We don’t often see Lewis Hamilton well up with emotion, but it was more than understandable as he prepared to step out on to the podium in Shanghai. His victory in the Chinese Grand Prix will go down as one of his finest after a scintillating race that was packed with incident and excitement.

McLaren’s first win of the season, breaking Red Bull and Sebastian Vettel’s seemingly iron grip on the top spot, came through great strategy, wonderful driving – and heart-in-mouth work from the mechanics. A fuel leak as Hamilton prepared to leave his garage to take the start almost destroyed his day before it had really begun. Team principal Martin Whitmarsh reckoned Lewis only made it to the grid with about 10 seconds to spare as the mechanics raced to quell the leak. The boys at McLaren earned their win bonuses in those vital seconds and have every right to enjoy a few Tsingtaos before the flight home.

Dominant pole position man Vettel was on the back foot after bogging down at the start and although he recovered to lead this Grand Prix, his two-stop strategy fell four laps short of delivering him a hat trick of victories for the season.

Jenson Button, starting second, swept into Turn 1 in the lead from the lights, as Hamilton left Vettel scrabbling to hold on to third place from Nico Rosberg’s Mercedes. The two McLarens and the Red Bull ran in close formation until lap 14 when Button and Vettel both made their first stops. Button had already run a lap longer than he was supposed to and then made a glaring error as he tried to stop in Vettel’s pitbox! “I was looking down as I came into the pits,” explained the sheepish Englishman afterwards.

A bemused Vettel followed Button into his pitbox and emerged from the stops after only a slight delay, and in front of the McLaren. Hamilton pitted a lap later, but his hopes of jumping the pair were thwarted after a poor in-lap during which Felipe Massa’s Ferrari passed him.

At this stage, Mercedes had made the biggest gains after Rosberg and Michael Schumacher’s early stops on laps 12 and 10 respectively. Indeed, Rosberg found himself in the lead from Vettel, Button, Massa, Hamilton, Schumacher and a subdued Fernando Alonso.

Meanwhile, Mark Webber appeared to be making little progress from his lowly 18^th on the grid following his troubled practice and qualifying. He’d started the race on the hard prime tyres and only made up a couple of places before stopping for a set of softs on lap 10. It looked like being a long afternoon for the Australian at this stage, but his patience would be rewarded…

At the front, Button would be the first to stop for his second set of Pirellis, on lap 24 – a clear indication that McLaren had chosen a three-stop strategy. Rosberg stopped a lap later, so Vettel now led from Massa’s two-stopping Ferrari. Nico rejoined still ahead of Button and Hamilton, and at this stage it appeared the race might be slipping away from McLaren.

But not for long. Vettel would make his second and final stop on lap 31, leaving him a daunting 25 laps to nurse his tyres to the flag, and a few laps later Hamilton began to make his move. He closed in on Button and made a decisive move on his team-mate into Turn 1 at the start of lap 36. The battle of the two Englishman had been decided.

Lewis followed leader Rosberg into the pits three laps later, allowing Vettel and Massa back in front – and now the chase was on. By lap 42 Hamilton was monstering Rosberg, who offered little resistance at Turn 6 as the McLaren outbraked the Mercerdes. He despatched Massa at Turn 1 on lap 45 and now there were 10 laps for him to catch and pass the World Championship leader.

On tyres eight laps fresher, it was an uneven contest. Four laps from the finish Hamilton looked unstoppable and so it would prove. He jumped Vettel with another terrific move, this time at Turn 7 – pleasingly taking the lead without the need for his rear wing Drag Reduction System.

The race was won, but the action was far from over. Webber was finally feeling the benefit of those fresh soft ‘option’ tyres that his poor qualifying had saved him for the race. His pace towards the end of the Grand Prix, after an aggressive three-stop strategy, was astounding and he closed in on an incredible podium finish. Rosberg was picked off at Turn 6 two laps from the flag, then Button – who admitted he’d uncharacteristically struggled to look after his rear tyres – was powerless to stop Mark sweeping by on the long back straight. From his lowly grid spot, Webber was just seven seconds behind winner Hamilton. It was a performance that might just rejuvenate the Australian as he fights to get back on terms with his World Champion team-mate.

Rosberg scored a creditable fifth behind Button, the Mercedes ace producing the goods to beat Massa who looked much more like his old self for Ferrari in China. He beat Alonso to sixth, while Fernando worked hard to hold off a determined Schumacher. These old rivals had enjoyed a spirited battle earlier in the race, with Alonso pulling off a perfect ‘undercut’ pass on the drag out of the hairpin. That his DRS appeared to be malfunctioning during this battle gave a clue that his afternoon had not gone entirely according to plan.

Hamilton paid great tribute to the team he has criticised of late, while Vettel took defeat with a smile after a day when radio problems had made communication with his pitwall difficult. Once again the team struggled to make its KERS run reliably and the pressure is back on Red Bull and Adrian Newey to solve the problems before the Turkish Grand Prix.

As modern Formula 1 races go, this was one of the best. Yes, DRS is a gimmick, Pirelli has been asked to provide ‘flawed’ tyres and a question mark remains over the benefits offered by KERS. But right now, the combination is creating races full of variables and plenty of passing moves that could never be described as easy. Artificial racing? Maybe. But you can’t deny it’s exciting.

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Adrian Newey isn’t a fan of KERS, but why he would be? Yes, it provides an 80-horsepower boost for a few seconds a lap, but a genius like Adrian has subtler ways of going faster than employing a ‘push to pass’ button, and that’s what it amounts to. At a time when FIA president Max Mosley was insisting that Formula 1 needed drastically to cut its costs, so the governing body introduced KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System), the argument being that it was ‘green’ in concept and the beginning of a path down which F1 must proceed if it were to have any chance of long-term survival. And if it cost a massive amount of money to develop, well, too bad, start serving up cheaper Parmesan in the motorhomes…

For all its green credentials, KERS would never appeal to a man like Newey. For one thing, it is a component on an F1 car over which he has no control; for another, it necessarily screws up the purity of his designs. With or without KERS, the minimum weight limit of an F1 car is 640 kilos, so if you don’t run KERS – as with Red Bull at Melbourne – you run an equivalent weight of ballast, and that’s fine, because you can position ballast and use it to your car’s best advantage. Sebastian Vettel utterly dominated the Australian Grand Prix in a car of perfect balance – without KERS.

Melbourne, though, was a bit of a special case, for it lacks a straight of any consequence. Come Sepang, with two extremely long straights, and KERS simply had to come into the reckoning – even for Red Bull. Even though his team, concerned about a potential problem, requested that he not use it for a portion of the race, Vettel still won again. But Webber, whose system was inoperative from the start, was decidedly hampered. In the circumstances Mark’s fourth place was a great achievement, but on the long straights his lack of KERS invariably kept him from getting within the requisite one second of the car in front – which meant, of course, that he was unable to deploy his ‘moveable rear wing’, otherwise known as DRS (Drag Reduction System).

All initials and systems, contemporary F1, isn’t it? Fernando Alonso had the opposite problem: his KERS was working, but his DRS wasn’t…

Over time all manner of things have been considered to improve the quality of the racing – or, at least, to permit changes in the order. That’s why refuelling was originally brought back, for example, and why, at different times, there has been talk of weight penalties for successful cars (as in the Trophee Andros ice racing series), and more recently proposals of rallycross-style ‘short cuts’ on the circuits – and even sprinkler systems to create ‘rain’.

All these ideas have been a tacit acknowledgement of F1’s ‘lack of overtaking’ problem, and I confess that whenever anything like this comes up I find myself thinking, ‘What would Ayrton or Gilles have made of this?’ Or, come to that, Jenks? And it doesn’t take me long to arrive at an answer.

I really wasn’t surprised that Niki Lauda contemptuously dismissed the ‘moveable rear wing’: “Completely crazy – now the FIA decides where you can overtake…”

Some suggest that these systems are no different from adjustable boost in the turbo era, whereby you could temporarily award yourself some extra horsepower (at the same time knowing that it was eating into your restricted fuel allowance for the race). But that argument is hardly valid – if a following driver whopped up his boost to pass you, there was nothing to stop you doing the same to defend your position.

All cars were operating to the same rules at all times in the race, that’s my point, and surely that is fundamental to anything calling itself ‘Grand Prix racing’. DRS strikes me as akin to investing in the best running shoes for all competitors – and then putting stones in some of them.

By common consent, wet races are invariably far more exciting – hence the ‘sprinkler’ idea – but why is that the case? It’s not rocket science; it’s because there is less grip. No, we can’t un-invent downforce, but surely we can come up with a set of aerodynamic rules that permit cars closely to follow each other through fast corners, perhaps generating downforce from shaped underbody, rather than relying absolutely on external appendage.

“Ah, here’s the purist – the keeper of the flame…” Max would murmur when I arrived at one of his functions, and I couldn’t – and can’t – take issue. I’ve loved Grand Prix racing all my life, and I’ve never cared to see artifices introduced to turn the sport into ‘The Show’, particularly systems – like KERS and DRS – which involve no element of driving skill. Of course I want to see better racing as much as anyone – but it has to be real. Remember the Hanford Wing, which undoubtedly increased the amount of overtaking in CART events on superspeedways, but rendered the races farcical? ‘I pass you here each lap, and you pass me there…’

F1 has surely become way too convoluted and complicated. Some years ago I asked Patrick Head what he would do to improve F1. “Oh, ban wings,” he said immediately, somewhat to my surprise. Then he laughed. “But that would never happen – think of all that lost advertising space…”

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There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Really? Like many correspondents I have, over the decades, enjoyed a fair few free lunches. Only last month I dined at Williams in Grove, the food prepared by two-star Michelin chef Michael Caines. Very Formula 1. There, now you know, this is the world in which I am privileged to live.

The word ‘free’ is, however, easily misunderstood. As you will know to your cost if you’ve been seduced by those dishonest bits of junk that come through the letter box.

Why am I going through this preamble? Because I am concerned about both KERS (kinetic energy recovery system) and DRS (downforce reduction system) in Grand Prix racing. These two devices, or systems, are seen by many as some kind of key to a puzzle – the magical answer to a lack of overtaking. But they are not and never have been the gift of free power, or the gift of a free passing manoeuvre.

Firstly, we cannot possibly judge the effectiveness, or otherwise, of these devices from what we saw in Melbourne. Nor will we be able to make a sensible judgement after Sepang. It will be mid-season before we can talk about how wonderful they are – or how they should be immediately banned. Or, more likely, how they have suddenly disappeared from the headlines.

KERS is painfully expensive. And DRS is horribly complicated, fraught with software glitches and electronic bugs that, for example, would not let Williams open the gap in the rear wings for some laps in Albert Park. Remember, the FIA is in charge of when they may be used, and Charlie Whiting makes the call, not the man in the cockpit. There are going to be toys hurled from prams before too long…

The expense of KERS is universally unpopular, up and down the pitlane, whether you’re Red Bull or Virgin. Some have designed and built their own systems rather than buy one in ready-made. This saves money but, for many teams, has disrupted pre-season testing and therefore reliability. So much time was spent on making KERS work that other areas like durability, efficiency and outright performance were compromised.

Red Bull didn’t use KERS at Albert Park, at least not in any meaningful way. That team, too, has had problems with the device and only got away without using it because the rest of the car is so incredibly good. The installation of this system is not only complex but also involves just about the whole of the rest of the design – because the weight has to be accounted for, and space made for battery packs. And, as we know, weight distribution is God.

Don’t be too surprised if, mid-season, KERS is the subject of robust debate. The teams don’t like it, the costs are hideous and the benefit remains open to question. As for DRS, we wait to see how it works on a circuit with a very long straight and a sharp corner at the end – like Malaysia. But the truth is that neither of these devices will solve the problem of overtaking. Only major changes to the rules governing aerodynamics – and a return to circuits designed for actual racing – will achieve an increase in overtaking.

I am simply concerned that Grand Prix racing has gone one step further into a technological labyrinth, and it should back out again before it gets completely mired in gizmos and post-race arguments. The vast majority of spectators are not bothered about when the KERS battery is charging, or when the rear wing is open or closed. They are there, and in their millions in front of the TV, to be entertained by Grand Prix racing that is worthy of its name, that justifies it being the pinnacle of motor racing.

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“That was really controlled,” said Sebastian Vettel over the radio at the end of the Australian Grand Prix. “Thank you very much, very cool.”

His race was indeed ‘very cool’ as having blown everyone away in qualifying – his team-mate Mark Webber included – the German took the lead off the line and only gave it up to Lewis Hamilton during his two pitstops. He drove a faultless race and even though the Red Bull wasn’t equipped with KERS, something that Christian Horner only admitted to after the race, it was clearly the fastest car out there. A worrying state of affairs for all the other teams.

Hamilton had a less ‘controlled’ race as although he managed to keep second place after getting too much wheelspin off the line and momentarily letting Webber through, the underfloor of his car came away later on in the race. Despite the lack of downforce he kept his track position and will be hoping that the car passes scrutineering. Something that team principal Martin Whitmarsh was confident of after the race, but not something that is a dead certain.

Big news came in the shape of Russian Vitaly Petrov though as having got a superb start from sixth on the grid he finally finished third. He didn’t put a foot wrong and proved that he’s not just racing because of the financial benefits to his team. A great result and a fitting tribute to the missing Kubica.

Nick Heidfeld’s race in the other Renault was sadly not as successful. After a poor qualifying left him all the way down in 18th on the grid, the replacement for Kubica had his work cut out. However, although he did finally finish 14th, his pace was nowhere near his team-mate’s. The fact that he was drafted in as a ‘safe pair of hands with plenty of experience’ is all very well – and I doubt he will finish where he did in the next race – but when you’re standing in for Kubica results will be expected. Watch this space.

Other big news was Sergio Perez. The Sauber driver had an absolutely fantastic race and – having pitted only once for new tyres – finished seventh behind Button (6th), Webber (5th) and Alonso (4th). Quite how the Sauber could be so gentle on its tyres is amazing and certainly bodes well for the rest of the season, especially when we go to tracks that are harder on the Pirellis. It was a great way to start a Formula 1 career and hopefully the confidence will be flowing after such a strong start.

So what of all the new rules and regulations? As I mentioned, Red Bull didn’t even run their KERS during Saturday and Sunday having evaluated it on Friday and deciding that it was too big a risk to run. The Red Bull of Vettel was comfortably the fastest car out there, which does tend to suggest that the KERS still needs work. I just wish the rules gave teams that used the technology a bigger advantage. 80bhp may seem like a lot of power – it is more power than some small hatchbacks – but surely with a boost of 150bhp the teams would put more effort into the device and the technology would be advanced that much faster? The rules are set though, and it’s 80bhp that the drivers can lay their hands on when they press the button.

The adjustable rear wing didn’t produce as much overtaking as everyone expected. However, it did solve the problem of being stuck in a slower car’s dirty air to some extent. Yes, the pit straight was not a long enough straight on which to operate it and the effect wasn’t as large as it perhaps could have been, but it did help faster cars close the gap and overtake either into turn 1 or later on in the lap.

One of the best examples was when Felipe Massa was following Sebastien Buemi later on in the race and although he was within one second of the Toro Rosso driver – who was sitting in a car with the same engine as his own – for a couple of laps, it took him two attempts to get past, even with the ability to open the flap on the rear wing on the pit straight. Was it too hard? Too easy? Time will tell. A gimmick? That it is, but as someone pointed out, during the turbo era drivers could turn up their boost to overtake someone which would have had a similar effect.

Finally the tyres. Pirelli have made some big improvements since testing and the four or five-stop race was a pessimistic exaggeration. In the end the most number of stops cars really needed were three, while all the front runners opted for two – bar Perez of course who managed to use only two sets all race. “We have to make some compliments to Pirelli,” said Vettel after the race. Of course, having just won the Grand Prix he wasn’t going to be rude about them.

Albert Park is a different circuit to most though so we’ll have to wait and see how things pan out when we get to Malaysia in two weeks and even China in three. In the meantime – congratulations to a dominant Vettel, a McLaren team that has managed to find a second between testing and the first race, and of course to Petrov and Perez who showed that Formula 1 isn’t all about experience. Just ask Barrichello who had the weekend from hell, spending more time off the track than on…

The two Saubers of Kamui Kobayashi and Sergio Perez have since been disqualified for a rear wing infringement. The team has made it clear that they wish to appeal the decision after investigating matters at its factory. Meanwhile, Hamilton’s floor was deemed legal by the scrutineers and his second place remains.

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Testing, testing, one-two-three. We are now in the midst of the fourth and final pre-season Formula 1 test at the Catalunya circuit in southern Spain, where it has been unusually grey and chilly. This is the test that should have been in hot and dusty Bahrain…

Pre-season testing can, as we have so often seen over the years, be not only inconclusive but also misleading. This is because there is always a certain amount of smoke and mirrors, some deliberate sandbagging and insufficient accurate information forthcoming on fuel loads and set-ups.

And this year, we should remember, we are dealing with totally new tyre compounds from Pirelli, which has not yet got a race under its belt in any kind of climate. Rubber is likely to be a major factor in early 2011.

Popular opinion – and many engineers agree – is that we are going to see a lot more tyre degradation in the early races than we have previously been used to. Three pitstops are predicted, some saying more, especially if the weather is hot, the surface abrasive. Added to this unknown we have KERS, moveable rear wings and new cars to consider.

Logic says that Red Bull will the early pacesetters, and so it proved on Tuesday in Spain, with Mark Webber (above) top of the timesheets from Jenson Button – by some margin. This does not mean Red Bull is going to disappear into the distance at Melbourne on March 27, but simply that on March 8 the new Red Bull was more sorted than the new McLaren. And that’s no surprise at this stage. In an era when aerodynamics is key, you can expect an Adrian Newey-designed car to be at or near the top of the times.

What will be in many ways more interesting to see is how the two most radical cars shape up against the rest. These are the Williams (below), with its radical rear end and new transmission, and the Lotus-Renault, with its forward-facing exhaust system. If either of these two risky design ideas prove to be the way to go, then the others will have to follow suit, just as we saw two years ago with the Brawn’s double diffuser, when Button’s pre-season testing pace had alarm bells ringing right down the pitlane.

This year we have seen no such clear advantage, although Red Bull is predictably fast. Not far behind is Ferrari, smarting from its title defeat in Abu Dhabi. All Grand Prix teams of any stature play their cards close to their chests, saving their best until the first afternoon of qualifying. And, just to complicate matters, testing is not what it used to be.

In days gone by there was virtually unlimited mileage, the teams under no pressure to get it all sorted in just four short sessions in February and March. And there’s another difference. Test drivers, or reserve drivers as they are now known, have to get some mileage now or never, whereas before they could do their testing while the teams were away racing. And this means – as we have seen in Spain – lots of new, young drivers being given time in the cars when, in a perfect world, they’d be waiting until the race drivers went away to race.

So, we should not be surprised if Red Bull, Ferrari – and possibly McLaren – are at the front of the grid in Melbourne. Button (above) says we should not expect too much, that the car is not the equal of Red Bull or Ferrari, and they don’t have time to catch up before the end of the month. Bad news for McLaren fans.

Oh yes, and we also know that Mercedes-Benz has a great deal of work to do if Schumacher and Rosberg are to be anywhere near the podium. Unless, of course, Mr Brawn has been keeping something up his sleeve…

So end the ifs, buts and maybes. Soon it will be time to race…

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“Nice wheels” and “Vodafone is painted on nice this year”. That was the level of insight offered by Lewis Hamilton at the ‘reveal’ of his new McLaren-Mercedes MP4-26 in a Berlin shopping centre on Friday.

Extravagant Formula 1 launches are generally a thing of the past, but Vodafone Germany wanted to make a show this year and while most teams have limited themselves to test day roll-outs, McLaren flew the media masses to the German capital to unveil its latest silver machine.

But as launches go, this one suffered a bit of a misfire. As we waited on our ‘media platform’ in the cold, a film began to play silently on the big screen. It took a while for some to even notice this launch had started.

The film showed members of the public carrying bits of bodywork through the streets of Berlin, on the tube and up escalators. Then, in front of us a team of McLaren mechanics wheeled the incomplete racing car into the shopping centre and began to piece together MP4-26 before a murmuring audience. The ‘civilians’ who’d been seen carrying the bodywork pieces on the big screen entered the arena and handed the parts over to the mechanics to fit to the car. Finally, Hamilton and Jenson Button walked in to look over the car – for the first time as a complete entity, according to Lewis – and participate in a Q&A session with the German host. The effect was… underwhelming.

In the press conference (thankfully back in the warm), Martin Whitmarsh and McLaren’s three senior engineers, Paddy Lowe, Jonathan Neale and Tim Goss, offered a little more substance on 2011 and their new challenger.

The overriding conversation point was the introduction of the adaptable rear wing for this year, which will allow drivers to ‘trim out’ levels of rear downforce and decrease drag in FIA-designated parts of the track when they are within a second of a rival – thus increasing the chances of overtaking.

It seems incredible to be writing this, but people are talking about overtaking being too easy in F1 this year, thanks to this new regulation. The effect is said to be about 10 times more than we saw with the (now-banned) F-duct last year. Overtaking, so it is said, will become common and therefore meaningless.

Team principal Whitmarsh had an answer to the doubters (of which I am one – I think it’s a gimmick). “What’s important to remember is that there was a comprehensive survey of fans and one of the overriding issues it raised was that there wasn’t enough overtaking opportunities. Now some of us deeply involved in the sport might not believe or accept that, but you don’t go to the detail of asking everyone what they want and then when primary point comes out, not do anything about it. There was a responsibility placed upon us to do something.

“We’ll all have opinions about it throughout the year. But if you’ve got it, you can tune it. The extent and manner of how you deploy it, and when, that’s an easy thing now for us to tune.”

The drivers are reserving judgement until they have real experience of the new regulations, but Jenson did suggest that the satisfaction of a perfectly-timed overtaking move might change this year. We will see.

Meanwhile, they are unconcerned about the complications of having extra buttons to press this year, thanks to the adaptable rear wing and the re-introduction of KERS. Lewis reckoned it was “quite easy” to manage. Again, only time will tell.

As for the MP4-26 itself, its most noticeable feature is the heavily sculpted sidepods that waste away dramatically at the rear, in the quest for improved airflow to the rear end. As usual, the car that was revealed only gives a clue to the real specification that we will see hit the track next week at Jerez. The car will no doubt change again by the time we reach Bahrain for the first race.

At the launch, the exhausts – which no longer have a double diffuser to blow through this year – exited straight out the back. Tim Goss confirmed that it’ll be a major area of development this year.

The next few weeks will be intense for the F1 teams. With so much change and so much that is new, drawing an accurate picture from testing will be even more difficult than usual. We eagerly await the Bahrain GP for some real answers to the big questions of F1 2011.

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Time flies. Like many other clichés, this is undeniably true. And, believe me, the older you get the faster time flies by.

If you follow a sport your year is pretty much defined by the season, or calendar, and this seems to make the passage of time faster still. No sooner have you seen a person or team crowned champion than it all starts again.

It feels like only last week that the Formula 1 cars crossed the line in Abu Dhabi at the close of another season of Grand Prix racing. And yet, suddenly, it is launch time. Not in the Cape Canaveral sense of the word, but with stages shrouded in dry ice, covers drawn back dramatically and newly-groomed drivers blinking in the bright lights.

By the time we get to Valencia on February 1 we will already be familiar with the shape of the 2011 contenders. Gone are double diffusers, F-Ducts and Bridgestone tyres. New for this year will be the return of KERS, moveable rear wings and Pirelli tyres. But the cars will look pretty much the same as last year to the casual observer, and that’s why launches are not as dramatic as they used to be when the regulations were less prescriptive and designers had greater freedom to express themselves. As things are, the casual observer may find it hard to tell a Mercedes from a McLaren.

Speaking of these two contenders, we see two very different strategies ahead of the first Grand Prix in Bahrain on March 13. Mercedes will unveil its new MGP-W02 in the pitlane on the first morning of the three-day test in Valencia on February 1. Will this be the car that Michael Schumacher needs to prove he still has the old magic? Who knows? McLaren-Mercedes, meanwhile, will not launch its new MP4-26 until after the Valencia test on February 4. This, the team says, is because they will gather data from the new Pirellis before revealing what they consider to be the perfect solution to the media and, more importantly, their rivals.

Six days later, on February 10, the teams will transfer to Jerez for a four-day test before making the trek to Bahrain. Every team will have its own strategy, its own programme of development over the next seven weeks. But you can be sure that the 2011 Red Bull will be one of the last to show its face. Adrian Newey has always preferred to spend as much time as possible in research before committing his thoughts to carbon fibre. To match, or exceed, last year’s results will be a huge challenge. Especially as its rivals have had all winter to study where it was that the RB6 found a second a lap on them.

How much we will learn from Valencia and Jerez is debatable. Claims and counter-claims will be made, we may not be privy to fuel weights on every run, and a Brawn-type advantage, such as we saw in 2009, is a rare occurrence. There is, however, every reason to believe that we are in for another thrilling year and Ferrari, still smarting from the confusion of last November, will be throwing everything it has at the 2011 title.

Off-season? What off-season? Time flies.

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Some of you may remember that a couple of weeks ago my esteemed colleague Rob Widdows, wrote a blog about his predictions for the 2009 Grand prix season.

Well, I decided that it’s all very well making predictions but what are the odds of any of these happening? I annoyingly agree with almost every point Rob made, but others have different views and I decided that the only way to sort it – apart from waiting for a year – was to find out the odds of everything happening.

So here you go, Rob did say that he wasn’t taking any bets but Blue Square are apparently…

Robert Kubica to win the 2009 Drivers’ Championship: 6/1

McLaren to win the 2009 Constructors’ Championship: 15/8

The BMW F1.09 will win in Melbourne: 3/1

Giancarlo Fisichella will retire at the end of 2009: 10/3

Jarno Truilli will retire at the end of 2009: 7/2

Kimi Raikkonen will retire at the end of 2009: 11/4

Toyota will stop participating in Formula 1 at the end of 2009: 10/3

KERS will be stopped at the end of the season: 5/1

Williams will score over 50 points in the season: 2/3

Fernando Alonso will move to Ferrari in 2010: 11/4

Sir Fred Goodwin will be the next FIA president: 12/1

And a couple of others that I couldn’t resist while I was there…

Sebastien Loeb will win every rally this season: 7/1

Valentino Rossi to win the 2009 Championship: evens

James Toseland to win the 2009 Championship: 80/1

One of the most surprising ones? Loeb winning every rally this season at only 7/1. It appears that we aren’t the only ones that think the Frenchman is nigh on invincible.

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It is truly remarkable just how many people love to watch motor racing. Almost everyone I meet knows something about the forthcoming Grand Prix season. Many have plans to go to at least one race. Many have their favourite drivers.

They all have opinions, both negative and positive, about the sport. I was queuing in a shop the other day when a man started telling me how wonderful Lewis Hamilton is. Then I was standing at a bar, having a quiet glass of wine, when a woman asked me who would win the championship this year?

I have no idea. Have you?

Lots of people ask me how Mr Ecclestone has managed to hold on to so much power. They all like to offer a wager on what will happen in 2009.

So, if we haven’t met, here are a few thoughts on the year ahead:

1.    The BMW F1.09 will be very fast in Melbourne.
2.    Robert Kubica will be in the hunt for the championship.
3.    Giancarlo Fisichella will retire.
4.    So will Jarno Trulli.
5.    And Kimi Räikkonen.
6.    Toyota will not continue into 2010.
7.    KERS will be very troublesome, and controversial.
8.    McLaren will win the constructors’ title.
9.    Williams will be revitalised and score points.
10.    Fernando Alonso will move to Ferrari in 2010.
11.    Sir Fred Goodwin will join the FIA.
12.    Rear tyre wear will be a headache.

I’m not taking any bets but some of these will come to pass.

More interestingly, David Coulthard will be the star of the new BBC TV coverage. This will reinvigorate Martin Brundle and the coverage will be warmly received.

Plans for a Grand Prix in London will be announced. Boris Johnson will support the plan and Donington will be put on hold

Aston Martin will not win Le Mans but the team will bring the race back into the headlines. The cars will look wonderful, sound terrific.

Meanwhile I have been talking to Bob Dance, chief mechanic at Team Lotus during the golden years of Colin Chapman’s innovative team. The old mechanics are simply the most colourful, entertaining and honest people you’ll ever meet in this sport. Bob has so many great stories from the Grands Prix of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s that he could fill the fattest possible book. He was a big fan of Mario Andretti, another huge character from the days when etc, etc. Mechanics tell good stories so keep an eye open for Mr Dance’s recollections of a wild night out with the 1978 World Champion in the magazine soon.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

BMW Magazine is a smart, beautifully designed and intelligent publication that comes through your letterbox if you own one of the cars from Munich.

I do not own a BMW but I have been reading the latest edition of the magazine. A friend of mine, soon to take early retirement from a blue chip British company, may forsake Waitrose for Tesco but he’s hanging on to his BMW.

The reason I mention this is because there is a most enlightening article about the new KERS contraption that will be seen on some of the Grand Prix cars when they appear in Melbourne in March. We know that BMW is well advanced in this respect, having already developed a brake energy recovery system for its M3 models. Conversely we know that the new Ferrari F60, launched today at Mugello, is using a Magneti-Marelli system that is rumoured to be far from fully ready to race. There won’t be much rest at Maranello during the next couple of months as Ferrari, like many other teams, strives to get on top of the new technology.

At BMW’s Research & Innovation Centre in Munich, meanwhile, there is cautious optimism despite this being relatively unfamiliar territory for the engineers, none of whom have a great deal of previous experience with KERS. Mario Theissen, who leads the BMW-Sauber team, has made it clear that the new system will only be run on the F1.09 when it has “fully matured”.

I may well be wrong but I sense there will be wranglings and gnashing of teeth in Melbourne. The FIA is said to be keeping a close eye on its latest wheeze to make F1 racing greener and more relevant to the high-performance cars of the future. Brake energy recovery may not be the re-invention of the wheel but it is certainly a headache for motor racing teams who require reliability with outright speed.

Encouragingly, the driver will have to use his brainpower, as he must decide when to use the extra energy stored up by the recovery system. Boy, how this would fall into the hands of men like Prost and Lauda. But who will make the best of it as we go into the new season? Nobody has the answer to that but an outside bet on Alonso in the Renault, or Kubica in the BMW, might be worth considering.

If you own a BMW you will have read about this intriguing new development. If you don’t, then it’s still well worth keeping abreast of how this technology works and how it may help, or hinder, the teams as they approach the first race. We may fleetingly return to the good old days with a fair few mechanical retirements. Remember all those cars parked at the side of the track? Certainly the cars are going to look a little fatter and wider to make room for all the gubbins that goes with recovering energy.

The days of Cosworths and Hewlands seem an awfully long time ago, don’t they? Nice memories on a wet, windy January day. But we have to keep up and, as the Dinky Toys advert used to say, there’s “always something new” to play with.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

In Indianapolis last week Tony George (above) and the IRL announced they are convening an industry roundtable to determine the new IndyCar formula for 2011. The roundtable will be headed by retired Ford racing executive Neil Ressler and will kick-off on June 24 with discussions with engine manufacturers, car builders and other members of the racing industry. The aim is to form a consensus among the key potential stakeholders in the IndyCar series on what the new formula should be.

One of the few prominent people in the IndyCar series who has a clear vision of the new formula is Bobby Rahal. A three-time CART champion driver and successful IRL team owner, Rahal’s business empire includes fourteen automobile dealerships in Pennsylvania. Rahal is adamant that the new formula must begin to embrace the wholesale move across the automotive industry to build more fuel-efficient cars.

“I think first and foremost, whatever formula that is adopted, it should have relevance to the retail automotive environment,” Rahal (above) says. “I think the formula must have relevance to where the automotive industry is going in the future with regards to power plants.”

Rahal believes a type of cellulosic ethanol should be selected as the fuel for the 2011 IndyCar formula. He also thinks kinetic energy recovery systems (KERS) or any kind of hybrids should be looked at for adoption by the IRL in 2014, or thereabouts, but no earlier. He’s convinced that it would be far too costly to introduce that kind of technology to IndyCar racing at this stage of the game.

“Longer term, we probably should go to flywheels,” he remarked. “But that’s maybe five, six or seven years down the road. You’ve got to be realistic.”

Rahal sees a twin turbo, 2.0 or 2.2 litre V-6 engine as the ideal power plant for IndyCar racing.

“I think turbocharged, small capacity engines are the way to go because that’s the way the automotive market is going,” Bobby observes. “It’s already there, in fact, and with the turbocharger, especially if it’s a one-engine series, you can turn the boost up or down depending on the type of circuit and have varying levels of performance.

“With a turbo you don’t have to worry about the noise issue when you go to street circuits or places like Laguna Seca where increasingly, you have noise limits. Just about every road course in this day and age is facing noise limits and a turbo is the best way to address those.

“I’d make it a twin turbo rather than a single because it gives better response and better performance. And a V6 has fewer parts. We did a study some years ago at CART about the difference between a V6 and V8 in terms of parts, and it adds up. You’ve got a smaller crankshaft, two less connecting rods, and eight fewer valves. So it starts to add up.”

Rahal agrees with Mario Andretti and many others in the sport who believe the balance between downforce and horsepower must return to where it was some years ago with more power and less downforce.

“The power-to-downforce ratio needs to be the inverse of what it is today where you have too much downforce and not enough power,” Rahal. “The number one benefit of more power and less downforce is that it gives you separation so you don’t have people running around stacked on top of one another. And number two is that the good drivers will be able to show themselves.”

I have to say I agree with Bobby all the way down the line and I hope the IRL gives his ideas serious consideration.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine