The Bahrain Grand Prix is over and the teams are heading back to Europe where the ‘real’ season will start in earnest in three weeks. The action on the track was nowhere near the excitement that goes on in Max Mosley’s bedroom but it still provided a few things worth pondering. After three rounds of the 2008 season, here are five points to consider.

1. The British press still have a beef with Fernando Alonso - Of course Lewis Hamilton would collide with Alonso! Or, if you believe some suggestions in the British Press - Fernando gave Lewis a bit of the old brake business. Come on! There was nothing to it but a racing mistake from a sophomore driver. Hamilton was flustered by a bad start, got anxious and hit a fuel-heavy Fernando in the rear - both drivers suffered as a result in the race. The countless suggestion from James Allen and Martin Brundle during the broadcast that it might have been more sinister than that was a desperate attempt at drumming up some drama that was nowhere to be seen in the race. Shame on you ITV!

2. BMW are derailing McLaren’s championship plans - The Scuderia must not know what to think when they look over their shoulders these days - the silver cars aren’t there! BMW are definitely on the move but the team from Hinwil don’t have the experience to challenge Ferrari for the title. McLaren are the team that everyone was expecting to take the fight to Ferrari - problem is, they seem to be stuck behind BMW!

3. Ferrari are running away with the season - The wunderkid from Stevenage seems to have come in contact with some Kryptonyte this season and is unable to take the fight to Ferrari. In a near repeat of last season’s closing races, Hamilton has squandered a 10 point lead in the championship and now trails Kimi Raikkonen by four points. If McLaren can’t find the pace to get around BMW and into a position to attack Ferrari, the season is all but settled. We’ll only have to wait for Jean Todt to mastermind one of his famous coin tosses to see which Ferrari driver will win the championship.

4. David Coulthard is racing his last season - Someone get this guy bigger mirrors! What can you say, the boil has come off this guy - the fire in the belly is gone along with his peripheral vision. There are a 1000 drivers who would kill to be in that Red Bull RB4 and they’re not going to have to wait much longer.

5. Renault are going backwards faster than the R28 can go forwards - Fourth, eighth, tenth - anyone else see the trend here? Renault are in need of some major upgrades on the car if they want to avoid being swallowed up by Red Bull, Toyota and Williams. Alonso has been driving well and that’s worth a few tenths but they need to find a second quickly which is unheard of in F1. If the rumors are true, and there are performance clauses in Fernando’s contract that let him leave if they aren’t competitive, then Renault have a crisis on their hands.

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It’s a sad fact that there are five teams in this category but all of these teams are facing the possibility of single digit points tallies at the end of the season and frankly, that makes them pretenders. Amazingly, only one team can claim they don’t have the cash to develop a winning car and that’s Super Aguri. It’s a miracle they even made it to Australia but that’s a story for another time.

So, without further fanfare and because first practice is only a few hours away, here are my thoughts and predictions on the 2008 pretenders of F1.

Toyota - How a team can spend half a billion dollars (500,000,000.00 - would you look at those zeros!) year after year and accomplish nothing staggers the mind. Toyota might have deserved to be in the previous group I reviewed but frankly, there’s no reason to think that some of their recent testing times were anything other than publicity grabs. Until this team unshackles itself from the corporate boardroom in Japan it will continue to under perform. Not signing either Ross Brawn as Team Principle or Fernando Alonso - even for a season - was yet another missed opportunity. Verdict: Mega money to spend but just more mediocre results to show for it.

Honda - Apparently the hole that Honda fell into last year was deeper than anyone thought. Again, a racing team cannot be run from the boardroom in Japan. Honda installed a completely unqualified technical director in 2006 and sent a top designer packing. It made no sense but the results were devastating - from contenders to joke in one season. Hopefully with Brawn at the helm and an on-form Button behind the wheel they can turn the corner mid-season. The struggle back to the front is going to be a character builder for everyone in the team. Verdict: More upheaval expected within the design team and few trips to the final qualifying session until near the end of the year.

Scuderia Torro Rosso - The Red Bull juniors are still a driver development team running second hand cars. Bravo for giving Sebastian Bourdais a much overdue F1 drive. Whether either driver will have a breakout year is open to debate though most of the paddock seem to think that the other Sebastian - Vettel, is the real deal. The team have adequate funding but the development of the car will come only after it’s been proven with the Red Bull Racing Squad. Verdict: With the quality of teams ahead of them, I expect them in the barriers more often than the points.

Force India - This team chews up and spits out millionaire owners like a bad monster movie. Jordan - Midland - Spyker and now Force India - the name changing never stops! The team have had some moments in testing but I can remember when Prost looked like title contenders in winter testing only to go broke before the year was over. The driver pairing looks interesting if a bit optimistic. Giancarlo Fisichella has a reputation for doing big things when expectations are low and after his last three seasons with Renault expectations are definitely low. Adrian Sutil still seems a little wild but if he can get the better of Fisi then he’ll be on to bigger and better things. Verdict: No better results this year than what you would have expected from Midland or Spyker in the past.

Super Aguri - What high hopes everyone had for the little team of super friends. Now, bought out by a conglomerate of investors, one has to wonder if Super Aguri will be the next Jordan-Midland-Spyker-Force India. It’s quite obvious that it is not possible to enter F1 without serious corporate backing. Aguri have done almost zero development work on their 2008 car - in fact, it’s safe to say that all their efforts were put into surviving, not finding another tenth of a second. Whether the name or the team remain for long is open to debate and that’s a pity. Verdict: The year will be summed up in one word for the team and its fans - ‘disappointment.’

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Its not hard to see that Bernie Ecclestone loves a good game of poker. He’s forever backing his adversaries into a corner with a wild, ‘all in’ declaration and then sitting back, stone faced and cocky while the rest of the world debates whether or not he is bluffing. Many a poor soul will tell you that they regret misreading Bernie.

Take for instance the drama that is the British Grand Prix. Usually about this time of year there is a quote from Bernie in the press warning Silverstone, home of the British Grand Prix, that they need to spruce the place up, put in more corporate hospitality seats and find more (government) money to pay the ever-higher sanctioning fees demanded by Ecclestone. Each year the same story unfolds. No one has a right to a grand prix, says Bernie, and the privilege costs money. Silverstone and its owners plead poor. Somebody (never Bernie) finds a bit more cash and the race survives for another year. Nothing changes but it always provides high stakes tension.

Maybe because Silverstone has become a deadlock, Bernie is on the lookout for another player to hustle. Enter Melbourne Australia, inconveniently located on the other side of the world and who’s F1 race is played out while most of Europe chooses to sleep.

One of the great dilemmas for Formula 1 is that there is a lot of cash available in the Asia-Pacific market but the historical fan base and the TV viewers are not interested in watching races in a time zone that forces them to turn on the television in the middle of the night. Always wanting to have their cake and to eat it too, the ever-spinning marketing minds of F1 may have found a solution - night racing.

Beginning this season, F1 will present its first ever night race. Live from Singapore and run under massive, computer controlled lighting systems, the entire course will be illuminated to a level sufficient for safe racing and television broadcasting. Because it will be run at night in Asia, the live feed will arrive in European living rooms mid-morning. This makes the race more attractive for the traditional viewer who can now watch the grand prix over scrambled eggs and coffee.

So Singapore will pilot the program, Malaysia has recently indicated an interest in moving to a night race format too, and Australia? Actually, far from choosing, Australia is being told it needs to go to a night race format or be dropped from the calendar. Bernie is playing up night racing like a card shark hinting at aces. No one can be sure if he’s bluffing or not, but threatening a long time race venue like Melbourne makes it clear to everyone how high the stakes are .

What the Melbourne threat really means is that Eccelstone is under pressure. He wants the money available from the emerging economies of Southeast Asia, China, India, and the Middle East but he knows he needs to appease the sport’s fans who are mainly in Europe. Without those fans, TV ratings (the basis for lucrative TV contracts and subsequently team prize money) will fall sharply. Additionally, F1 could become a marginal sport in Europe.

For Ecclestone, night racing is a hand he can’t afford to lose. Its a dangerous gambit because the format is a complete unknown. What happens if it rains heavily or there is a power failure mid race? F1 has not canceled a race in many years, not even when Ayrton Senna was killed. How will organizers deal with a blackout during the race and how will fans react if a race is canceled? As quickly as night racing arrives it could disappear, taking a lot of fans with it.

Beyond Melbourne, the future of Formula 1 is at stake. Bernie wants F1 to grow into new markets without alienating and abandoning the fans who made it what it is today? If he can’t achieve that, is it possible to shift the sport into the Asian market, abandoning Europe, and grow the fan base quickly enough to continue to feed the sport’s huge appetite for cash?

The relatively new races in Bahrain, Malaysia and Turkey all shared one thing in common - empty grandstands. The local populace aren’t keen on racing when basic survival is the primary concern for most of the population. Similarly, well-heeled Europeans aren’t flocking to sweltering Asia and its various security concerns to see races. So far, the odds seem to be stacked against Ecclestone.

Bernie has made his fortune by winning these high risk games but eventually everyone’s luck runs dry. If night racing works and proves popular, F1 could spread further into the Asian market and still keep European interest. If it proves to be a dud with fans or organizers, then we could still see a shift to Asian races but without European interest or support.

Knowing Bernie, there is probably an ace up his sleeve still to be played. That’s just the kind of game it is.

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