Jenson Button is the perfect example of this. He has the best F1 brain in the paddock. He judges tyres and wet conditions better than anyone else, and we saw the results of that once again last night. The same applies to dry weather racing and overtaking. It may be true that most of the time he’s not quite as fast as Lewis in normal conditions, but he makes the best of what he has at his disposal, and often out races Lewis after being more steady and calculating.

Lewis should stay aggressive of course, it’s who he is as a driver, but should just make sure an overtaking move is really on before diving down the inside. F1 is a non-contact sport, which, like in Basketball, doesn’t mean contact doesn’t occur, but unlike basketball, you can’t win if you get in tangles. F1 cars aren’t touring cars or Nascar stock cars. Their front wings for example aren’t built to withstand even light touches and you have to take that into account when overtaking. The tyres of course are also completely exposed and can be punctured by sharp wings or other bodywork very easily.

I don’t want to be really critical like some people online are being towards him. After all, it’s none of our business how he drives a racing car. No one can deny though that he’s been making himself look pretty foolish in recent weeks, and it’s a trend he’s going to want to buck very soon.

Austalia

• The DRS wasn’t very successful in the first race, not long enough to make it work as desired but it did add some overtaking at least, but not enough.
• Red Bull far ahead of everyone else, good if you’re a fan of them but bad if you like close competition, something we rarely see in F1.
• Great podium by Petrov shows Renault will be right up there challenging for podiums, although probably only for the beginning of the season until Ferrari and Mercedes get their acts together.
• McLaren make massive improvement from testing.
• Lotus not as compeitive as expected, stuck in a division all their own. Too far behind established teams yet far ahead of Virgin / HRT.
• HRT embarrassingly don’t qualify for opening race, Virgin very slow.

Image via Wikipedia

Now that testing has come and gone, and we’re 2 weeks away from the start of the season in Melbourne, we’re a little closer to understanding where all of the teams will be in performance. We still are essentially guessing, as a variety of factors can prevent onlookers from getting a true sense of where the teams stand in ultimate pace.

Here’s how I would rank the teams based on what I’ve read over the last couple of months.

1. Red Bull – clearly they have a great car again. It looks to be more reliable than the previous model, at least at the beginning of the season, but you really never know. Regardless of reliability, I think they’ll prove very hard to beat this year, especially as Vettel now has all of the pressure off him as he’s already achieved his ultimate goal in the sport. Not only this, but he and the team have just agreed to and announced a two year contract extension that ties him to them until 2014. The speculation regarding team switching has been silenced for at least the next two years, if not 3. Not many people would want to bet against him and Red Bull repeating their success.

2. Ferrari – It was essentially a two horse race last year and Ferrari, despite their strong car and very strong driver lineup, especially Fernando who didn’t struggle with the tyres like Massa did. I think Alonso did a great job fitting into the team instantly last season and this year should be stronger. Felipe looked a shadow of his 2007 – 2008 self last season and I really hope he can get it together this year.

3. McLaren – While I did say that last year was a two horse race, it would really have been 3 had Lewis not had his extremely costly mid-season slump last year. Despite crashing out at multiple races where he could have challenged for podiums or even wins, he still was technically in the title fight until the last race. Jenson did well to win two wet races but he needs to step it up in the dry. The less durable tyres should help him more but we’ll see.

The team has had a tough testing and people are starting to write them off. Personally, a company with the resources of McLaren can never be written off. Even in 2009 when they misjudged the new regulations and built a very bad car to start with, they were winning races in the second half of the season. I don’t think this car will be anywhere near as bad as that one was because the rule changes this year aren’t as all-encompassing, and you would think it would be hard to lose that much speed in one off-season. I think that even if they take a few races to get up to speed, they will be there sooner rather than later.

4. Mercedes – The fourth spot is a very tough call. The reason I’m going with Mercedes now is because I feel that over the season they are more likely to have strong upgrades to improve the car. Williams might fall back over the season if their development is not as strong. Mercedes appeared to bring a very strong update to the final test last week and their performance looks promising. Whether the other teams have more developments at the first race that will push them back ahead is unknown, but for now they seem to be in a much stronger position than they were last year.

5. Williams – I think Williams could fill the fourth spot at the beginning of the season if their car’s revolutionary gearbox provides a strong performance benefit over the other cars. What could happen though is something similar to 2009 where they were one of the three teams to start the season with the controversial double-diffuser. Despite having this great advantage in the first few races, they didn’t really capitalize on it when they had the chance. When all of the other teams incorporated their own versions of the device, Williams fell down the grid. I hope that this scenario doesn’t play out again if Williams do find themselves with a competitive car in Melbourne and I hope they can keep in contention for strong points throughout the season.

6. Renault – This team were dealt a massive blow with the injury to star driver Robert Kubica, who they can’t really replace fully. I think Nick Heidfeld will do a strong job for the team, but I don’t know if they will be able to challenge the 3 top teams. I really hope they can and their car proves to be as good as it looks.

7. Toro Rosso – This is a team that everyone is touting as having made great progress in their new car. It apparently has a kind of double-floor concept which is very innovative, and if it works, could really help them climb up the grid this year. Hopefully it’s also something that is not easily copied if it is an advantage, in a similar way to Williams’ diffuser. Their drivers will have immense pressure on them to perform. They would have done anyway with Daniel Ricciardo looming over their shoulders as the third driver, ready to replace either one of them mid-season if they slip up. With a competitive car, the pressure will be even higher, with them being expected to score points regularly and maybe even collect a podium or two if they really have something special on their hands.

8. Sauber – I haven’t heard much about the Sauber car this year. Like the new Williams’ car it almost embarrassingly for one driver, Sergio Perez, is adorned with advertising from his native Mexico. This makes both him and Pastor Maldonado look like pay-drivers not there on talent alone which is unfortunate and not how the sport should be. I do think though that he is a good driver and like his team-mate Kobayashi did last year, will bring excitement and a fresh feeling to F1 which would be great. Their car seems to be an unknown quantity at the moment which is very interesting, but I still don’t think they will challenge too many of the teams above them.

9. Force India – I think this team will struggle to be as good as they were at the start of 2010. They gradually faded in performance throughout the year and I don’t see how they will be able to claw that performance back now. They are one of the lower budget teams and this, coupled with the fact that many of their top technical staff have either gone to Sauber or Lotus will really curtail their progress in designing their 2011 car. Paul Di Resta will be the exciting ingredient in their 2011 season regardless of how competitive the car is. He could be a real star of the future.

10. Lotus – Team Lotus are the only one of the new teams from last year to have a realistic chance of catching up to the back of the established group of teams this season. With the Renault engine supply and Red Bull gearboxes, their performance will be far stronger than last year right off the bat. Not only this, but they have gone for a much more aggressive aero design this year which should also dramatically improve their pace. I’ll be disappointed for them if they aren’t fighting the two or three teams above them in the first few races. If they still can’t join the midfield by the end of the season, then I’m sure the guys there will consider the 2011 campaign a total disaster so I hope it doesn’t come to that. I do think that their 10th place prize money is pretty much secure already though, unless we see some big surprises.

11. Virgin – Disappointingly, I think Virgin’s progress won’t be enough to lift them into the mid-pack of teams, or even stay with Lotus. They aren’t running KERS and also are stuck with the Cosworth power which supposedly is the weakest engine on the grid, even if Williams are using their expertise to get more out of it. The car looks nicer than the first one but I don’t think it’ll be enough.

12. HRT – The biggest surprise HRT could produce this year would be if they weren’t absolute last in everything. Their car definitely looks better this year, at least in its livery. Performance wise it’s hard to say but considering they only started designing it fairly late into the year after their agreement with Toyota fell through, I can’t see how they could have improved that much. I’m pleased to see Tonio Liuzzi back on the grid in 2011 as I feel he was treated very badly by Force India who clearly wanted to force out Tonio and replace him with Paul Di Resta. There’s nothing really wrong with wanting to go in a fresh new direction, but they should have been up front and honest about it much earlier in order to give him more time to find a new seat. Luckily, he managed to secure the final one on the grid. Narain Karthikeyan seems like a nice guy and a fast driver, certainly popular when he was racing in the Nascar Truck Series last year. I think he’ll be good for the paddock if nothing else.

I hope that I’m wrong with these predictions. I would love to see Williams and Renault out front in the opening race, and have a story like the Brawn GP one from 2009. It seems unlikely, but you never know in this sport. I’m really excited about the start of the season.

Williams finally showed off their car in its final form today with the definite colour scheme it will sport for the 2011 season. Upon first glance, it isn’t a whole lot different from the last several years, but for several new details which harken back to the 1990s when the team was sponsored by Rothmans. It’s a cool retro look in a way, going along with the current trend of retro coming back, as seen with the Lotus Renault black and gold.

I generally have preferred the Williams cars of the past that have been more white than navy but this one is still a cool looking car. I suppose it makes sense for them to differentiate themselves from the rest of the field, and navy blue is the definitive colour of the team.

Sam Michael and the team are talking positively about the team’s chances this year. While they have some encouraging signs with how their car is designed, I’m reluctant to commit to any such thoughts myself until we’ve seen a few races. The issue is that every team always say that they’ll improve, but I just have this bad feeling that they will fall greatly short of these lofty aims.

After watching and loving the end of the Daytona 500 recently, it pains me to see how pitiful F1 continues to be in making teams as equally competitive as possible. Practically nothing is being done to ensure a level playing field. The closest F1 will ever get to a Trevor Bayne story is Lewis Hamilton’s immediate impact in 2007 but that was only because of his extraordinary talent and belief, and in no small part because he was raised in motorsport terms by McLaren.

Still, back to the subject, I think Williams should be better this year and you would assume they will stay ahead of Force India and the other midfield teams, by more than a single point this time too. Considering how many important members of staff Force India have lost to Team Lotus and Sauber, it’s hard to see how they can keep their development at a high enough level to challenge the Grove based team. Whether they can edge closer to Renault and Mercedes is less likely, but it would be a great story if they could do so.

This team is not lacking in funding and they need to put their money and brain-power to good use to get themselves back to where they should be, fighting for wins at the very least.

VJM04, via Autosport

The new Force India car is an interesting subject. The air-box has been changed considerably to use the blade style pioneered by Mercedes last year, and adopted by Team Lotus this year. It’s an interesting change considering Mercedes themselves haven’t continued with that concept and have gone back to a traditional style.

The front of the car is where I am most perplexed though. The nose looks chunky, just like last year’s VJM03 and also the Renault from 2010, which was considered by quite a few to be the worst looking nose of any car last season. I don’t really understand why they haven’t followed the trend of sleeker, slimmer noses on their new car, but they were at least ahead of most of the rest in having a high nose on the car, along with Sauber who also have had a similar design for several years. I just hope that their bulbous one doesn’t detract from their performance gains elsewhere.

As far as the look of the car livery wise in concerned, I really like the new digital look of the accent colours over the white base. The layout of the logos is also improved and it’s a really nice change from their livery of the last two years.

They will run the car for the first time on Thursday in Jerez.

It’s clear to see where Daniel Simon got the inspiration for this livery. They even call it the cosmic motors livery in the above picture. It looks a lot better than last year’s ugly grey design but I’m not sure what it really has to do with Spain. That’s not necessarily a problem, but even last year’s car had small indications, like the narrow yellow and red stripes that went from the front of the car to the back of the engine cover.

Speaking of the engine cover, from this early image, you can see that they have actually gone with the same square shaped engine cover that Red Bull have with the RB7, which is quite interesting. It’s probably a coincidence but it makes you wonder why only HRT have done the same as the championship winners. That is unless Force India do but we haven’t yet seen their new car. It’s the last remaining to be shown in some capacity and I’m excited for that.

The next test starts on Thursday in Jerez.

This is a bit of old news now, and I don’t really want to cover this silly argument much more, but it was interesting that Tony Fernandes responded to Gerard Lopez’s accusations that Team Lotus only kept the name to keep the FOM money for coming in 10th place in the championship.

So in a way Gerard Lopez was right, but Fernandes also talked about his passion for the Lotus name and how he played with his toy Lotus car when he was a boy, so he is showing that it’s about far more than money to him. I’m sure if push came to shove, he would relinquish the name reluctantly and adopt the Team Air Asia moniker as his GP2 team does. Obviously if they can come to some agreement where they keep the FOM prize money as well then that would be the best solution to this saga, as Lotus Renault GP I don’t believe can be forced to abandon the sponsorship agreement with Group Lotus.

I hope this gets sorted out very early in the season so it doesn’t drag out and allows both teams to focus on the task at hand, racing to win.

Robert Kubica‘s high speed rally crash puts season and maybe career in jeopardy

Obviously this is a big shock to everyone, a great shame for Robert and the team, and for all the F1 fans out there who desperately wanted to see him challenging for wins this season in that beautiful new black and gold car.

Apparently he was in a worse way than we were led to believe at first. We heard that he had broken an arm and a leg, which is bad enough. What we didn’t see at first though was that he had partially severed his hand in the crash. He had to wait at least 30 minutes to be cut free of the car and had to undergo 7 hour long surgery to make sure that movement in his hand was saved. Obviously, no one has to explain how vital this is to his career so it’s good to read that things have gone well so far, and in the next few days we should get a clearer idea of how it is and how long he will be out for.

Renault showed immense compassion and of course, as you would expect, put the safety of the driver above their dampened season hopes. They said that everyone at the team and Robert himself knew and understood the risks. They wouldn’t want to attempt to stop Kubica from participating in his hobby of rallying, no matter the danger, as they knew how big a part of his life it is.

Some F1 teams, and certainly teams in other sports such as football would not be so lenient and would have a kind of get out clause in the contract to allow themselves to bail out if an athlete injured themselves while participating in an activity the team banned them from. Perhaps when they signed Robert, they thought that they were lucky to have signed such a talented driver to their line-up at a time when the team were in the midst of the fallout to crash-gate. With that said however, I don’t think this really played into it too much.

Bruno Senna is the obvious choice to replace Kubica for the time he is out, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we see another driver from Force India moving teams mid-season to replace an injured starting driver. Felipe Massa was eventually replaced by Giancarlo Fisichella and Nico Hulkenberg could be an appealing prospect, as he is currently only a test driver at that team. Then again, that could be seen as a massive snub to Senna and Grosjean who both have considerable F1 experience. It would really depend on how competitive the car is and if they think anyone else would be able to get more out of their car than the two reserves they have under contract currently.

Karun Chandhok closing on Team Lotus Test role

It has just been announced that Karun will test for the team in Jerez this week. The team clearly like the Indian former HRT driver and want to make him a permanent fixture with the team in this role. I hope this next test goes well and we see him hanging around the Team Lotus garage at each of the 20 races this year.

The Red Bull RB7 looks as you would expect. The only real differences I can see are that the engine cover is shorter now that it doesn’t have to reach the rear wing for the F-Duct. It’s also very square in shape which is unique among the cars we’ve seen unveiled so far. The livery on the rear wing has also been changed. Instead of the old Red Bull and cola ads which are still on the new Toro Rosso, the red, white and blue lines seen on the rest of the car have been brought to the wing as well. It makes the car look a bit nicer and helps to unify the look across the whole car. There’s also another logo for Total at the top of the wing as well. Otherwise it’s essentially a slightly modified RB6 in terms of looks.

Mercedes‘ new car, the MGP W02 looks to be a significant upgrade over the 2010 car. As I mentioned yesterday regarding the teaser image of the car released before today’s launch, the nose of the car does look higher and much nicer to look at. The car is also painted in a lighter shade of silver than before, which looks far nicer. There is also a larger green element on the sidepods of the car where the Petronas logo is, as well as on the rear wing. It’s a much improved car in terms of looks and it seems very likely in performance as well.

Toro Rosso’s STR5 also looks similar to its predecessor in shape and livery. One area where it is different is that it has a more rounded engine cover similar to the Lotus T128. Otherwise there’s nothing else in terms of visual changes to the car. Under the hood there will be some fairly major changes but we’ll have to see how well those play out in the next 6 weeks.

The new Renault looks much more streamlined than the last version, especially at the front of the car. Last year’s nose cone was very big and bulbous compared to most of the other cars. This year’s R31 is slimmed down and looks similar to the other new cars we’ve seen so far.

This year’s Sauber also looks very sleek and as we expected is covered with advertising for Mexican sponsors due to Sergio Perez‘s financial backing. It’s a nice looking car though and an improvement on last year. As far as performance, you would expect them to be a bit better this year but we’ll find out in Bahrain as in testing pace can easily be disguised as happened last year.

The Lotus T128 is a big improvement over the first entry by the new Norfolk based team. Not only do they now have championship winning Renault engines, but also the Red Bull technology gearbox and hydraulics. These are along with the completely redesigned aerodynamics of the new chassis. The new car is still green and yellow but beyond that the similarities appear to end. Obviously it’s still an F1 car so it can’t look too different, but the team say they have made big improvements in every area of the car. I hope they really can establish themselves as a midfield team this year but the proof will be on the track. I have a little doubt also cautiously optimistic at the same time.

As far as the livery, I really like it. They’ve made a big change the the engine cover and wing design with a prominent Air Asia logo on the engine cover. This is probably nice preparation for if and when they are forced to change their team name to that.

Mercedes also teased their new car today. The picture can be found on their own site as well as the official F1 site and Autosport. The picture is a front view of the car as rendered, so you’ll have to wait until tomorrow for the actual physical car to make its appearance. From the image though, it appears that the new car will have a higher front nose unlike last year’s which was one of the most dramatically downward facing. As I mentioned earlier, this appears to be one of the key trends among all of the newly shown cars.

I should also mention that Renault have announced both Bruno Senna and Romain Grosjean as reserve drivers for this year. It’s nice to see that Bruno is getting a chance to keep his F1 career alive after being relieved of his HRT race seat after a season in which he wasn’t really able to show what he could do in a good car. Like Nico Hulkenberg, he now has that chance so hopefully he can do well in any practise sessions he gets to drive in and put himself in the frame for a race seat in 2012. The same applies to Romain Grosjean who was replaced by Petrov at the end of 2009.

Tomorrow will see Red Bull, Mercedes GP, Williams and Toro Rosso unveil their cars. That will leave McLaren’s launch on the 4th of February, Force India on the 10th and Virgin and HRT still unconfirmed.

It’s finally been confirmed that they have bought out Vitantonio Liuzzi‘s contract and given his seat to up and coming star Paul Di Resta. It’s tough for Liuzzi as it’s not showing much confidence in him especially since he had a contract for this season. I suppose it’s nice that he’s getting paid to not race in 2011 but don’t rule him out yet for the one remaining open spot at HRT. However, judging from their pick of Narain Karthikeyan, they could pick from a pool of many drivers, a lot of which may be unknown to the majority of fans.

As far as Force India’s remaining seats, they have kept Adrian Sutil as he has driven for them in each of their 3 seasons so far and stretching back to when the team was known as Midland and Spyker in 2006-7. They have also signed Nico Hulkenberg who as we know was released by Williams due to them selling out to Venezuela and signing the GP2 champion Pastor Maldonado. Hopefully Hulkenberg can get a drive next year, although he possibly had a chance to be with HRT and chose not to go down that route.

Ferrari Using Toyota’s Wind Tunnel

This was an interesting detail that came out with the F150 launch yesterday. It’s good that Toyota are continuing to make money out of their state of the art facilities. It’s just a shame they aren’t using it themselves any more, and that they didn’t make the best use of it when they had the opportunity to.