MOTOR SPORT: It's Formula One season again. Justin Hynes looks at how the 2006 season is likely to shape up.
It's a strange, twilight world this. Bahrain, a dusty island outpost of the Gulf states, more used to day-trippers from Saudi Arabia than hardened motor racing fans, is a place in love with an idea, the idea of a future where a cutting-edge technological wonderland fuses with a tourist paradise carved from the sandblasted landscape. Its envious eyes look towards the glittering towers and pools of Dubai, and Bahrain imagines itself in that image.
And the shortest, sharpest route to techno-utopia is Formula One, an instant injection of top fuel glamour and speed, a quick and dirty route to high stakes paradise. And Formula One needs Bahrain's neediness. These venues, tucked away in an ambitious, questing corner of the world are the future of a sport which has had its lifeblood squeezed dry in its European heartland.
That Bahrain is the hot, dusty venue for the opening race of this season is strangely apposite, with the emphasis on strange. Formula One is used to pitching its tents for the first show of the year in the sunshine city of Melbourne, feted, fanfared and treated like royalty. The scales haven't fallen from Bahraini eyes yet but the empty spaces inside and outside the circuit testify to the oddness of transporting something so thoroughly Eurocentric to the Middle East.
But it's not an ordinary Formula One season beginning in the Gulf. Formula One arrives in 2006 as a sport in transition, welcoming the first of a reported long queue of small-holders and interested privateers into the realm where only billion-dollar manufacturers have dared tread for the past decade. It is a sport where the rules have been pitched to slash costs, to oust the plutocrats, to deliver more bang for the punter's buck. It is a sport contemplating a change of racing guard, preparing itself for the double whammy of Ferrari sliding from their lofty perch and of Michael Schumacher counting down the races to a final bow.
The baton has already been handed to Fernando Alonso, Renault's 24-year-old world champion, the youngest the sport has seen and a man with as keen an eye for the main sporting and financial chance as Schumacher ever had.
The Spaniard has already nailed his colours to the McLaren mast for 2007, a move which will bring in anything from $20 million to $37million a year depending on which web report you read. Those are Schumacher-like figures. His bailing out on Renault for last year's quickest, and, long term, most stable team is a move of Schumacher-like nous. But until then Alonso remains the pace at Renault. Schumacher is still counted among his rivals - only a fool would discount the seven-time champion - but there are other, greater threats on the horizon.
Kimi Raikkonen, whose 2005 challenge was ended by Alonso two races from the end of last season, remains the Spaniard's biggest concern. The Finn at McLaren began the preseason build-up in the worst possible fashion, clambering into a car that failed to solve last year's dreadful reliability issues and added engine fragility into the bargain. Arriving at the final preseason test in Barcelona a fortnight ago, the fragility miraculously disappeared, the Mercedes engine became ironclad and Raikkonen and quixotic team-mate Juan Pablo Montoya just as quickly became the major threat to Renault's dominance once more.
Some say the announcement of Alonso's move to McLaren will destabilise the Mercedes-powered team's drivers but in Raikkonen's case the opposite is just as likely to happen. The Finn, optioned last year by Ferrari, should Schumacher quit, could use a useful 2006 as a two-fingered salute to the team with whom he has always enjoyed a fractious relationship.
Montoya, by contrast, could fold unless the car is immediately competitive and offers him the kind of performance that saw him reel in Raikkonen last year in terms of race pace.
The other challenge will come from Honda. Having bought out BAR, the Japanese team have got a car rich in raw pace and, crucially, missing the kind of aerodynamic flaws that destroyed their season last time out. And their driver partnership has been bolstered with the ejection of the unpredictable Takuma Sato and the importation of ex-Michael Schumacher understudy Rubens Barrichello. The Brazilian comes with a wealth of experience, the ability to, on occasion, outshine Schumacher and the will to stamp his identity on a team that have in the past been built around the underachieving Jenson Button.
The Englishman is still seeking his maiden win, but rather than doing so at a team in thrall to his Pop Idol looks and marketing appeal he must fight for the respect of a team he attempted to ditch in favour of a return to Williams only to come crawling back, at a multi-million dollar cost to himself, when he decided Williams's loss of BMW power was a signal of a downturn in Frank Williams's fortunes. Button has had the edge in testing, occasionally, over the Renaults of Alonso and team-mate Giancarlo Fisichella, and the Honda pairing should prove a match for McLaren and a test for Renault.
And Ferrari? Schumacher is this season's outstanding drama. From 2000 to 2004 the German was F1's dreariest star, a victory-machine bent on single-handedly withering the sport on the rich vine grown in the late 1990s. But since his stranglehold on the championship was broken by Alonso, since he was forced to race, and race hard, for 10th position in a car ill-served by chassis and tyres, Schumacher has become glamorous once more.
He is the wearying prize fighter, climbing into the ring to rope-a-dope it against faster, more aggressive opponents. The mystique says he has a 15th-round comeback left in him. The pragmatists point to a slow Ferrari decline, to Schumacher's 37 years, to his will to win. The will is there. Schumacher returned to training earlier than ever this season, in an apparent bid to dismiss the demons of last season. But whether Ferrari can present him with the tools with which to demonstrate his sublime skills remains to be seen.
New Rules
Tyres
Out go the long-life tyres and back in with a bang comes tyre-changing during the race - which, if nothing else, will make pit stops seem a little more lively. Drivers can now use as many sets of tyres as they like, as long as they remain with seven sets per weekend. On the evidence of last year, the change will suit Bridgestone and disadvantage Michelin.
Engines
In a bid to reduce costs and slow the cars down, the old 3.0 litre V10s have been replaced with 2.4 litre V8s. That brings with it all sorts of reliability issues, from vibration to the simple fact of the teams having to start engine development from a new baseline. It seems they've got it right.
Recently in Barcelona, Honda's Jenson Button lapped in 1.13.955, just four-tenths off the best ever lap by a V10 there. This from a car down some 200bhp on last year's.
Qualifying
Once again, Formula One tinkers with the Saturday format. While last year's single-lap shoot-out had its merits - unpredictability, the likelihood of a spectacular error - it was generally regarded as a flawed attempt to address the problem of the old 12-lap system which saw the track empty for the first half-hour of the session.
So in a bid to mix it up and have cars fighting for position, in comes a complex hour, divided into three phases. Everybody must take to the track in the first 15 minutes. After that time, the slowest six are removed from the equation. The same will apply at the end of a second 15-minute session. The final 20-minute session will be a shoot-out, with the drivers able to lap as many times as they like, hopefully giving a similar feel to the old 12-lap system in which the last seconds of the session often determined the shape of the grid.
Red Bull
14 - David Coulthard (Bri)
Age - 34; GPs - 193; Wins - 13; Poles - 12
2005 - 24pts, 12th
15 - Christian Klien (Aut)
Age - 23; GPs - 31; Wins - 0. Poles - 0
2005 - 9pts, 15th (15 races)
Something of a surprise package last year, and not just in terms of in-your- face marketing ploys, the dial has been turned back with the RB2 bedevilled with cooling problems all winter.
Williams
9 - Mark Webber (Aus)
Age - 29; GPs - 68; Wins - 0; Poles - 0
2005 - 36pts, 10th
10 - Nico Rosberg (Ger)
Age - 20
GPs - 0
Williams have ditched manufacturer power (BMW) for the cosier - if less cutting edge - embrace of Cosworth and look happier for the deal, even though it means a slip from the sharp end of the grid. Their pace in testing has been considerably slower, relative to the front runners, than last year.
Renault
1 - Fernando Alonso (Esp)
Age - 24; GPs - 69; Wins - 8; Poles - 9; 2005 - 133pts, world champion
2 - Giancarlo Fisichella (Ita)
Age - 33; GPs - 159; Wins - 2; Poles - 2; 2005 - 58pts, 5th
Plus ca change.
Alonso might be in his valedictory year at Renault before his big money move to McLaren, but his commitment hasn't dipped and with the French squad providing a car with all the benefits of last year and more, expect the victories to flow.
Scuderia TR
20 - Vitantonio Liuzzi (Ita)
Age - 24; GPs - 4; Wins - 0; Poles - 0
2005 - 1pt, 24th (four races)
21 - Scott Speed (US)
Age - 23
GPs - 0
The second Red Bull squad are running Cosworth V10s limited to compete with the V8s of the rest and also have a chassis of questionable legality.
BMW Sauber
16 - Nick Heidfeld (Ger)
Age - 28; GPs - 97; Wins - 0; Poles - 1
2005 - 28pts, 11th
17 - Jacques Villeneuve (Can)
Age - 34; GPs - 151; Wins - 11; Poles - 13
2005 - 9pts, 14th
Competitive in testing the BMW looks good over long runs and should harvest a decent haul of points.
Villeneuve looks to have the legs on Heidfeld.
Midland F1
18 - Tiago Monteiro (Por)
Age - 29; GPs - 19; Wins - 0; Poles - 0
2005 - 7pts, 16th
19 - Christijan Albers (Ned)
Age - 26; GPs - 19; Wins - 0; Poles - 0
2005 - 4pts, 19th
The Midland F1 team have been reliable, but unspectacular in testing and their chief battles will be with STR and RBR. Both drivers are safe pairs of hands.
Honda
11 - Rubens Barrichello (Bra)
Age - 33; GPs - 215; Wins - 9; Poles - 13
2005 - 38pts, eighth
12 - Jenson Button (Bri)
Age - 26; GPs - 100; Wins - 0; Poles - 2
2005 - 37pts, ninth
A successful 2004 had pointed to big things for BAR-Honda last season, but the campaign was beset by fuel-related bans, aerodynamic deficiencies and technical glitches. This year looks much better.
Ferrari
5 - Michael Schumacher (Ger)
Age - 37; GPs - 231; Wins - 84; Poles - 64
2005 - 62pts, third
6 - Felipe Massa (Bra)
Age - 24; GPs - 52; Wins - 0; Poles - 0
2005 - 11pts, 13th
Perhaps this season's best story.
Can Schumacher beat an improved but apparently fragile car and advancing years to add to his awesome tally of victories?
Are Ferrari a spent force? And will Massa prove as reliable and benign a team-mate as Barrichello was.
McLaren
3 - Kimi Raikkonen (Fin)
Age - 26; GPs - 86; Wins - 9; Poles - 8
2005 - 112pts, second
4 - Juan Pablo Montoya (Col)
Age - 30; GPs - 84; Wins - 7; Poles - 13
2005 - 60pts, fourth
A topsy-turvy winter has seen McLaren announce the signing - for 2007 - of Alonso, thus destabilising their current drivers, steal Vodafone sponsorship from Ferrari - again for 2007 - and launch a car with even more reliability issues than last year's MP4-20. And the new MP4-21 has been slow.
Super Aguri
22 - Takuma Sato (Jpn)
Age - 29; GPs - 51; Wins - 0; Poles - 0
2005 - 1pt, 23rd
23 - Yuji Ide (Jpn)
Age: 30.
GPs - 0
The four-year-old Arrows chassis and Honda engine package have been six to seven seconds off the pace in testing.
Toyota
7 - Ralf Schumacher (Ger)
Age - 30; GPs - 145; Wins - 6; Poles - 6
2005 - 45pts, sixth
8 - Jarno Trulli (Ita)
Age - 31; GPs - 146; Wins - 1; Poles - 3
2005 - 43pts, seventh
Last year's big movers, Toyota look to have taken a step back, as they have struggled for pace in testing.
Recent aerodynamic modifications have helped, but they still have much ground to make up if they are to open the season in the style they did last season
