Hi folks...
Welcome to the second part of my preview for Australia. I've already talked about the top two so now let's look at the other teams.
BMW was third best in '07 and could quite possibly pull off a grand prix win this year, but it depends on whether it has gone in the right direction. The team is at the teetering point.
It could go and destroy the pace and progress or it could just go the right way and maybe improve it and be on the back of
Ferrari and
McLaren for podiums and also pick up a win.
In testing, however, it seems to have gone a little bit astray. It might be able to recover from that and get back on the pace, but we will have to wait on that.
It happens though. We saw that with
Honda a few seasons ago. The Brackley boys were under a lot of pressure to get results and, the following season, it got results and
Jenson Button won his first grand prix. Then, all of a sudden, it went into the year after and it all went pear-shaped. That can happen and it may well happen to
BMW.
Indeed, there seems to be a couple of teams, such as
Red Bull Racing, Toyota and
Williams, coming up and posting some good laps and they could knock BMW off its perch - assuming the test times are genuine. And testing is never a very reliable indicator.
For me, this is the first 'real' Adrian Newey-designed Red Bull car. He has had enough time and influence on the RB4 for him to be able to say what is out on the circuit is one of his and, given his pedigree, you would expect great things.
As we look at the moment, there does seem to be progress and the drivers seem pretty upbeat. Yeah, there are some aerodynamic differences in the look of the car, with that shark fin, and we see that happen now and again. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. I can reflect back on the 1995 McLaren looking slightly different when I was there and it handled slightly differently as well - because it didn't work!
Then there is
Toyota, which set the pace on the final day of winter testing at Barcelona.
Toyota is one of those teams where, every year, we go in and say it should be doing this and it should be doing that. It has got one of the biggest budgets and one of the biggest resources behind it being the number one or number two biggest car manufacturer in the world. Due to all that, everyone's expectations are that it should be able to go motor racing and be competitive, but we haven't really seen it yet.
