Moving his attentions forwards now, the single-seater turned sportscar star – who triumphed in the inaugural season of the Middle Eastern-based Speedcar Series last year up against such as fellow grand prix aces Jean Alesi and Heinz-Harald Frentzen – is not convinced that the raft of new regulations sweeping F1 in 2009 will improve the spectacle as they are intended to.

“Regarding the amount of downforce that they've lost through all the changes with the wings and everything, they will probably get most if not all of it back somehow,” he argued. “The engineers can always dig out something to get it back, so the racing itself probably won't change much.

“The slicks are the only thing that might make it better, but probably not – at the beginning maybe, but only because everybody might not be up-to-speed with it all. There will still be the same issues that we've had in recent years.

“Because they've changed the cars so much, sadly it's probably going to be the guys who are spending the most time in the wind tunnel [who benefit most], which does cost money. It will always be the big teams, for sure, but then again, there aren't many small teams left in Formula 1 now. They're all big; even Force India has gone from Jordan to Midland to Spyker to what they have today, which is a McLaren-powered car, so they're going to be competitive too.

“Then you've got Williams, Red Bull and Toro Rosso, who are the only ones left that are really privateer teams shall we say – everybody else is all manufacturer-backed. At the end of the day it will be the guys that adapt [that do best], and that's always the same year-on-year.

“McLaren and Ferrari at the moment are battling it out, but there is more chance for the others to maybe close the gap. Toyota and BMW and co will still be pushing very hard to make it happen from their point-of-view, but Mercedes and Ferrari aren't going to back off either. It will be as intense as it always is, and there is always a chance that someone might make a big leap forward. It's happened before, and there's no reason why it can't happen again. Who, though? I don't know…”

by Russell Atkins

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