant backers even to a team which is out in front and winning races. Maybe I'm being cynical, but I can't help but wonder whether Richard Branson didn't pull of a tremendous publicity coup for his Virgin brand without actually signing any cheques last weekend. Certainly if a major deal had been signed, it was a little odd that the team were sporting only a few small Virgin decals as they set about dominating the weekend's sports pages.

Perhaps the team's best hope is that, if the new, supposedly cheaper F1 is more than a mere mirage, the idea of picking up a well-run team with a car might just appeal to one of the car manufacturers not currently involved in the sport. One of the Korean car makers might be tempted by the opportunity to raise their profile worldwide, and perhaps Volkswagen-Audi Group might finally tire of toying around with diesel sportscars and join the party. They'd have a lot of work to do - Mercedes is unlikely to provide engines to them - but on the other hand, Cosworth have a pretty effective 2.4l V8 sitting around gathering dust, that they could probably be persuaded to sell for the right money.

The trouble is, for all that it might make a lot of sense, especially compared with the way some car-makers have gone motor-racing, it still looks unlikely given that the motor industry has been amongst the hardest hit by the current global recession. Discretionary spend, of any kind, is unlikely to be on the agenda when the fundamental problem facing car makers is the disappearance of the market for their primary product. Maybe, after all, Brawn's best bet is to "do a Williams" and try to run the team according to the conventional business model of selling sponsorship as was once the way almost all F1 teams operated, before the appearance of the car giants, billionaire soft drinks magnates and India's richest businessman changed the rules of the game.

I'd like to believe that if the results come, then one way or another, the team will survive. If a team can win races but still not raise the money needed to survive then something really is wrong with the sport. Can they go on winning races? If you believe what some are saying, much will depend on the outcome of the appeal against the Brawn's diffuser which Renault's Pat Symonds reckons is worth half a second a lap. For all that I'm sure they'll want to win their case on 14 April, it might not be the end of the world if they do lose the appeal though. For one thing, even if it is worth half a second a lap, the scale of the Brawn's advantage at Melbourne suggests they will still be amongst the front-runners. Secondly, I'm not entirely convinced by Symonds' claim anyway. Brawn's closest challenges last weekend were not the other members of the so called 'diffuser gang', Toyota and Williams (though both teams ran well) but the more conventional Red Bull and BMW.

No, I reckon what might swing it one way or the other for Brawn is the question of whether KERS will turn out to be an expensive dead end, or whether once teams have gotten to grips with it, it will turn out to be every bit as essential for anyone running at the front as semi-automatic gearboxes, active suspension or traction control was when first perfected. So far, the evidence is mixed. Only one team ran their cars in both KERS and non-KERS spec, and it was Kubica's KERS-free BMW which went quicker. But on the other hand, Kubica was quicker than Heidfeld last year too. In fact, the two men giving Button pause for thought last weekend were running cars with no KERS and conventional diffusers. It was noticeable though that those drivers running KERS, and in particular Lewis Hamilton, appeared to have an easier time overtaking people than the rest of the field around Albert Park, and Ferrari might have been up there too had they not dropped the ball in terms of strategy and then encountered reliability woes.

If KERS turns out to offer no advantages, at least when configured to the current rules, then I wouldn't be surprised if Brawn are able to remain among the front-runners all year. If, on the other hand, it turns out to offer a significant advantage, the team are likely to be in trouble. For reasons best known to themselves, Honda didn't leave their KERS system with the team when they pulled out of the sport and Ross Brawn say they are very unlikely to run the system in the car this year.

Ross Brawn has already achieved something any life-long racing afficionado would surely dream of - scoring a one-two in his first race as a team owner with a car bearing his own name. Whether his team can mount a tilt for the world title, and whether they can ensure their long-term survival remains to be seen, but the fact they've got this far surely augurs well.

A Step Into The Unknown - F1 2009 Preview

Anyone's game?

In the more than 20 years I've been following Formula 1, I honestly can't remember there being so much uncertainty as to who would be at the front going into the first race of the season. For the last couple of years, it has been pretty clear from Winter testing that the battle at the sharp end would be fought out between Ferrari and Mclaren, and so it proved to be. This year, though, there is no such certainty.

Through the Winter,, Ferrari, Toyota, Williams, Red Bull, BMW, the new Brawn GP team, Renault, and even, right at the last gasp at Jerez last week, the seemingly troubled Mclaren, have shown flashes of real pace. The trouble is, it's hard to read too much in testing times. Without knowing who has been running what fuel loads, who have been concentrating on simply getting miles on the new car, and which teams, if any, have been running low-fuel qualifying-simulation 'glory runs' in order to attract headlines and sponsors, it is hard to know what the times tell us.

A real upset?

Perhaps the biggest question left unanswered by the winter tests has been just how real the apparently scintillating pace of the new Brawn-Mercedes is. If the stopwatch is to be believed, then they've got a car which is kind to its tyres, and about half a second quicker than anyone else round Jerez and Barcelona. But are they running underweight to attract backers? Ross Brawn says they're not, and to be sure, it doesn't seem the sort of thing that an old hand like Brawn would be doing, but, of course, if they were running light, there would be little sense in admitting as much. And if the car isn't underweight, is it legal. Red Bull have already indicated their intention to protest the team's diffuser and if as Helmut Marko claims, it is really worth half a second a lap, Brawn's chances this year are going to hinge on the outcome of that appeal.

But assuming, for a moment, that Brawn really are the team to beat going into 2009, the battle between Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button could be rather intriguing. Barrichello had six years in a Ferrari, so it can hardly be said he's never been given a chance in a title-winning car. However, throughout that time, he had Michael Schumacher as a team mate, and, leaving aside the fact that Schumacher was probably the single most consummate driver of the last 20 years, it's not clear whether Barrichello was often even allowed to race him. So in a sense, this might be his first real run at the F1 title, in his 17th season in the sport.

When he was first paired up with Jenson Button in 2006, it was the younger Button who had the edge and won Honda's only Grand Prix win (in that incarnation, the previous works Honda team, too, also scored a single GP win with John Surtees back in 1967) but last year, it was Barrichello who, in what we had assumed to be the autumn of his career, generally had the edge in the awful RA108. Truth be told, that's of a piece with Button's career as a whole. Given a good car, he's tended to be quick, but in a bad one, like the 2001 Benetton or last year's Honda, and he tends to lose interest.

If the Brawn really is as quick as it looks, then, aside from being a final ironic coda to the disaster that was Honda's return to F1 as a factory team, the battle between two men who, just a couple of months back looked to be out of work, and who must surely have thought their time at the top of F1 was over could be hard fought indeed.

Massa vs. Raikkonen - the Rematch

It is usually fairly safe to assume that Ferrari will be somewhere towards the front of the pack. Neither the loss of Rory Byrne, Jean Todt and Ross Brawn nor the departure of Schumacher appears to have affected that. The winter testing times have been promising too, and it is probably a fair assumption that they will be somewhere near the front this weekend. What will be interesting to see is whether Felipe Massa will be able to retain the upper hand over his better paid team mate into 2009. He certainly had the edge for much of last year, but then Raikkonen was clearly never entirely at home with the understeery 2008 Ferrari. The reckoning is that the 2009 slick tyres will leave the cars more prone to oversteer, with the rear tyres wearing faster than the fronts, and that could give Kimi the upper hand. The only remaining question is that of whether his motivation is quite what it once was, with a world title in the bag and untold millions in the bank. All said, for all that this year looks very open, I think over the season as a whole, with Mclaren seemingly in trouble, Ferrari stand a good chance of seeing off the pretenders to their crown. Which of their drivers will have the edge, though, is another question entirely.

All according to plan at BMW?

Mario Thiessen, BMW’s master planner, had always pencilled in 2009 as the year that the team formerly known Sauber would make a serious bid for the world title. There were moments last year when it seemed they might hit their target a year early, but Kubica’s brief period at the top of the driver’s table notwithstanding, the team abandoned development of the 2008 machine to concentrate on this year’s car. Will that pay off? It’s too early to tell. On the plus side, they are reputed to be further ahead in the development of KERS than any other team, and have had their 2009 car up and running very early on.

On the other hand, though, the car hasn’t stood out in testing – it’s been decently quick, but not on the same pace as the Ferrari. And if they’re going to lodge a title bid, it’s surely going to have to be with Kubica, which might pose a problem on two fronts. Firstly, as one of the sport’s tallest and heaviest drivers, he’ll be more heavily penalised by the extra weight of KERS than most. Secondly, his lacklustre 2007 season was put down in part to a car too oversteery for his liking – and, of course, received wisdom is that the 2009 cars will tend to oversteer. In spite of all this, I still see Kubica as a dark horse for the world title, especially if the other front-runners run into reliability troubles.

The car in front…at last?

Toyota have spent a lot of time and money in F1 since the turn of the decade without achieving much in the way of anything. There are signs that this might be about to change this year. The team appear cautiously confident that the TF109 will be right at the front, and Timo Glock hinted in a recent interview that he thought victory in Melbourne not beyond the bounds of possibility. The team will have benefited more than most from the ‘reset’ provided by the rules changes, and despite budget cuts, they still have more resources than more or less anyone else on the grid.

After an uncertain start, Timo Glock has matured quickly into a very solid F1 performer – about the only team mate Jarno Trulli has ever had who has troubled him as a qualifier on occasion. Trulli, meanwhile, remains the master of the single quick lap. If the latest rules don’t make overtaking easier than it has been in recent years, then given a half-way quick Toyota, that might be enough to secure Trulli Toyota’s first win.

The Renault-powered quartet

None of this year’s F1 cars would win beauty contests, but nothing else is quite so downright ugly as the stubby-nosed Renault R29. Early pace in testing suggested the car might be as bad as it looked, too. Since then, though, Flavio’s team appear to have sorted out the car’s rumoured lack of downforce and Fernando Alonso has been sounding a lot more positive with regards his chances than he did at the same time last year. Certainly if the Renault is anywhere approaching competitive, Alonso can be relied upon to get the most out of it. His troubled year at Mclaren notwithstanding, anyone who can win two races with last year’s R28 can be relied upon to get the job done.

Nelson Piquet Jr’s retention I can only guess is down to the team not being confident that Di Grassi or Grosjean were likely to be any better. There was little indication in 2008 that he will follow in his father’s footsteps though unlike Hamilton, he is at least unlikely to unsettle team mate Alonso to the detriment of the team as a whole.

Renault will also benefit from having been allowed to update their engine to achieve parity with the other engine-makers after they took the engine-freeze regulations a little more literally than anyone else last year. It’s reckoned that alone might give them another couple of tenths of a second, and that will be good news not only for Renault, but for the Renault-powered Red Bulls.

If the Renault is the ugliest car on the grid, then a strong case can be made for the Adrian Newey-designed Red Bull RB5 being the prettiest. After flying in the hands of Sebastian Vettel soon after being unveiled at Jerez, they haven’t really stood out since but all the same, surely it’s time for Adrian Newey to build another world-beater. Perhaps they’re just taking a little longer than others to get on top of their car. However fast the Red Bull does or doesn’t turn out to be, though, the battle between team mates Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel is going to be one to watch. Neither man can afford to be outpaced by the other. Both are clearly quick, but questions remain as to whether either is absolutely first-rate. Webber, the 21^st Century Chris Amon, lost much of the winter to a broken leg picked up in a cycling accident – not what he needs as he faces the sternest challenge of his career. On the other hand, Vettel wouldn’t be the first highly rated youngster to come off second best to the Aussie. Ask Pizzonia. Or Wilson, Or even perhaps Rosberg. As I say, one to watch…

Woking in trouble?

It doesn’t matter how much money you have, or how long your pedigree, building a racing car is a tricky business, and the scope to get it horribly wrong is considerable. Early indications are that the 2009 Mclaren is simply not working as it should – that it has fundamental aerodynamic flaws. With the in-season testing ban, it’s going to be very difficult for the team to make up for lost time and ground, though if anyone has the resources to do it, it is Mclaren.

That said, those 1.17 laps at Jerez right at the end of winter testing – are they a sign that the team have got their problems licked? Or just a glory run on a day when the circuit was particularly quick?

If the car is as bad as it seems it might be, it will be an interesting test of Lewis Hamilton’s character. There’s no doubt that the young Briton is outstanding in a good car, but in his whole career, he’s never really experienced the dispiriting feeling of being in an uncompetitive car. If he rises to the occasion, and transcends the limitations of his equipment, as say, Schumacher did at Ferrari in 1996, his reputation will be well and truly sealed. If his head goes down, and he allows himself to be outpaced by Kovalainen, or if he begins to take his frustrations out on the team, his reputation might be destroyed as quickly as it was made.

The pressure is on for his team mate, Kovalainen too. Last year, he seemed to be within reach of Hamilton over a single lap, but could not stay with him over a race distance and Mclaren’s failure to capture the constructor’s title from Ferrari could be said to be down in part to their number 2 driver’s lack of race pace. If he’s to remain with Mclaren, or another front running team beyond the end of the season, he’s going to have to be a lot closer to Hamilton than he was in 2008. That said, he does have more experience with bad cars. Perhaps his troubled debut year with the difficult Renault R27 might turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

More of the same for Frank’s boys?

Williams seem to go well every winter, and every season since they fell away from the leading teams around 2004, they have suggested that this time it will be different, and the team will be back at the front. It never seems to work out that way. Recent Williams have tended to be quick out of the box, and with their good mechanical grip, they usually run well on the streets of Melbourne, but the team have been behind the curve when it comes to aerodynamic efficiency, and it’s not clear whether the rules changes will help. The testing times have been encouraging, but then they always are. The team abandoned development of the 2008 car early to concentrate on the 2009 machine, but that would be more likely to pay dividends if it weren’t for the fact that Mclaren and Ferrari aside, pretty much everyone else did the same thing.

On the driver front, it’s crunch time for Nico Rosberg. After a promising couple of years in 2006 and 2007, he struggled to rise above the limitations of his car last year, and with the emergence of Kubica, Hamilton and Vettel, no longer looks like he’s necessarily one of the stars of the future. Kazuki Nakajima acquitted himself well last year, but unless he ups his game this season, he’ll only be in the sport as long as engine-suppliers Toyota think its worth paying to have him drum up interest in the sport in Japan.

Supporting cast

Toro Rosso are unlikely to match the highs of last season, which saw them beating parent-team Red Bull and winning their first race. Whatever happens this year is likely to be something of a come-down. Which is a shame, because there is real potential here. They will still be running a Ferrari-engined Red Bull, which with Giorgio Ascanelli heading up the engineering side, should provide the team’s latest pair of Sebastiens with the means to embarrass the front-runners on occasion. Bourdais has been retained for another year, which was probably the right decision. Armchair enthusiasts might have been keen to see the return of Takuma Sato, but in all honesty, the Japanese driver has had more than his fair share of chances in the sport already, and failed to make the most of them.

The choice of Sebastien Buemi to partner Bourdais seems rather odd, and the only way it makes sense is that he was the only driver on the Red Bull junior ladder with the experience needed to make the switch to F1. He was unexceptional in his time in GP2, and if he doesn’t deliver quickly, the likes of Brandon Hartley and Jaime Alguesuari will be knocking at the door. That said, if he excels in F1, he wouldn’t be the first driver to prove quicker in F1 than in his junior career.

It’s hard to believe that a Mercedes powered Force India is going to be any quicker than a Ferrari powered one, really. Team owner Vijay Mallya has been making optimistic noises which leave me wondering whether he really understands the sport and the sheer scale of the task facing the former Jordan outfit. Giancarlo Fisichella and Adrian Sutil are back for another year. Both are competent enough, but I must confess to feeling a little disappointed that the team aren’t bringing on another promising youngster. Sutil no longer entirely convinces me – a driver who’s really going places shouldn’t struggle to beat Fisichella, and it would have been interesting to see what Grosjean or Di Resta could have done in the car. Expect them to bring up the rear again.

So who’s going to win it?

Pretty much the whole thrust of this piece has been to admit that for once, I really don’t have a clue (not that I’ve got a brilliant track record of picking driver’s champions anyway). At the risk of putting a curse on the Maranello team my hunch is that Ferrari will have the edge over the season as a whole. Brawn might appear to be the quickest of the bunch right now, but there have to be question marks both over the legality of the car, and over whether they have the money to fund the kind of development needed to keep them at the front over the whole season. Toyota have looked promising, but even if the Toyota can match the Ferrari on pace, are Trulli and Glock really able to take the fight to Raikkonen and Massa? Kubica, Alonso and Hamilton all certainly can, but with the possible exception of Kubica, I’m not convinced that any of those three will have the car they need to make a bid for the title. So, forced to choose, I’d tip Ferrari, and forced to pick one of Massa and Raikkonen, I’d back Raikkonen to secure a second driver’s crown. But I can rarely remember feeling less sure….