I don’t think this would happen however. One of the reasons RBR switched to Renault engines (from Ferrari) is to be treated more fairly and to avoid these kind of problems.

Customer engines? What’s the difference between them and factory?

Ferrari, Renault etc. get theirs from the factory, but Williams, Red Bull, Brawn are supplied by other teams?

Hope someone can help. Thanks

Oh, and keep up the good work James : )

Can I just draw another similarity?

In 1998, the lead driver of one of the teams was a German wet weather specialist.

At the other team you had a driver who had spent years in the wilderness trying to get hold of a decent car who clearly had more talent that his results suggested and who also had just one win to his name prior to that season. And in that season (1998) he came out of the blocks with a great car to win the 1st two races of the year appearing like the man most likely to win the championship – despite only having one race win to his name before -….

…before the German wet-weather specialist won the 3rd race of the season!!!

From one modern language graduate to another, I thought I’d better point out that Sebastian Vettel doesn’t spell his name with an ‘e’ in the penultimate letter, but with an ‘a’. Unlike the other two Sébastiens at Toro Rosso.

One could maybe say there are a disproportionate number of ‘Sebs’ in Formula One and rallying at the moment, I think!

As the creator of your Facebook appreciation group, may I also add my voice to the ‘Bring James Allen to the BBC campaign’.

Thanks for continuing to keep us updated on this site!

Luke

Is there not any data available from the practice runs in China, so we can compare Brawn and Red Bull laptimes over long-runs?

It seemed to me that the absolute pace of the RB and Brawn packages was pretty similar, however Brawn seemed to show far more consistency over the run and set a higher, average laptime.

Of course you have the vague issue of fuel loads during practice….

Cheers,

Steve

Then that machine is given to the best drilled teams in the world who lovingly cajole the car into life and ensure every aspect of it is running at peak performance, regardless of track or conditions.

And finally the best drivers in the world push it and themselves beyond limits they don’t even acknowledge they have.

I don’t see how a budget cap prevents all that – all it does is level the playing field a bit.

Personally I think it’s going to give us some of the best racing Formula 1 has seen for decades.

But if you want speed, there’s always drag racing.

If I was Robert Kubica I would be extremely dissapointed. He challenged last year and if the team didn’t give up on him and the car it could have been possible that he finished the season in the same way Alonso did and challenged for the championship at Interlagos. Instead, he had to sacrifice for a car that is a midfield runner at best.

Newey updated the RB3 with some of his touches to produce an ok RB4 (a chassis that won with Vettel at STR). RB5 is the first of his cars built from the ground-up, and it shows.

So the teams that are performing well now are the teams who had a 1-2 year plan in place for 2009. That demonstrates the problems with the proposed budget cap.

The potential solution is that the FIA holds off on publishing the 2010 regulations until later in the season, to give all teams the exact same ‘start date’ on development. If a team were to focus on 2010 now, what would they do exactly? The 2010 regs are very much up in the air and because 2009 is a ‘clean slate’ season, there is still a lot more room for improvement on the current crop of cars.

Ferrari and BMW need to do what McLaren have been doing – using their people and budget resources to develop their 2009 cars further and in the interim rely on smart driving and smart strategy to scrape as many points as they can.

The start of this season is far too unique a situations to be able to make big long-term calls such as there being a new shift in the pecking order of F1.