Williams it might just come good

Williams have as good a chance as anyone this year to make a go of it, I’m not saying that they will win the championship – I think that might be beyond them but I think they can return to the type of form we saw a few years ago.
In 2009 they showed promise at some of the races with Nico Rosberg, and they have had one of the most stable winter breaks of all the teams, with Rubens Barrichello joining them they have the safe and fast hands of F1s most experienced driver to get the best from the car and the young and exciting talent of Nico Hulkenberg, another fast german.
Since BMW let Williams seem to have been slowly rebuilding the team that showed so much innovation to bring home so many titles and I hope that they continue in this vein, Sam Michael seems to have everything [...]

Sauber – the return

When BMW announced that it’s foray in F1 was over it seemed that the BMW Sauber team was destined to dissappear, but Peter Sauber couldn’t just let his old team go. So he’s back at the helm, it’s unclear what is left of his old operation or of BMWs investment but it is clear that it’s going to be hard work to get any results this season.
They have an interesting driver partnership for 2010, Pedro De la Rosa, an old hand I’ll give you that but not exactly a top billing, but then much more interestingly the Young Japanese Kamui Kobayashi from Toyota, this is the guy that went wheel to wheel with Jenson Button last year with some pretty spectacular driving. It was a shame when I thought he’d lost his chance with the demise of Toyota and I’m really excited to see him driving again. This pairing doesn’t [...]

New Boys

The 2010 season sees four new teams appear on the grid, along with the return of Peter Sauber who takes back the BMW team. Indeed the manufacturer defection goes even further as Renault have sold a large chunk to an investment firm, with only Mercedes coming into F1 we’re looking at a season full of independent teams. The Final list for 2010 is:

Mercedes
Red Bull
McLaren
Ferrari
Sauber
Williams
Renault
Force India F1
Toro Rosso
USF1*
Campos*
Virgin*
Lotus F1*

* = new team
I’ve said before that I think the old teams will have a tremendous advantage going into this year where not many of the regulations have changed, not to mention the experience of the teams at these new organisations. Presumably they have experienced staff with Toyota shutting up shop and Brawn laying off half their staff at the beginning of the year but they won’t have all been racing together before. The Mercedes and Sauber teams will also have restructuring to [...]

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 [...]