Reading the Runes

If this year's Spanish Grand Prix was in any way interesting, it certainly wasn't because of anything that was happening on the track. The Circuit De Catalunya is not a place at which modern Formula 1 cars can overtake each other, unless the car behind is several seconds a lap faster than the car in front. Hence, after the first lap was done, the only passing manoeuvres came when the delayed Nick Heidfeld came upon Giancarlo Fisichella's Force India, and a similarly out-of-position David Coulthard found himself behind Takuma Sato's Super Aguri. Towards the end of the race, we had Kubica, Hamilton, Massa and Raikkonen all circulating in fairly close proximity, but it was hard to get excited when one knew there was no chance of any of them actually swapping positions. As Keith Collantine pointed out recently over at F1-Pitlane, it's as much about the cars as about the track. We can only hope that the new-for-2009 aerodynamics and tyre regulations do something to address the problem.

If the Spanish Grand Prix was in any way significant, it was for what it seems to tell us about the rest of the season. One of the ongoing question marks about 2008 is just what the extent of Ferrari's advantage actually is. Everyone, it seems, is in agreement that Maranello have produced the best car on the grid. What is much harder to determine is just what margin of superiority they enjoy over the opposition. Winter testing suggested it might be huge. The Australian Grand Prix, on the other hand, left us wondering whether they had the quickest car at all. Bahrain, and in particular, Malaysia, will have reassured them on that score.

Those are odd races, though. Australia is a street circuit, and the track was unexpectedly 'green' owing to overnight rain. Malaysia and Bahrain are undoubtedly affected by the heat, while the latter was Ferrari's testing destination of choice over the winter. The Spanish Grand Prix perhaps gives us the most accurate picture we have yet had of where the teams stand relative to each other.

It's a circuit which all the teams test at constantly. Everyone on the grid will have a reasonable working set-up, and the drivers know the place like the back of their hand. On top of that, it's fairly typical circuit - not a Monza, a Monaco or a Montreal. If you're quick here, you really should be on the pace almost everywhere. It is as close as we get all year to a simple test of the relative out-and-out pace of each of the teams.

So what did it tell us? Well, it would seem that Ferrari are indeed a step ahead of their main rivals, but there isn't nearly as much in it as we might have thought. In qualifying, the Ferraris were a shade quicker than the Mclarens and the BMWs, but then they were also fueled a lap or two lighter than Hamilton or Kubica (Kovalainen's shunt leaving us unsure as to how much heavier Heidfeld and Kovalainen himself were, as a safety car intervened). Although the question of just how good a lap each of Hamilton, Raikkonen and Kubica strung together remains unanswered, the times tend to suggest that, on qualifying pace, the Mclaren and the BMW are much of a muchness, and within about 0.2s of the Ferrari.

Now a margin of 0.2s is interesting, because it suggests that, while Ferrari may be the team to beat, Mclaren and BMW are close enough that, should the Scuderia stumble, or should the track simply not suit their car, any of Kovalainen, Hamilton, Kubica and Hamilton might be in a position to take advantage. It may be Maranello's year, but we are not looking at a repeat of 2002 or 2004. A margin of a couple of tenths a lap is also the kind of gap that a particularly inspired bit of driving might be sufficient to overcome - especially when qualifying and track position are so crucial to the outcome of the race. In the modern era, it might be hard for even the best driver to overcome a performance deficit in their car, but if the car disadvantage is small enough, it is not impossible (just look at the variations in pace between team mates, which can easily exceed 0.2s).

All this, of course, counts for little if Ferrari's race pace advantage greatly exceeds their qualifying pace advantage. It has been suggested that, while the Ferrari F2008 struggles to generate sufficient heat in its tyres over a single lap, it is much much kinder to its rubber over a whole stint than the Mclaren and, especially, the BMW. Before the Spanish Grand Prix, I would have been inclined to agree, but I'm no longer so sure. After all, the Ferraris of Massa and Raikkonen were rarely more than 5 seconds or so up the road from Hamilton's Mclaren, and the BMW of Kubica had no difficulty staying on in touch either (that despite the fact that the BMW, in particular, had a reputation early in the season for eating its tyres). Now it could be that the Ferrari pair were taking it easy - not pushing as hard as they could have done - and certainly Kimi Raikkonen's fastest lap at the very end of the race hints that this was in fact the case. On the other hand, if the Ferrari duo were pushing only as hard as they needed to, wouldn't they have built up a slightly larger margin than they did. A five second lead, after all, is not going to be enough to allow a driver to stay in front in the event of even a brief off-track moment (and let's face it, Felipe Massa has had a few of those this year). If Massa and Raikkonen could have done so, surely they would have stretched the gap to a more comfortable 10 or 20 seconds?

The other major point of interest last weekend was, of course, the pace of former World Champion Fernando Alonso's Renault at his home race. After struggling to make the top 10 in Bahrain (despite a bit of attrition up ahead) Alonso shocked everyone by getting the Renault onto the front row, just a tenth of a second slower than Raikkonen's pole-winning Ferrari. OK, so he was fueled light (Joe Saward was particularly scathing of Renault's approach over at grandprix.com) but he wasn't fueled as much lighter than his rivals as we might have feared. He pitted three laps before Massa and four before Raikkonen. Enough to explain how he was able to get ahead of the Mclarens and split the Ferraris, but not enough to explain the massive leap he and the team appear to have made since Bahrain, when he was 2 seconds away from the pole. On the admittedly very rough assumption that each extra lap of fuel slows a car by around a tenth of a second, it appears that Renault, at least when Alonso is behind the wheel, are about two or three tenths of a second a lap off the pace of BMW and Mclaren, perhaps even a little less.

It's hard to know if the Enstone team, whose budget is not in the same league as the three teams up at the very front, can keep up this rate of progress. On the other hand, in Fernando Alonso, they have, to my mind, probably the best all-rounder in F1 today, and there is little doubt that Renault is one of the most closely knit teams on the grid - a group of real racers who are able to go about their business with relatively little interference from the parent company. It will be a tall order for them to find race winning pace, but I wouldn't quite rule out the possibility.

We may not be on course for the epic season-long battle we saw last year between Ferrari and Mclaren. I can't help thinking that, over the balance of the season, Ferrari will prove to be a little too far ahead for that. On the other hand, when it comes to individual races, things could be a good deal more interesting this year. BMW's pace suggests that they really are close enough to the pace to pick up a victory if the cards fall right for either Heidfeld of Kubica this year. Mclaren certainly have race-winning pace, if the circuit suits them, and with Alonso at the wheel, Renault might at least be quick enough to crash the party whenever any of the big three teams stumble. I'm not sure we're in for a classic F1 title battle of the kind we saw last year, but, however dull the Spanish Grand Prix might have been as a race, it hints that we could still be in for an interesting season.

Known Unknowns

That was a breath of fresh air, wasn't it? Whether it was the sight of Fernando Alonso ragging his ill-handling Renault in hot pursuit of Sebastien Bourdais in the closing laps, the rear end hanging out over the kerbs, or Heikki Kovalainen's inspired move on Alonso into turn 13, two laps from the finish, this felt like a race.

Sometimes you can end up feeling jaded, and wonder if the magic has gone. After too many line-astern processions last year, and talk of Ferrari domination this year, I was not as keyed up about the new F1 season as I have been in the past. Hell, I didn't even stay up to watch the race live (though in my defence, I'd just come in from best-man duties at a friend's wedding at 2am, and collapsed straight into bed). What I saw in Melbourne this weekend helped to reawaken my interest, though.

I'm not talking about the accidents. Jonathan Meades may once have opined that the unspoken appeal of all motorsport was gratification of the appetite for crashes, but it ain't so. Rather, what gripped me was that this was a race which was hard fought all the way down the field. Maybe not at the front, but elsewhere down the order, the Ferraris of Massa and Raikkonen had to force their way up through the pack - though both made themselves look rather foolish in the process. Fernando Alonso showed why, whatever you may think of his behaviour last year, he is still a very formidable force, throwing the Renault around like a man born to it. In keeping a double world champion behind him in the closing stages, Sebastien Bourdais demonstrated that, while he may lack the outright pace of young team mate Sebastien Vettel, he's picked up considerable racecraft in his time in Champ Car. So Lewis Hamilton ran away with it serenely at the front? Well, we'll see if he can do it again in Malaysia. I wouldn't put too much money on it.

What the weekend didn't do, however, is answer the many questions all race fans have been asking over the winter. Let's start with the big one. Is Mclaren going to be a match for Ferrari?
It's hard to know, as Ferrari and their drivers made such a dog's breakfast of the Melbourne weekend. First there was Raikkonen's fuel pressure problem in qualifying, which relegated him to 15th on the grid. Then Massa became the first victim of the traction control ban, losing the back end of his Ferrari at the first corner on the opening lap and falling behind even Raikkonen.
Raikkonen made steady progress up the field, only to throw it away by going off at turn 3 not once but twice. And to cap it all, both Ferraris went out with engine failure. Mclaren must feel their chances of stealing back the constructors championship are off to a good start. So we're left with two contradictory fragments. On the one hand, Raikkonen's mid-race pace, and the way he was all over the back of Kovalainen, suggests that had he qualified at the front, he might have disappeared off into the distance. On the other hand, Massa, in the other Ferrari, qualified behind both Mclarens and a BMW. A sign that the new F2008 isn't the car to beat after all? Or that the Brazilian is lost without traction control?

Talking of traction control, is the standard ECU and the loss of traction control and intelligent 'engine braking' going to make a difference to the racing? The initial evidence appears to be positive - there were more mistakes from drivers, and the cars appeared to visibly slide around rather more than they did last year. Appearances may be deceptive, however. Cars may have lacked grip more because of an unusually 'green' track than because of fundamental changes to the cars' electronics. And the driver errors might have had more to do with the intense heat in Melbourne over the weekend and a degree of race-rustiness from the winter break than anything else. The jury, I think, is still out.

If the loss of driver aids appeared to make some guys look rather foolish, then few looked more out of their depth than Nelson Piquet Junior. Is this a sign that the scion of the Piquet family has just been found out - that he isn't really up to F1 standards? Well maybe. But maybe not. He did, of course, qualify only 21st, but even Fernando Alonso could not get the difficult Renault any higher than 13th on the grid. Piquet had the lion's share of the team's problems in practice and got little running in on a track he had never been to before. And let's not forget that Piquet is a man who gave Lewis Hamilton a run for his money in GP2 a couple of years back - which you can't imagine Ricardo Rosset or Gaston Mazzacane having been able to do. It's early days. That said, few really great drivers look so hopelessly out of their depth on their debut...

There's a couple of other newcomers, or near-newcomers over whom question marks still hang. Sebastien Vettel looked mighty in second qualifying, but that was about the last we saw of him. His Toro Rosso never took to the track in Q3, and then he was eliminated on the opening lap in the race. Testing has tended to suggest that he has the measure of the Red Bulls, but then testing tended to suggest that BMW were in trouble. Vettel's pace rather put Sebastien Bourdais in the shade. A shame for the 4 times Champ Car champion who has waited so long for his F1 chance - who looks like he might just have been paired up with the next big thing. Thing is, though, that Bourdais is convinced that he could have been through into Q2 had he not been caught out by the yellow flags during his qualifying run. An excuse, or an explanation? Time will tell, though if Bourdais doesn't want to be written off as a nearly-man, he will have to make an impression quickly.

Where do Williams stand in the scheme of things? Pre-season, the talk had been that they would be leading the chasing pack behind Mclaren and Ferrari, but in Melbourne Rosberg found himself outqualified by both Sauber BMWs and a Toyota. He dealt with the Toyota easily enough in the race, but never quite looked the equal of the BMWs on pace. Was this the result of a Friday practice session lost to car problems, or a sign that the Williams just isn't quite on the pace of the BMWs? Maybe Malaysia will give us a clearer idea.

Then, perhaps most intriguing of all, there's the question of quite where BMW stand in the pecking order. Robert Kubica surprised us all by grabbing a front row slot at Albert Park. It probably would have been pole had he not gone off onto the grass at turn 12 on his fast lap, too. Ah, we nodded sagely...the effect of a light fuel load. Well, sort of. But not that light. Kubica came in for fuel a few laps before pole-man Hamilton did, but then but for his error, he would have been a couple of tenths quicker than him in qualifying too. It does rather point to the possibility that, over a single lap if not over a race distance, the BMW might be right on the pace of Mclaren and Ferrari. Which will certainly make things interesting at some of the tracks where overtaking is more difficult.

I'm left with the impression that Melbourne gave us pointers. We learned what the questions are, but we have not found out what the answers will be. We are in the terrain of Donald Rumsfeld's known unknowns. A good thing we've only a week until Malaysia and a chance to find out more.

Formula 1 2008: Raikkonen for the double?

It seems to have crept up almost unnoticed on me this year. Maybe it was the endless spy-scandal shenanigans. Maybe it was Max Mosley's weekly pronouncements on the future of the sport, and Bernie Ecclestone's desire to drag the sport away from its traditional heartland and towards any country or venue which will put up the money, regardless of whether there is any local interest. The end result was that I had come to feel a little disillusioned with F1 over this winter.

We're heading into Spring though now. New life, new beginnings, and perhaps most importantly, warmer weather. Enough to affect a change of mood, and sure enough, I find myself as intrigued as ever as to what is going to happen this year - what the season will bring. This is not intended to be a complete who's-where kind of preview. If you want one of those, there are plenty websites which will provide. The Guardian have produced their usual amusing guide for the casual fan, and a host of websites and blogs will get you up to speed on who is driving for whom, and when the races are taking place. Instead, I'm going to run through some of the main talking points of the new season, and see if I can avoid getting things as wrong as I did last time, when I confidently predicted that "the idea that Lewis Hamilton will be keeping Alonso awake at night is probably still more far-fetched"...

Advantage Maranello?

On recent form, we're probably overdue a season in which the Scuderia run away and hide, leaving all their rivals embarrassed and perplexed. They did it in 2002, and again in 2004. Since then, things have been rather more close-run. They were nowhere in 2005, and narrowly lost out with Schumacher in 2006. Last year, they came home with the title by the narrowest of margins, helped immensely by Mclaren's shooting itself in the foot in the final two races.

This time, the signs are that they are going into the new season with a sizeable advantage. Their biggest rivals last year, Mclaren, must surely have been destabilised by the $100m fine handed out to them in the wake of Spygate, and the likes of Renault, Williams and BMW look unlikely to make the quantum leap required to challenge for outright victories. On top of that, their pace in testing, especially at Bahrain, has been ominously fast. About the only chink of light for those who don't particularly want to watch a season-long redwash has been that they seem to lack the single-lap pace of the Mclarens.

Last year, to the surprise of many, Felipe Massa was able to keep Kimi Raikkonen very honest, and for much of the first half of the season actually appeared the quicker of the two. However, there has been little indication from winter testing that Massa will prove capable of repeating the feat now that Raikkonen is fully ensconced within the team. Mark Hughes, of Autosport, observed that Massa seemed harder hit than most by the banning of traction control, and as such, may prove the first casualty of the end of driver aids.

Mclaren on the back foot?

A $100m fine. An operating loss for the first time in years. Talk that the new factory may be bright and shiny but is hardly conducive to building racing cars. An acrimonious split with their double world champion driver after just a single season. Are Mclaren in trouble?

It's true that their testing pace has not quite been the equal of that of Ferrari. Certainly it is possible that with two talented but inexperienced drivers in Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen, they may want for the kind of technical feedback which Fernando Alonso was able to provide. On the other hand, there are reasons to hope that the Woking team may be able to put up a fight against the Ferraris. For one thing, Lewis Hamilton seems quietly confident that, despite Ferrari's superior winter testing pace, he still has a package which will enable him to challenge for the title. As a team, they are much more likely to be pulling in the same direction, now that Alonso has left for Renault and that should at least bring a measure of calm following last year.

Perhaps most importantly, though, observers of winter testing reckon that, over a single lap, Mclaren might have the fastest car of all. Combine that with the pace of a Lewis Hamilton, and that provides the team with a formidable starting advantage. The car may be harder on its tyres than the Ferrari, but if Mclaren can start enough races from the front, given how hard it is to overtake in Formula 1 these days, they might still be in with a shout.

Last year I rubbished the suggestion that Hamilton would offer any threat to Fernando Alonso. It would be tempting to say the same to this year to those who think that Heikki Kovalainen, whose debut year at Renault was hardly stellar, will seriously challenge the Englishman. I'm not so sure. It's a lot easier for a novice to shine in a fundamentally good car than in a problem-child car like last year's Renault. See, for example, Jenson Button's impressive 2000 showing at Williams in comparison with his disastrous second year with the awful 2001 Benetton. Let's not forget that Kovalainen came into F1 with a very strong junior record, and lets not forget either that in the second half of 2007, once Renault had sorted out some of the worst of the car's problems, Kovalainen actually went very well indeed. In the wet at Fuji, he was, along with Hamilton, one of the star performers. The battle between the two sophomore drivers could be closer than you think.

The prodigal son returns

They say you can never go home again. After a stormy season with Mclaren, Fernando Alonso will find out the truth, or otherwise, of that old adage. Renault and Alonso were a giant-killing act in 2005 and 2006, taking on the better-resourced Mclaren and Ferrari and winning. Now he's back with them again, but it remains open to question, whether having previously spurned them for Mclaren, they will be able to rebuild that kind of chemistry again.

All that said, if I were a team boss, and I were simply looking for the best all-rounder in the sport today, I would, perhaps slightly hesitantly, get on the phone to the Spaniard. Not as unflappable as Raikkonen, nor perhaps as outright quick as Hamilton, he had immense knowledge of car-setup, a relentless race pace, and when his head is together, a formidable racing brain.

The question, though, is whether Renault can provide him with a car which will enable him to take the fight to Mclaren and Ferrari. On current evidence, the answer would appear to be that they can't. No other team had got to grips so well with the Michelin tyres, and one year on from the switch, they still appear to be struggling with the Bridgestones. On top of which, they are simply not funded to the same level as Mclaren, Ferrari, BMW or Toyota, and perhaps it is beginning to show. If nothing else, this year will be an interesting test of the question of how much difference a mere driver can make in today's technology-led F1.

In making that judgement, much will depend on his pace relative to team mate and newcomer, Nelson Piquet. The son of the 3-times World Champion has a somewhat mercurial reputation. Incredibly fast on his day in GP2, there have been constant suggestions that he lacks the application needed to succeed in F1. Whatever Alonso may want, Piquet doesn't seem the sort to give way to his team mate. Winter testing, though, rather suggests that this will not become an issue in practice, and Piquet may be in for a rather character-building year alongside the double world champion.

Fighting for Bronze

Far from taking the fight to Mclaren and Ferrari, Renault may find that they are constantly looking over their shoulder, fighting a rear-guard action against a gaggle of teams locked in combat to claim the title of 'best of the rest'. Long-time Formula 1 fans like myself will doubtless be pleased to see that the winter has seen an apparent resurgence of form for the Williams team.

With F1 increasingly a marketing and PR operation for many teams, it is heartening to see that Williams - a team of racers which exists only to compete in F1, are still able to take the fight to the car manufacturers, soft-drinks magnates and billionaire businessmen. Thus far, they have looked closer than anyone else to threatening Mclaren and Ferrari, and their pace over long runs, in particular, has been very impressive.

If the team have a weakness, it is probably that second driver, Kazuki Nakajima is not truly ready for F1 yet. In his debut year in GP2 he was, on occasion, very quick, but he was not exactly a model of consistency. His driving style, all opposite lock and Ronnie Peterson slides, was fantastic to watch, but is hardly the way to get the best out of a modern F1 car. Another year in the category might have been a better bet, but it would appear that Toyota were anxious to propel a Japanese driver into F1 - if only perhaps to distract the home audience from the works team's dismal performances. Nico Rosberg, on the other hand, matured into a fine and polished performer after a shaky start in 2006, and is likely to be able to extract whatever performance there is from the rather pretty FW30.

BMW have been curiously disappointing in testing over the winter, but it seems hard to believe that they have forgotten all that they learned during 2007 (hard, but not impossible, look at what happened to Honda last year). In Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica, they have a solid driver pairing, though Kubica's brutal style has been curtailed more than most by the traction control ban, and Heidfeld has not been at home with the new F1.08, which apparently does not suit his driving style. That said, it's not all gloom. They may have been slow elsewhere, but their stunning pace in Valencia hints that, while it may be too much to hope that they can make the last step towards being outright title contenders, it would be unwise to write them off in the battle for 3rd place yet.

The other team which just might be in the running to take the fight to Williams, Renault and BMW is Red Bull. Last year, they proved that Adrian Newey is not, in himself, a magic bullet, destined to instantly catapult any team he works for to instant success. The RB3 showed flashes of real promise, especially in the wet, and especially towards the end of the season. What it was not, however, was either reliable or a consistent rival for Williams or BMW in terms of pace.

Mark Webber, who has made a career out of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, must be hoping that Newey's influence is beginning to make itself felt at Red Bull. Testing form, though, has been inconclusive, suggesting that they might be within reach of BMW, but will struggle to take the fight to Williams or Renault. On balance, what this probably means is that Webber might just have a car that he can launch into the top 10 in qualifying, but that both he and veteran David Coulthard (who, despite scoring more points than his Aussie team mate, was never really a match for him last year) will be squabbling over the scraps in terms of points in 2008. Those, who, like me, suspect that Webber would be every bit as quick as say, Felipe Massa in a Ferrari, will have to hope I'm wrong.

Rising Sun, Setting Sun?

Time was that, while Toyota were making a royal mess of running their F1 team, Honda were doing a pretty good job with the shell of Craig Pollock's old BAR team. Well times change. Honda had an awful season in 2007, scoring points only thanks to Jenson Button's sublime wet weather performances and a hefty slice of luck. The early season testing suggests that 2008 is going to see more of the same is in order this year. For Jenson Button, this means immense frustration, as he watches fellow Briton Lewis Hamilton's meteoric rise, while his own career remains stuck in limbo (perhaps he should set up a self-help group with Mark Webber). For Rubens Barrichello, it guarantees what is more than likely his final season will be something of a sad end to a long and often impressive career.

The parallels between the travails of Honda and Toyota are intriguing. Both had an opinionated, 'difficult' star designer. Both fired their man for reasons that seemed to have more to do with company politics than their job performance. Toyota have now been nearly two whole seasons without Mike 'rottweiler' Gascoygne and it will be interesting to see if they are at last able to turn things around. Perhaps rumours that head office in Japan are considering pulling the plug and going off to Le Mans with a hybrid will be enough to spark some kind of a revival. Testing pace has been hard to read. Trulli pulled out a single lightning fast time at Barcelona last week. Does this mean that they've been sandbagging all winter? Or was last week's time a headliner-grabber set with an underweight car? Only time will tell.

Perhaps of most interest will be whether GP2 Champion Timo Glock can follow in the footsteps of fellow title winners Hamilton and Rosberg and establish himself as a real name to watch. Being stuck in a Toyota perhaps puts him at something of a starting disadvantage, but regardless of how far he is off the absolute pace, if he can keep Jarno Trulli honest, he will have established himself as having earned the right to be on the F1 grid. It might prove to be one of the more intriguing intra-team rivalries, and, if recent seasons are anything to go by, about the only reason to pay any attention to Toyota.

B-Teams and backmarkers

For much of last year, one thing you could be certain about was that the first six cars to be knocked out of qualifying would consist largely of Spykers, Toro Rossos and Super Aguris. Toro Rosso, in particular, may have reason to hope that this will not be the case in 2008. Thus far, Sebastien Vettel, in what is effectively the old Red Bull RB3, has more than matched the pace of the 'works' team's RB4. Whether this is an indication that Toro Rosso is doing a very good job, or that Red Bull is in significant trouble, is hard to tell. In any case, Toro Rosso have been known in the past to put in stunningly fast times in testing, only to sink back into anonymity the moment the season starts.

Also of interest down at Dietrich Mateschitz's B-team is the question of whether, after years of domination in Champ Car, Sebastien Bourdais can prove that he really deserved that F1 break all along. Early testing form suggests that the doubters were perhaps right - Vettel has been consistently faster. That said, Bourdais is enough of an old hand to know that being fastest in the winter is neither here nor there, and he might perhaps be biding his time. That or Vettel really is as good as the likes of Mario Thiessen think he is...

The other B-team, Aguri Suzuki's oddly named 'Super Aguri' squad, look likely to take a big step backwards this year. Hamstrung by a lack of funds, they've been absent from testing virtually all season. Last minute investment from Magma ensures that they will be on the grid, but such niceties as the loss of traction control and electronically adjustable engine braking will be new to them - and other teams have encountered their fair share of trouble in adapting their cars.

More fundamentally, for reasons that are rather lost on me, they're stuck running last year's Honda chassis. Quite why the team didn't opt to go their own way in developing the 2006 chassis with which they regularly embarrassed the works squad last year, I don't know. Sufficen to say that if an experienced, well funded race team couldn't do anything with last year's RA107, it is highly unlikely that an ad-hoc group of ex-Arrows mechanics will have any more luck. A trying year is in prospect for Takuma Sato and Anthony Davidson, if indeed the team aren't forced to ditch them for pay-drivers.

Last, but, for once, not least, is Force India, formerly known as Spyker, formerly known as Midland, in turn formerly known as Jordan. With Giancarlo Fisichella, a man who seems every bit as adept at squeezing pace out of bad cars as he is out of bottling it in potentially race-winning cars, and with Mike Gascoygne out to prove a point to old employers Toyota, they might do rather better than expected.

Indian businessman Vijay Mallya has given the team a serious cash injection, which will at last enable them to run a proper development programme. With a bunch of guys from the old Jordan team who still know how to run a racing team, if only they had the money to do the job properly, they could begin to make progress up the grid. At the very least, they should comfortably have the beating of Super Aguri. Early indications suggest they might embarrass Honda as well.

The final point of interest is the intriguing question of how hotly-tipped newcomer Adrian Sutil will fare. There were times, early on in 2007, when he looked very impressive indeed. Later on in the season, however, other than a particularly inspired drive at Spa, he looked disinterested and wasn't nearly as far ahead of Sakon Yamamoto as a promising young star ought to be. This year is make-or-break time. With the advantage of incumbency, he really has to beat Fisichella...

So, set the alarm clocks for 3am (if, like me, you're in the UK, anyway), and let's see what happens...

A final word

Several of us motorsport bloggers, including Clive at Insight F1, Alianora at La Canta Magnifico, Christine at Sidepodcast and Keith from F1 Fanatic are writing for a new Formula 1 site, F1 Pitlane. Check it out and let us know what you think.

The Jigsaw Falls Into Place

So in the end, Fernando Alonso went back to the obvious place. For all the wild talk that the Spaniard would drive for Toyota, or Red Bull, or even Honda or Ferrari, he's back with the team with which he won two world championships - Renault. We shouldn't be too surprised. All of the above teams, in theory, did not have a vacancy. Honda have been at pains to insist that Rubens Barrichello will be staying with them next year, Red Bull have Mark Webber and David Coulthard in place and Toyota pretty much removed themselves from the bidding process when they hired GP2 champion Timo Glock to drive alongside Jarno Trulli in 2008. Ferrari have always insisted that Felipe Massa would be retained alongside champion Kimi Raikkonen, and for all that Massa was seen hanging around the Toyota garage earlier in the year, it would appear that they meant it.

Renault, on the other hand, always had a vacancy. Giancarlo Fisichella's contract was up, and it was plain that the Italian had had a disappointing season and had looked no match for Heikki Kovalainen in the latter part of the year. It was no surprise when he was let go. On the reasonable assumption that Alonso didn't really have anywhere else to go, it was no surprise to see him agree terms with Flavio Briatore.

What was more of a surprise was the news that Heikki Kovalainen would not be kept on. Kovalainen had been a Renault development driver for some years, and after a faltering start, had acquitted himself well in the latter part of the season, with a second place in treacherous conditions at Fuji being both his, and the team's highlight of the year. It could be argued that his start was just a little too faltering - certainly he looked out of his depth in his first few Grands Prix - but I would have thought he had done enough to merit retention. Rumours have circulated that Kovalainen left because he was unwilling to accept no.2 status to Alonso, but it now appears that his departure had more to do with a very rich Mexican backer, Carlos Slim who reputedly made it clear that he wanted Nelson Piquet Jr in the second car.

If, briefly, this appeared to be bad news for the Finn, it might have been a blessing in disguise. For the moment he became available, he stood out as far and away the obvious choice at Mclaren to replace Fernando Alonso. After all, who else was there? Of the test drivers Pedro De La Rosa is a known quantity, but really, what we know about him is that he isn't quite quick enough. Gary Paffett and perhaps even Paul Di Resta were possibilities, but they would represent a serious leap into the unknown, as neither has any previous F1 racing experience. It would probably have been easy enough to prise Adrian Sutil out of his contract with Force-India but he too be something of a gamble. He looked impressive against Albers in the early part of the season, but he really ought to have been a good deal quicker than Sakon Yamamoto if he really represents a great white hope for the future. Besides, he'd already been made to look rather ordinary when he went up against Lewis Hamilton in F3, so why on earth would things be any different this time round?

When Nico Rosberg unexpectedly took himself out of the equation by re-signing with Williams, that all only left two out-of-work old stagers about whom Ron Dennis has previously been fairly dismissive - Ralf Schumacher and Giancarlo Fisichella. One began to wonder whether Ron Dennis might put aside all concerns of propriety and try to pinch a guy who was already under contract. Mark Webber, Jenson Button and Robert Kubica all must have seemed intriguing prospects. When Kovalainen suddenly became available, he was the obvious choice for the Woking team. Fast, reliable and seemingly a team player who probably doesn't quite have the pace to seriously threaten Lewis Hamilton on a regular basis. The pair could be the new Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard, and certainly it is hard to imagine their relationship being quite as antagonistic as that which the team had to endure this year.

I could see this being a pairing which works well. If I were Ron Dennis and had complete freedom to run any driver other than Raikkonen or Alonso alongside Hamilton, I'd probably pick Nick Heidfeld. A good worker, with plenty of experience, who knows how to set up and develop a car. BMW, however, have doubtless recognised the same qualities in the bearded German and would probably not have been keen to let him go. Aside from anything else, by the time the Hinwil team had been paid off, Heidfeld was liable to be very expensive. Kovalainen, who was suddenly unemployed and lacking other options, was probably very cheap. Mclaren may have one of the biggest budgets in the sport, but when you've been hit with a $100m fine, saving money on driver salaries is likely to be important. Kovalainen strikes me as a good compromise. Seemingly a fairly apolitical team player, and probably the fastest unemployed racing driver on offer, he did a good job in his debut season at Renault once he had got on top of the tyres. With a year's experience under his belt, he might even start to threaten last year's star rookie on occasion.

There are those who speculate that the partnership of Alonso and Piquet Jr. could be explosive. I'm not so sure. We know from his GP2 days that Nelsinho Piquet can be incredibly fast, especially over one lap, when he puts his mind to it. What I'm not yet convinced about is that he really has the determination, and the work ethic, to succeed at the highest level. Piquet Jr has had his path smoothed up to now by his father's name, wealth and connections. Now he's in F1, that isn't going to help him a great deal. While he could be utterly imperious when the mood took him in GP2, there were other occasions on which he really looked rather ordinary. That said, it has always been open to question whether Piquet Sports was really a top-flight GP2 team, and if it was not (and certainly no other Piquet Sports driver has ever achieved much), that rather puts a different light on Piquet's junior series record. Against a man with the kind of relentless, grinding race pace as Alonso, Piquet is going to have a real fight on his hands if he wants to repeat Hamilton's remarkable feat of upstaging the double world champion in his rookie year.

One thing that we can be sure of is that Fernando Alonso is unlikely to react well to being beaten by a rookie team mate again. I think, given how exceptionally quick Alonso is, that it is rather unlikely that lightning will strike twice though. For one thing, it is clear that Alonso was caught out by the switch from Michelins to Bridgestones (as probably was Kovalainen, which may explain why Fisi had an edge over him in the early part of last year). That won't be the case this time round. Equally, while Piquet may, conceivably be the equal of Hamilton in terms of outright pace, I somehow rather doubt that he will have been as carefully groomed for F1 success as Hamilton had been by Mclaren. Renault doesn't strike me as that sort of team, and for in any case, until he was brought on board as a test driver last year, Piquet's career was largely managed by his father. Call me a cynic, but I somehow can't see Nelson Piquet Sr. having been quite as methodical as Ron Dennis and his men.

In the end, I can't help feeling it will come down to how good the new car is. It had better be an improvement on the machine which left Giancarlo Fisichella demotivated and uninterested. Else I suspect that a bruised Alonso, battered about by a difficult year at Renault, might simply get bored and start looking around for people to blame, while an inexperienced Piquet is to my mind even less likely to be able to help the team turn things around. Alonso claims that he was responsible for Mclaren finding 9/10ths of a second last winter. I've always rather doubted the claim, but to judge by Renault's performance in 2007, he might need to repeat the trick come January.

ENDNOTE: I'd just like to take this opportunity to wish readers an enjoyable Christmas (if you celebrate it) and a great New Year. I'll be taking a break down in the wilds of Northumberland, but will be back early in the new year with more of my ramblings,

Patrick.

The Motorsports Ramblings Top 10 - 2007

It may not be the Autocourse list, but it is a good two months earlier. Argue with my selection all you will, but this represents my best attempt to decide who did the best job in 2007. Without further ado...

10. Heikki Kovalainen

It must have sounded like an enticing prospect. For your debut season, you get last year's World Championship winning car, a year's prior preparation as their official test driver, and Giancarlo Fisichella as your team mate. It didn't quite work out as hoped for the young Finn. There is little doubt that this year's Renault R27 was a pale shadow of its predecessor, and Fisichella is a tougher nut to crack than is popularly assumed (just ask Ralph Firman, Alex Wurz, Felipe Massa or Jenson Button, all of whom came off second best to him).

The low point of his season came at the beginning. While fellow GP2 graduate Lewis Hamilton was grabbing all the plaudits at the front, Kovalainen had a messy race, with a spin and an off-track excursion, and finished a long way off the pace of his team mate. In other words, he looked like a rookie. It didn't immediately get a whole lot better, and indeed some of his early season performances were so poor there was talk of him being shown the door and replaced with Nelson Piquet Jr.

A promising showing in Spain, where for the first time he outraced Fisichella, gave hint that there was potential, but it was in the North American races that Kovalainen began to really turn things around. In Canada he recovered from a poor qualifying performance to finish 4th, ahead of such as Alonso and Raikkonen. A week later in Indianapolis, he ran rings around Fisichella and fought hard with Raikkonen and Heidfeld in the opening stages, eventually coming home 5th. From there on in, he was in a roll, almost invariably outpacing Fisichella and scoring points on all but two occasions. Late on in the season, he put in his most impressive performance to date, keeping the Renault on the island in very tricky conditions to finish an excellent 2nd in Fuji. Wherever he ends up when the Alonso saga shakes out, he's served notice than there's more than one quick Finn in F1.

9. Robert Kubica

Such was the explosive pace which the Pole showed when he burst onto the F1 scene at the end of last year, one could be forgiven for thinking his 2007 season a little disappointing. After all, he didn't quite get onto terms with team mate Nick Heidfeld over the course of the whole season, despite the widespread assumption he would comfortably outpace the German this year. He was genuinely quicker at Melbourne and (most notably) at Magny Cours, but elsewhere he appeared to be ever so slightly overshadowed. On reflection, though, he did about as much as anyone really had any right to expect. He was amongst the drivers who found the control Bridgestone tyres hardest to adapt to, and as someone who skipped GP2, many of the circuits were quite unfamiliar to him. Given these disadvantages, its impressive he ran Heidfeld as close as he did.

A potential surprise win fell by the wayside in China when his hydraulics packed up while leading and fueled to the finish. On the plus side, he could count himself lucky simply to be alive and unscathed after a truly horrific looking accident at 190mph during the Canadian Grand Prix. On balance, a pretty solid performance for a man in his first full season of F1.

8. Mark Webber

What is it with Mark Webber? Without fail, the man always seems to end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. He spent two years with Williams while they were in the depths of their troubles, and then he goes and moves to Red Bull just in time to end up racing the woefully unreliable RB3. On the plus side, it was at least reasonably quick when it kept going.

On points, David Coulthard actually came out ahead over the season, but that only goes to show how misleading raw points tallies can be when it comes to the performances of drivers further down the field. Look at it this way: Was the Red Bull really a car which you'd expect to make it through the top 10 run-off in qualifying on a regular basis? No? Well Mark Webber got it through on no less than 10 occasions. Coulthard, by contrast, got there just twice. OK, so there was less to separate them in race conditions, but still, with the notable exceptions of China and Bahrain, it was the Australian who had the edge.

Like many a true racer, he was at his absolute best in wet conditions, taking a podium for Red Bull at the Nurburgring and looking like he might challenge for victory at Fuji before being eliminated by Sebastien Vettel - under a safety car, no less. It was emblematic of a season, and a career, which seems to have been dogged by bad luck throughout. One can only hope that in 2008 he'll finally get a chance to show what he can do.

7. Jenson Button

If Mark Webber had a frustrating time of it in 2007, he can perhaps console himself with the thought that at least he wasn't driving a Honda. The Japanese concern has spent years carefully building up a reputation as an engineering-led company with some very well-made cars and bikes, only to go and sabotage itself by establishing a colossally awful F1 team.

This year's RA107 was terrible. So bad, that for much of the season, it was outpaced by a group of ex-Arrows mechanics running last year's Honda with a pair of drivers rejected by the works. Initially, Button seemed to take this rather badly, and he found himself being outpaced by Rubens Barrichello. In reality, he was probably suffering, as many drivers had done, from the swap from Michelins to Bridgestones. Once he got that licked, he drove better than almost anyone. How else to explain how he dragged his car into the points in Magny Cours and Monza, ahead of sundry Williams and Toyotas? If that were not enough, how about sticking the car on the third row in Fuji? With the weather acting as something of a leveller, Button got a rare chance to make full use of his supreme delicacy of touch and demonstrate why some consider him to be in the same sort of class as Raikkonen, Alonso and Hamilton.

A wet/dry track provided another opportunity to show what he could do a week later in China, and he seized it with both hands, taking a 5th place finish which was comfortably the team's best result all season, and which finally hauled them ahead of Super Aguri in the points table. The thought occurs that had Button been in a Super Aguri, he might actually have done better, so lets hope that Honda get their act together in 2008. If they do, Button could really fly in the brave new world of standard ECUs and no traction control.

6. Nick Heidfeld

He's got a reputation for being a touch dull, has Nick Heidfeld. A perception, one might add, which is unlikely to be significantly altered by his decision to sport the weirdest facial hair the sport has seen since the 1970s (when, lets face it, weird facial hair really wasn't all that weird). Still, there must be a few teams pondering upon the advantages of dullness in a lead driver, right now. Especially when its married to the kind of prodigious pace which Heidfeld has demonstrated this year.

Remember how, at the beginning of the season, he expected he would be blown away by Robert Kubica? Didn't happen. Instead, Heidfeld was the one man who could just occasionally gatecrash the Ferrari/Mclaren battle at the front. Recall, for instance, his wonderfully opportunistic move on Alonso for 4th in Bahrain? Remember, too, that he was the one man able to give Hamilton pause for thought in Canada. Not convinced? Here's another stat. On occasions where both the BMW drivers finished, only twice did Kubica beat Heidfeld all season.

I don't know if there is any chance of it happening, but think how convenient it would be for all concerned if Mario Thiessen and Ron Dennis were to organise a Heidfeld/Alonso swap. And if it were to happen, who's to say that Heidfeld wouldn't given Hamilton more of a run for his money than anyone would expect?

5. Nico Rosberg

How good was this year's Williams? We'll never know for sure, but it didn't look very good in the hands of an experienced guy like Alex Wurz. Chances are, Nico Rosberg was making the FW29 look a good deal better than it actually was. Certainly, he seemed determined from the outset to extract every last drop of pace from the 2007 Williams. He signaled his intent with 7th in the Australian Grand Prix, pulling off the race's only pass of any account in the process, at a circuit where such things are supposed to be next to impossible. Two weeks later, he hung gamely on to Felipe Massa's Ferrari in Malaysia until his engine let go. He was damned quick in qualifying at Monaco - a circuit where he has not previously shined - and was let down only by a strategy that really relied on his not getting stuck behind a heavily fueled Nick Heidfeld.

While Alex Wurz was lucky to pick up a bundle of points in a couple of very high-attrition races, Rosberg by contrast had to work very hard for every point he scored, doing what he could against BMWs and Renaults which were usually faster. In the final race, he even went one better, keeping much closer to Fernando Alonso's Mclaren than anyone had any right to expect, and passing both BMWs on the track, on his way to fourth place. I'm not at all sure anyone else achieved so much with so little, this season.

4. Felipe Massa

First, a disclaimer. The performances of the leading 4 drivers were so closely matched this year, that I could make a good case for any of them as my driver of the year. Certainly, had the dice fallen a little differently over the course of the year, we might now have been looking at Brazil's fourth world champion. Think about the times that he lost points needlessly. The gearbox failure in qualifying at Melbourne, the refueling error in qualifying at Hungary, his failure to get off the grid at Silverstone. And that's without even mentioning the two races where he failed to finish at all - thanks to suspension failure at Monza and a silly error on the part of both driver and team in Montreal which led to his disqualification.

In the plus column, Massa was frequently mighty in the first part of the season. We'll never know how much of a threat he might have posed in Melbourne, but based on his pace in the subsequent races, Raikkonen might not have found it easy to secure a win on his Ferrari debut. In Bahrain and Barcelona, he was imperious, comfortably having the measure of his more illustrious team mate. He would probably have equalled Raikkonen's win tally too, had he not had to sacrifice his own desire for a home victory at Interlagos to help his team mate's title ambitions.

So why doesn't he feature higher up my list? Two reasons really. Firstly, once Raikkonen really got to grips with the Ferrari and its Bridgestone rubber, Massa rarely looked quite as quick as his team mate (save of course at Brazil). Over a single qualifying lap, he perhaps still had it, but over a race distance, he seemed to lack that last tenth of a second a lap. The second reason is that he never showed quite the 'fight' of the other three. Sure, he was unlucky with his start position on a number of occasions, but one can't help but feel that Raikkonen, Hamilton or Alonso might have made up more places in Hungary or Melbourne. He was also a tad underwhelming whenever the track was wet, come to that. These are minor niggles though, and like any of the big 4, he would have made a worthy champion.

3. Fernando Alonso

How short was the reign of the man who finally toppled King Schumacher. If you only ever read the British tabloids, you might think that Alonso's year consisted of being blown away by a fresh faced British newcomer and going off in one almighty sulk. Which, of course, would be nonsense (apart, perhaps, from the bit about the sulking).

Yes, there were days when Hamilton appeared to have his team mate beaten on pace, but equally, there were occasions when Alonso was comfortably the quicker of the two. Think of his dominant performances at Malaysia and Monza, for example, or the way he just left his team mate for dust at Spa or Silverstone. Fernando Alonso was also responsible for two of the most astounding passing manouvres of the year - on Massa for the lead of the German Grand Prix and most impressively of all, round the outside of Heidfeld at the Lycee in the French Grand Prix.

The falling out with Mclaren was unedifying, for sure, and his public pronouncements suggested an unhealthy degree of paranoia. On the other hand, though, how much more impressive that a man who was barely on speaking terms with his team, and who had fallen out spectacularly with the boss of the operation could simply tune it all out and drive as he did in Monza and Spa, while at the very eye of the storm.

So why only 3rd? Firstly, I can't help thinking that he made more mistakes than Hamilton or Raikkonen - he just got lucky and didn't pay as heavy a penalty for them. His startline move on Massa at the Spanish Grand Prix was ill-judged and his multifarious Canadian errors smacked of desperation. He looked scrappy at Indianapolis and Bahrain, come to that. It seemed he was far more rattled by Hamilton than was the case the other way round. Secondly, at the very death, in Shanghai and Interlagos, he seemed, well, flat. Had he been at his mighty best in Shanghai, he just might have taken the fight to Raikkonen, and who knows, he could have been a triple world champion by now.

2. Kimi Raikkonen

Let's be clear about one thing. If this list were based only on drivers performances in the latter half of the season, Kimi Raikkonen would be my driver of the year. From Indianapolis onwards, he was on the form of his life. He dominated Grands Prix at Silverstone, Spa and China, looked quicker than Massa in race trim in Turkey and gave Hamilton far more of a fight that might have been expected in Hungary. It was said that the 2007 Ferrari didn't really work well in wet conditions, but this did not seem to trouble Raikkonen at the Japanese Grand Prix, where he thoroughly shaded his team mate. If he needed a little assistance from Massa in Brazil to be sure of the title, well, so be it.

Mark Hughes once opined of Kimi Raikkonen that "he refuses even to acknowledge the game". He was talking about the constant psychological warfare that seems to be a standard part of Formula 1 at the very top level these these days. Kimi doesn't go in for it, and he doesn't let others throw him off his stride either. When he found himself outpaced by Massa at the beginning of the year, there was no self doubt, nor any petulant suggestion that Ferrari were favouring the Brazilian. He showed no outward sign that this had gotten to him at all. He simply kept his head down and worked on finding the missing tenths of a second. It's an attribute which would have been much appreciated in the Mclaren garage this year, and one which just might have helped him secure the title. Both Hamilton and Alonso made mistakes under pressure this year, pressure which was at least partly of their own creation.

So why's he not at the top of my list? Simple, this is about performance over the whole season and he was really rather lacklustre in the opening part of the year. A man who is supposedly the outright fastest driver in the world really should not be getting beaten by Felipe Massa, and in Malaysia, Bahrain and Spain, he was simply outclassed. He might have had the pace in Monaco, but a rare unforced error in qualifying meant we had no way of of knowing. Still, as I have said before, he's a worthy champion nonetheless, and his comeback drive to win the title must rank amongst the most extraordinary in the sport's history.

1. Lewis Hamilton

The British press have a lot to answer for. Here was a driver of astonishing natural talent, a man with a seemingly innate ability to make an F1 car dance on the very edge of adhesion, and by Brazil I was simply sick to the back teeth of hearing about hm, and quietly hoping that Kimi Raikkonen might wrest the title from his grasp.

It's usually assumed that it takes at least a couple of seasons to get fully to grips with F1. Lewis, armed with the most complete preparation any rookie has ever had, and access to the most advanced simulator in the sport, set about making a mockery of this. By his third race, he was outpacing his double world champion team mate Fernando Alonso and after two victories in North America, the lad from Stevenage had emerged as the odds-on favourite for the World Title.

Over the course of the season, he ticked all the right boxes. He demonstrated tremendous spatial awareness and racecraft at the start of both the Australian and Malaysian Grands Prix, pulled off an excellent move under braking to snatch second from Kimi Raikkonen on Ferrari's home turf at Monza, blocked out intra-team strife to take an assured win in Hungary and proved himself equal to the worst the elements could throw at him in Fuji. All in all, it was the performance of an established Grand Prix great, rather than a fresh faced rookie.

Let's not go overboard with the superlatives. There were certainly times when Alonso made him look rather ordinary, though equally, there were times when he made Alonso look rather foolish. And while it could be suggested that it was misfortune (in the form of a duff gearbox) which cost him the title, he really suffered no greater mechanical misfortune than either of his title rivals, over the course of the season. In the end, it was his one real elementary error, sliding into the gravel trap while coming in to pit at Shanghai, that cost him the Championship. Still, who'd bet against him coming back stronger next year?

The Rest

10 is an arbitrary number. If there was space for a few more, then three or four other drivers would merit consideration. Jarno Trulli's efforts to rag what pace there was out of the 2007 Toyota were impressive on occasion, though more often than not he qualified well only to sink back down the order come race day. Both Super Aguri drivers had their moments. Takuma Sato had the upper hand in the early part of the year, and even passed Fernando Alonso for position during the Canadian Grand Prix - not something anyone would have predicted before the season began. Anthony Davidson generally outpaced the Japanese driver in the latter half of the year, and his qualifying effort in Turkey was one of the standout performances of the year. Adrian Sutil did all that could be expected in the hopeless Spyker, outclassing all his team mates and occasionally dragging the car a touch further up the order than it had any business being (most notably at Spa and at Indianapolis). He went off the road too often to merit inclusion in the top 10 though, and indeed this tendency may preclude his picking up a more worthwhile drive next year.

David Coulthard did a solid job for Red Bull, without ever quite appearing to be on the same level as his team mate. He was impressive in the wet, picking up a couple of 4th places, and coped admirably with a broken gearbox on his way to 5th in Barcelona. Rubens Barrichello, too, did a better job than he was credited for. Unfortunately, he was generally at his best when the Honda was at its worst, and so ended up pointless at the season's conclusion. If, as rumours suggest, this is his last season, it was a sad note on which to end.

Three other old stagers who may be staring retirement in the face are Giancarlo Fisichella, Ralf Schumacher and Alex Wurz. Wurz was a terrible disappointment in the Williams, and jumped before he was pushed. Schumacher achieved little in the Toyota, and was outclassed by Jarno Trulli. Fisichella had a good start to the season with the disappointing Renault, but appeared to lose interest mid-season and rarely figured after the British Grand Prix.

Vitantonio Liuzzi might just have done enough to salvage his F1 career, but his performances at the troubled Toro Rosso team were hard to judge. His team mate, Sebastien Vettel, initially looked out of his depth but came on in leaps and bounds when Toro Rosso finally began to understand the RB3 towards the season's end. He did enough to suggest that the mid-season replacement of the unexceptional Scott Speed was the right move.

Christijan Albers, whom I had been impressed by last year, was rather shown up by the appearance of a talented young team mate, and when the money ran out, he was shown the door at Spyker. Neither Markus Winkelhock nor Sakon Yamamoto made much of an impression either, though the number 2 seat at Spyker was perhaps F1's least desirable drive this year.

Les Autres

I had intended to pontificate at length on the subject of team orders and the FIA's dubiously motivated 'investigation' into Mclaren's activities at the Monaco Grand Prix. Thankfully, however, as I was bashing out my vitriolic rant, news came through that the FIA had seen sense and let the matter lie. Its a shame that we didn't see a fight all the way until at least the second set of pit stops at Monte Carlo, but there's to my mind a pretty significant difference between asking drivers to hold station and asking them to swap positions.

So instead, I feel it is time to take a break from what is a rather fascinating four way battle for supremacy at the front of the field, and in particular the relentless attention being given to one Lewis Hamilton and focus for a while on how the other new boys are doing.

Though you might not know it if you only ever read the popular press, there have been four other rookies, or near rookies on the grid this season. If you have the dubious pleasure of picking up the ITV coverage, you could be forgiven for thinking Lewis Hamilton the least experienced driver in the field, but in fact, the man with the least previous experience of powerful single seaters, let alone F1 mileage, is Spyker new boy Adrian Sutil.

Sutil, unlike Hamilton, has hardly had an error free start to his F1 career (offs in four of his five Grands Prix so far). On the plus side, though, he has looked very fast from the off - comfortably outpacing his more experienced team mate Christijan Albers. And remember, Albers had little trouble seeing off Monteiro last year. At Monaco, he went one better and outqualified Takuma Sato and Ralf Schumacher. Frankly, being anywhere other than on the back row is always going to be a pretty impressive achievement in the primitive and underfunded Spyker .

Even the mistakes are somewhat more excusable given his more limited testing mileage, the fact that he is trying to make a name for himself in a desperately slow car, and the fact that those at the wrong end of the grid are far more likely to get caught up in opening lap chaos.

The other absolute beginner on the grid, of course, is Heikki Kovalainen. Unlie Sutil or Hamilton, he has very extensive F1 testing experience, having been Renault's official test driver throughout last year. However, one wonders if this was necessarily the best preparation for his first F1 season, or whether it has simply left him race rusty, and unused to driving at the full potential of the car. Testing doesn't normally involve driving at 10/10th, and perhaps after a while it becomes habit-forming. Certainly this might help to explain not only his performance, but also the rather lacklustre start of F1 returnee Alex Wurz over at Williams.

In a way, I feel rather sorry for the Finn. If Hamilton had not come along and redefined what it is possible for an F1 novice to achieve, then Kovalainen's performances in the Renault perhaps wouldn't look so bad. Sure, he was awful in Australia and utterly anonymous in the midfield in Monaco, but in Bahrain and Malaysia he looked the equal of the vastly more experienced Fisichella, and in Spain he actually appeared the quicker of the two.

Given that Fisichella has comprehensively outpaced all but one of his former team mates, including Jenson Button and Felipe Massa, that's perhaps not bad going for a newcomer. Or it wouldn't be, if it wasn't for the fact that said former team mate is himself being given a much harder time by another new boy than Fisichella ever managed to give him. Which, if nothing else, has raised the bar for what is possible for a rookie in the right car, even against the most experienced of team mates. Perhaps he is suffering for the fact that this year's Renault is emphatically not of the same kind of quality as the 2006 car. Certainly it has been said before that while anyone with enough natural talent can be quick in a good, quick car, experience comes to the fore in getting the best out of a more troublesome machine.

Aside from the genuine debutants, there are two nearly new boys - men who have raced before, but who are doing their first full season this year. Anthony Davidson's F1 career, until this year, had been brief and disappointing. Two outings in the second Minardi in 2002 both ended in the gravel trap while a one-off run with BAR in 2004 lasted just a handful of laps before the engine gave up. His potential, therefore, remained something of an unknown when he was announced as Takuma Sato's partner at Super Aguri.

That, to some extent, is how he remains. There has been little to separate him from his more experienced team mate, but it is very hard to know how well, or how badly, the Super Aguri pair are doing. They are in effect running a well proven car on a very minimal budget with the wrong tyres on it. When Davidson or Sato start mixing it with the Williams and Toyotas, it is hard to know whether that is because they are doing an outstanding job, or because a year old Honda on Bridgestone tyres with a group of experienced ex-Arrows men doing the engineering is a pretty serious proposition.

Similar question marks surround the performance of the other nearly-new boy, Robert Kubica. Some people expected that, given his explosive debut last year, he would blow Nick Heidfeld away this season. It hasn't quite worked out that way. The BMW has proven to be a seriously competitive piece of kit, but it has generally been the hitherto anonymous German who has got the most out of it. It is hard to know quite why this should be - perhaps Heidfeld has found having Kubica alongside him a wake up call, perhaps after 8 years in F1, he is finding that having a competitive car has sparked his motivation. Or perhaps Kubica, like Alonso and Raikkonen, is simply struggling to adapt to the very different demands of the new Bridgestone rubber.

Whatever way one looks at it though, the mixed fortunes of what is to my mind, the most promising set of F1 rookies in a very long time is a significant story in itself. It would be a shame if it were entirely lost in the hype surrounding the undoubtedly highly talented Lewis Hamilton.

Post Script - Motorsportsramblings will take a one week break next week. I'll tell you why when I get back...