Trust me…

The mad world of F1

Over the course of the last few years F1 has seen a lot of turmoil, from so called ’spygate’ to the breakaway series. All of these issues detracted from the sport in unsavory ways. This year really put all of that behind and got on with business, even the whole Singapore 08 scandal couldn’t get that much press coverage compared to the on track action. Next year looks to be even more eventful on track with up to six more cars on the grid, I do wonder however whether they will be six more cars worth watching.

Next year the lineup in F1 will be as follows (from formula1.com);

TEAM / CONSTRUCTOR
SCUDERIA FERRARI MARLBORO / FERRARI
SCUDERIA TORO ROSSO / STR TBA
RED BULL RACING / RBR RENAULT
AT&T WILLIAMS / WILLIAMS TOYOTA
FORCE INDIA F1 TEAM / FORCE INDIA MERCEDES
CAMPOS GRAND PRIX / CAMPOS COSWORTH
MANOR GRAND PRIX / MANOR COSWORTH
TEAM US F1 / TEAM US F1 COSWORTH
VODAFONE McLAREN MERCEDES* / McLAREN MERCEDES
BMW SAUBER F1 TEAM* / BMW SAUBER
RENAULT F1 TEAM* / RENAULT
PANASONIC TOYOTA RACING* / TOYOTA
BRAWN GP FORMULA ONE TEAM* / BRAWN TBA

Obviously this has changed now with BMW and TOYOTA pulling out and Mercedes buying Brawn, this means the return of the Lotus name but it also means that there will only be two manufacturer backed teams next year and that there will be at least four new teams who have never run an F1 car in anger before. So what does this mean for the world of formula one? Well it’ll be very different that’s for sure, the refuelling change was always going to make that the case but there will be a lot of newbies around next year and I’m guessing that means that the old names will come back to form. I expect McLaren and Ferrari to be vying for the championship next year and that there will be a lot of also rans. I’d also expect Williams and Renault to jump back up to form comparably but then again who would have bet on Brawn in January!

This means that I think Jenson Button has made the right decision moving from a team that I think won’t have the stamina to develop a championship car next year to one in McLaren that do. Yes he has to fight with Hamilton but I think everyone expects Hamilton to beat him and therefore I think the pressure will start on Hamilton to prove this and as we saw with Alonso it can have some spectacular results, I’m not convinced that everyone in the McLaren camp loves Hamilton, remember the lying incident where someone else took the fall for him.

With that move sorted out I guess the rest of the driver market will now fall into place and that we’ll see a lot of new faces next year. I’m just worried that we’ll have a two tier championship where most of the cars are making up the numbers, having said that if we hadn’t had Max’s cost cutting war there would only be eight teams on the grid next year. And I guess I could be wrong…

Good Hunting