Giancarlo Fisichella Adrian Sutil Lewis Hamilton Heikki

The Williams racing livery will be officially
unveiled at the Australian Grand Prix
Nico Rosberg
Jarno Trulli
Kazuki Nakajima
Timo Glock
Jenson Button Rubens Barrichello
What Frank Williams doesn’t know about Formula One
probably isn’t worth knowing. His team have won nine
constructors’ and seven drivers’ championships and when
they line up on the grid in Australia they will be starting their
30th season and 500th grand prix. I think Williams have
suffered in recent years from the surge in manufacturer teams
such as BMW, Renault, Honda and Toyota. I hope that Frank
does not sell to a faceless brand because F1 needs Williams.
This season the car has been looking good throughout testing
and both their drivers are extremely competent behind the
wheel. I reckon business might be about to pick up.
2008 chances:
Competitive enough to challenge BMW
Toyota certainly have the passion to win and their pockets are
so deep money is not a problem, so why do they consistently
under-achieve season after season? Their best result to date is
third place in the 2006 Australian Grand Prix, and that is
unlikely to put smiles on the faces of the men in suits back in
Japan. Trulli is okay as drivers go, but he has this amazing
ability to qualify well only to promptly fall away once the race
starts and struggle to stay in the top ten. Glock is the current
GP2 champion who, thanks to some disqualifications, scored
two points in his first-ever F1 Grand Prix back in 2004. It remains
to be seen whether the 2008 car is any better than last year.
2008 chances:
Double-figure points if they’re very lucky
Very interesting days lie ahead for Honda. Securing the services
of the mighty Ross Brawn is a huge coup for the team. Brawn’s
technical and strategical genius is unparalleled and his move
to Honda after a year off must have turned more than a few
heads in the paddock. No, we can’t expect miracles from the
man this season but the coming months will certainly give him
the information he needs to build a championship-winning
team as he did with Ferrari ten years ago. However, a good
team needs good drivers and I don’t think Honda have that
yet. Barrichello has had his day and Button has never lived up
to the hype. Can you feel the wind of change?
2008 chances:
A scattering of points, nothing more
David Coulthard
Mark Webber
Sebastian Vettel Sébastien Bourdais
Takuma Sato
Anthony Davidson
The team formerly known as Spyker, formerly known as
Midland, formerly known as Jordan. Their current owner is
an Indian billionaire who is CEO of a brewery and an airline,
making him the perfect F1 team owner! Money, alas, does not
bring rewards in this game as many people have found out.
Sure he’s got a car, a couple of journeyman drivers and
probably a very capable group of mechanics but you need so
much more in Formula One. Performance during a season is
only the start and we’ll have to see whether Force India are
accepted into the paddock and whether they have the
staying power of the likes of Williams, Ferrari and McLaren.
Giancarlo Fisichella
Adrian Sutil
2008 chances:
Finishing races, scoring points is unlikely
All in all 2007 was a bit of a scrappy year, with Webber and
Coulthard finishing in the points only seven times between
them. The team’s best result was third for Webber at the
European Grand Prix, where Coulthard was fifth. I was hoping
for a really special Adrian Newey-designed car last season but
for whatever reason it didn’t perform as well as many had
expected. Red Bull certainly are a solid midfield team but now
is the time to push themselves and begin to climb the success
ladder. Coulthard doesn’t have many seasons left and if he
was going to be champion it would have happened already.
Give Webber a good team-mate and fame and fortune beckon.
2008 chances:
Same as last year. Maybe better, maybe not
Selling Minardi was the best thing Paul Stoddart ever did, and
even though Toro Rosso is viewed as Red Bull’s training camp it
is still very much a team in its own merit. (Did you think they
would finish ahead of Honda last season?) This year sees them
powered by Ferrari engines once again and they also have the
benefit of sharing certain technical resources with Red Bull.
Last year was a rather lacklustre one for the team, highlighted
only by them claiming fourth and sixth places at the Chinese
Grand Prix. However, Vettel is no slouch and Bourdais has
raced in IndyCars, at Le Mans and has held the US Champ Car
title since 2004. Now it’s time to play with the big boys.
2008 chances:
Looking to be the best of the back-markers
The F1 minnows achieved their first-ever points haul last
season with eighth place at the Spanish Grand Prix and sixth
place in Canada. Other than that, their best finish was 12th.
This season hasn’t started so well either, as they have done
minimal testing and are still struggling to finalise funding from
investors and other ‘technical arrangements’. I think it‘s highly
unlikely that Super Aguri will do any better this year although
stranger things have happened (remember Takuma Sato
overtaking Alonso’s McLaren last year?). The back end of the
grid is more crowded than ever and, come Australia, it will be
interesting to see which team rises to the occasion first.
2008 chances:
Points, if all the top teams crash out first
McLaren must bring the fight to Ferrari’s garage door this season.
They were stripped of all constructors points last year and as a
result have been relocated to the bottom garages of the pit-lane,
plus they have ceased technical development on certain
elements of their 2008 car. I think Hamilton and Kovalainen will
make a great pairing, and they should work alongside each
other in total harmony, just like we thought would happen last
season. But let’s be honest, what sort of world champion is it
that whinges and whines and then threatens his own team?
You can be sure that Prost, Senna, Schumacher, Stewart, Hunt,
Mansell, Lauda, Hakkinen et al would never have done that...
Lewis Hamilton
Heikki Kovalainen
2008 chances:
Title-fighting all the way to the finish line