The team’s have endured back to back races in tough (hot) conditions and while some people feel the real season won’t start until the Spanish Grand Prix, I think a few things are coming to the fore that will provide the theme of this season’s championship.

1. BMW are the fly in the ointment for Ferrari and McLaren. If either of the top two teams stumble during a race this season, they won’t just fall behind their main rivals - odds are they’ll fall behind BMW as well. With BMW able to match the pace of McLaren and showing better reliability than Ferrari, the damage from a bad weekend will be greater than what either team faced last year. Unlike 2007, the front runners are now looking over their shoulders.

2. Toyota weren’t grandstanding! I can say it - I was wrong. I honestly thought that Toyota were going to be nowhere this season but happily the team with megabucks have proven me, and many others wrong. We never really got to see Trulli’s ultimate pace in Melbourne but in Malaysia, he put in a strong qualifying performance and followed it up with a determined run to fourth, holding off a late charging Lewis Hamilton. Toyota aren’t quite with BMW yet but they seem to have the measure of Red Bull and Williams. As a qualifying specialist, Trulli should not be underestimated and he might wreck the race plans of more than one driver this season.

3 . Massa is looking hopeless. Wow, can it get any worse for Felipe Massa? Two races, two unforced and very amateurish driving errors. Worse, the second ‘off’ cost him an assured second place. I haven’t even brought up the silly crash with David Coulthard in Australia. F1 claims it has the best drivers in the world so you would expect that lapping the track would be fairly easy stuff. Apparently not for Massa who is looking more and more uncomfortable in a world without traction control. He’s 14 points behind Hamilton after two races and can already kiss his title shot goodbye. If he doesn’t improve, Ferrari will not be able to hold onto the Constructor’s Title.

4. Ferrari have a serious reliability issue. I’m not sure of the count but…let’s see, in Australia we had Kimi’s engine expire, Felipe’s engine expire and Sebastian’s engine explode. Interestingly, in Australia Adrian Sutil’s Ferrari powered Force India had ‘hydraulics’ problems and again in Malaysia. It wouldn’t be so suspicious if Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari powered Torro Rosso didn’t also fail because of hydraulics in Malaysia. So in all, six Ferrari powered cars have failed to finish for mechanical reasons in two races. That’s a 50% failure rate. Even in the dark days before Schumacher at Ferrari, the team wasn’t this bad, was it? With engine homologation looming, now is not the time for problems.

5. Alonso is showing a champion’s character. Fernando put in a scrappy race in Australia and between the retirements of those in front of him and the bizarre pit-limiter mistake from Heikki Kovaleinen that slowed his car right after passing Alonso, the Renault driver was lucky to steal fourth place. Still, unlike most, he tamed the Australian circuit without the aid of traction control. In Malaysia, he put in a hard fought race, dispatching David Coulthard and harassing Mark Webber relentlessly at the end of the race for the reward of a single point. There have been many former champions who just switch off and fade as soon as they aren’t fighting for wins (Hill, Hunt, Scheckter) but Alonso is not one of them. He flogged a pretty awful car around the track with sublime control. He seems at ease at Renault and back on the form that marked him as one of the most complete drivers in F1 - past or present. I’m happy he’s back to normal.

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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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Reports out of Germany and re-posted on TSN in Canada indicate that three partnering investors have come forward with a financial package to save the Super Aguri team.  The question is, who are they?

The report in Auto Motor und Sport suggests the buyers are a British based company, a group of Middle Eastern investors and another group of German investors.  Could Dave Richards be behind the deal as well?  It’s well known that Richards desperately wants to have his own F1 team and while his dream of a ProDrive F1 team seems to be over, taking over the financially strapped Super Aguri team would work too.

Richards recently arranged for a Middle Eastern investment group to take over British marquee, Aston Martin.  Dave had a strong relationship with Aston Martin for several years having prepared DB9’s for Le Mans (through his company ProDrive).  Since the purchase, Richards enjoys a position on the board of Aston Martin.

Could Richards have convinced the new owners of Aston Martin to buy into F1 as well?

Parallel to the ProDrive/Aston Martin partnership,  Richards has also managed the Benetton and Honda F1 teams.  He knows the current landscape of F1 and is credited with turning the Honda program around. Interestingly, Super Aguri has a contract with Honda for engines so the previous relationship might be quite helpful in the short term.

In the long term, if the investor is Aston Martin, would they consider building their own F1 engine and entering the team under its own name?

It’s a discussion probably best held over a beer in the pub but in the funny old world of F1, the same people seem to keep popping up in the strangest places.

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Every success WilliamsF1 achieve is a testament to the spirit of the garagistas. WilliamsF1 is a racing team amongst corporate giants. Sportsmen fighting against businessmen. David versus Goliath. They are you and me. They are the heart and soul of what F1 should be.

A decade ago WilliamsF1 peaked with a string of nearly uninterrupted championships. Since then, success has been fleeting but with a quiet dignity, the team has soldiered on. Today, surrounded on the grid by the world’s largest automotive manufacturers, WilliamsF1 is the last of their breed - garagistas. Pure racers. Simply, WilliamsF1 exists, not to sell more Honda Civics or BMW M3’s but to win races and championships. Period.

Where a team like Honda or Toyota can simply quit F1 if they become disenchanted with not winning, WilliamsF1’s existence remains tied to sustainable success on the track. That ethos demands a level of commitment that few in the paddock demonstrate.

How much commitment does Renault’s Flavio Briatore have to ‘his’ team’s survival? Some, but it’s not his team - he’s an employee with a salary and benefits. Frank Williams is a team owner. To demonstrate the difference, consider this: Frank Williams sold his private jet last year to fund a second, state of the art wind tunnel. As a quadriplegic, Frank benefited more than most would from the use of a private jet to get back and forth to races. It was more than a luxury but it was also a means to an end.

How many ‘employees’ would do that for an employer? For that matter, how many owners would do that for their teams? Eddie Jordan, owner of Jordan Racing, sold his team when they were in financial trouble. Selling the private yacht and other toys was not an option for Eddie.

That new wind tunnel was built to make the race cars go faster, end of story. Was it worth it? Well, the team have put what might be their best designed car in years on the track. Certainly in winter testing, it has been consistently fast during every test. The question is, can Frank’s team humble the corporate juggernauts like Ferrari, McLaren-Mercedes and arch rival BMW?

I think they already have - just by continuing to exist and thrive as racers.

The heart of F1 is no longer Italian red, it is blue - the midnight blue of the new WilliamsF1 team colors. Incidentally, the team launched their new livery today - see below.

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One of the great paradoxes of Formula 1 is that because of the introduction of so-called cost cutting measures designed to keep teams from ‘buying success’ through massive spending on research, the rules are in actuality creating an environment where only the richest teams can compete.

In its infancy, F1 was ruled by ‘Grandee’ teams like Alfa Romeo and Maserati who were also car manufacturers. These grandees were initially the only ones who had the resources to build race cars but within a decade they were facing strong competition from small, specialty companies who would build a few race cars and compete for prize money. Enzo Ferrari scornfully called these teams, ‘Garagistas.’

From the early sixties until the turn of the century, ‘Garagistas’ like Cooper, Lotus, Tyrrell, and McLaren (before the Mercedes partnership) were the kings of F1, staying one step ahead of the Grandees by adapting new technology into their cars. Because the technology was cheap and available, nearly anyone could participate and be successful. So successful that Ferrari, the longest competing ‘Grandee’ of them all, failed to win a World Championship for 21 years before the pendulum started to swing back.

The reemergence of the grandees like Honda, Renault, BMW, Toyota Mercedes (via McLaren) and Ferrari at the top of the sport has coincided directly with the introduction of the cost cutting rules that dictate the type of engine, transmission, tires and electronics that can be used in F1.

This standardization has created the perfect environment for the grandees to compete in. Because there are so few areas where teams can introduce new innovations (something the Garagistas excelled at) the manufacturers have found an advantage in exploiting small performance gains found only by exhaustively refining their static designs. This process can cost millions of dollars per tenth of a second of performance – millions the independents don’t have.

For those fans that admire the drive and passion of the independent teams of F1, these are dark days in the shadow of the Grandees. The last best hope for survival of the Garagistas doesn’t lie in cost-cutting but in throwing out the design rules altogether.

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