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 [...]