In case it has escaped your notice, the F1 season kicks off on Sunday in Australia. This comes as a blessed relief after a winter of wrangling, whingeing and general bovine waste product generation in the F1 world, which I've watched with increasing concern and bemusement as the whole thing seems to be descending rapidly into farce.

There's been the GPWC vs. Bernie saga, FIA meetings where all the teams but Ferrari turned up, then Fazza sided with Bernie and there was another FIA meeting where only Ferrari turned up. The latest chapter is apparently Bernie having signed up all the circuits to deny them to GPWC.... Oh, and apparently they can't use the term 'GP' anymore......

Then there was the sale of Jordan to an outfit who appointed two drivers with no F1 experience, and limited success in the lower formulae, but who offer, er, significant commercial opportunities. Jordan's highly respected Chief Designer Mark Smith soon left and joined Red Bull, who had bought the Jaguar team when Ford retired hurt. His signing, together with the vastly experienced David Coulthard, make it look like this team might actually take racing seriously.

Finally, there's Minardi..... Maybe if Paul Stoddart put as much effort into his team as he seems to into generating column inches, they might move further up the grid. Mind you, the appointment of a 41 year old "test driver" is obviously going to make a big difference. Could be an idea for Corse Clienti though...

Amidst all this, the teams were faced with new regulations for the last year of the 3 litre V10 formula:

• Aerodynamics have been dramatically revised in a bid to reduce downforce, with a higher nose and front wing section, a changed rear diffuser profile, and moving the rear wing forward.

• Engines must last for two full weekends.

• One set of tyres must last through both qualifying sessions and the whole race.

• There will be one qualifying session on Saturday afternoon and another on Sunday morning. Both sessions will feature the cars going out one at a time, on Saturday in the reverse order of their finishing positions at the previous race. On Sunday, the cars will go out in the reverse order of the qualifying on Saturday (i.e. the fastest car on Saturday runs last on Sunday).
  
  The cars will run on Saturday with unrestricted fuel. They will then go into parc fermé after this qualifying session and for the Sunday qualifying session they will run with race fuel, having been allowed to refuel before the second qualifying session. They will not be allowed to refuel again before the race starts. The times of the two sessions will be aggregated to determine the grid, with the shortest aggregate time in pole position.
  

Alles Klar?

So how will this affect things? The objective was to slow the cars down and improve racing, but Raikkonen in the '05 McLaren MP4-20 has already outpaced the '04 car and got to within a fraction of the unofficial lap record at Valencia, but how will it affect the results?

There has been much speculation about the relative competitiveness of the teams and particularly the apparent lack of pace of the Ferrari 2004M. The majority of the F1 'public' winter testing has taken place at three circuits in Spain, namely Barcelona, Valencia and Jerez, so we've aggregated the best reported times for each team and averaged them in an attempt to gauge the overall standings.

February times were used wherever possible to try to eliminate '04 spec. cars and other "odd" times were weeded out. The only major problem was that BAR did not test at Barcelona, so a time was guestimated based on their relative performance at the other two tracks. Jordan only appeared at Barcelona and Minardi did not show at all - despite their fab new test driver.

The results of this highly empirical survey are:

1. Renault
2. McLaren
3. BAR
4. Ferrari
5. Williams
6. Red Bull
7. Toyota
8. Sauber

Let us hope Ferrari prove it wrong in Melbourne by completing the well-known phrase or saying of which our title is the first half - usually attributed to three times World Champion (and Australian) Sir Jack Brabham. If they don't, roll on the F2005!

Forza Ferrari!

This column is dedicated to the memory of racing enthusiast and fellow
website GP scribbler, Frank Bott, who passed away recently
and whose articles I greatly enjoyed.

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