Ask Jonathan Noble: February 18

Dear Darren,

Formula 1 is heading to its second consecutive season with big changes to the format of a race weekend - even if they will not quite be as radical as they were from 2002 compared to last year.

Dealing with them in the order with which they will appear over a race weekend, the first obvious change is the demise of Friday testing. The extra two hours handed to the smaller teams last year proved brilliant at mixing the order up - allowing Renault and Jaguar to get a head start on the opposition at many tracks.

Instead this year the bottom six teams will be allowed to run a third car on Fridays, although their test driver cannot be too experienced. Although this may not seem such as big an advantage as the full two hours of extra running, the switch to a one-engine per weekend format could make having a third car, capable of endless laps on the Friday for tyre evaluation, a big benefit to those teams fighting at the front. BAR particularly stand to benefit because it has Anthony Davidson on tap and its car appears a match for the front-runners.

Managing the single engine per weekend limit will probably favour the top teams, because they will have the means and ability to evaluate their engine performance better than some of the smaller outfits. Those manufacturers that had their 2004 engine running early - especially BMW - are likely to benefit most from the change on the rules because they are simply better prepared in terms of experience.

On Saturday the major difference will be qualifying, which although strictly one session is unofficially split up into two sessions, again with single-lap running. The first session, which runs in the order of the result of the previous race (for Australia 2004 it will be Japan 2003) will decide the running order for the second session. The second session, in which cars must run in their race trim and fuel loads like last year, takes place just two minutes after the first session ends.

Although there were fears that the new format would heavily penalise the smaller teams, because of the little preparation time between the two sessions, the reality is that it does not favour or penalise anyone in particular. Drivers and teams are unlikely to run ultra low fuel settings in the first part of qualifying because there is no real need - and the advantage of knowing how a car handles in race trim outweigh any benefit from running slightly later in a session.

For the races, launch control is now banned (added to the fact gearboxes now have to be operated by drivers). This instantly wipes away any advantage Renault had with its electronic systems and it will be fascinating to see how drivers cope with this change. Ferrari could suffer, because Michael Schumacher is a renowned poor starter.

In the race themselves, the raising of the pit-lane speed limit to 100kph increases the likelihood of three stop races. This could favour those teams that have had trouble looking after their tyres over long distances, most notably Jaguar last year, but it will still mean managing tyre performance over full race stints.

The final rule change is the revised bodywork regulations, with a two-plane rear wing and taller engine box. Designed to increase sponsorship space it has forced the teams to work hard to recover lost downforce - something that will no doubt help the bigger teams rather than the smaller ones.



Although most previous world championships have ultimately developed into a two way head-to-head, to pick out two individuals or two teams that are going to be at each other's throats this year is far too difficult at the moment.

That is not me washing my hands of the answer [Are you sure? - Ed] but simply because I think this season is going to be closer, more exciting and less predictable than even last season.

The current grid appears to be split up into two distinctive camps - the Big Five of Ferrari, Williams, McLaren, Renault and BAR - and then the other group of Jaguar, Toyota, Sauber, Jordan and Minardi. Picking who will head either is almost impossible judging by the way testing has gone and the amount of promise shown by different teams at different stages of winter development.

The fight between Michelin and Bridgestone will be key to this - and both tyre manufacturers are currently optimistic about what they have in place. Michelin has led the way in testing most of the winter but when Rubens Barrichello shattered the Mugello lap record by two seconds in the new F2004 the other week it set a few hearts fluttering down at Clermont-Ferrand.

In terms of team-mates, there is likely to be very little friction inside teams this year. For sure Juan Pablo Montoya and Ralf Schumacher will never get on as friends, but inside the team they work together as much as they can. What will be fascinating to see though is which one gets the upper hand this year judging by the way neither is under contract to the team next year. Montoya wants to join McLaren with the number one on his car, Schumacher wants to be champion because it will boost his wage demands.

Another team head-to-head I am looking forward to seeing is how Jarno Trulli deals with Fernando Alonso this year. I have a great deal of respect for Trulli - a driver whom I cannot believe has so much bad luck. He did fantastically well against his team-mate in qualifying last year but somehow got forgotten thanks to his misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time far too often.

I know Trulli has this label of being a 'good qualifier and a bad racer' but I think he has proved many times this is not the case. I still have a suspicion that he is so good at qualifying that his car is often in places on the grid that it does not deserve to be - and that leads to him slipping backwards on Sundays.

If Trulli can start the year with the kind of overall weekend performances than he ended 2003 then I think it could be a fascinating situation at Renault - especially if the team is as capable of fighting for race wins as pre-season testing is leading us to believe.



Dear Richard,

The winter world championship is by far the easiest motor racing series to win. With the ever increasing focus on Formula 1's winter testing series, it is inevitable that more and more fans, media and sponsors are focusing on the lap times - and that leads to temptation to take the fuel out (and perhaps a little more) in a bid to grab the headlines.

When Jenson Button set a new record time at Barcelona in the week before BAR's new car launch, and then bettered it with the BAR006 almost immediately, there were plenty of sceptics in the paddock who believed that the British ace had been running on vapours - and that the team may have even taken out some ballast for a bit of a speed boost.

In some senses such behaviour is fully understandable. Teams are fighting for sponsors and column inches and to set a lap time takes the heat off the team - irrespective of how quick the car is over the rest of the day. The fact that more teams don't just put a quick time in during an early test session with their new car baffles me, because it has to be easier than constantly being forced to justify why your team is slow because it has been working on reliability or race distance runs. A good lap is also a brilliant way of boosting team morale and giving mechanics and engineers a lift during the long, often monotonous, test days.

What a low fuel run does allow teams to do is see how aggressive they need to be with new tyres and in full qualifying trim. Such a behaviour is especially important for BAR this season after its switch from Bridgestone to Michelin. It needed to establish a baseline of performance for its old car and its new car - something that teams that are sticking with the same tyre manufacturer do not need as badly.

The real trick to understanding winter testing times is to take into account lap times over long distances. The recent analysis of long runs at Barcelona indicated that BAR's performance was certainly no flash in the pan - and that it appears to be well in contention with the top four teams.

A few years ago Prost Grand Prix, desperate for sponsorship, did most of its winter testing with low fuel runs - heightening expectations and building up interest in the outfit before the Australian Grand Prix. When its form subsequently dipped in the cold light of day it left a lot of people with a sour taste in their mouth. Let's hope those teams setting the times this winter have not gone down the same route.



Dear Fraser,

Barrichello's view about the Renault is one shared by quite a few people up and down the pit lane at the moment - and it is based on some pretty convincing evidence.

When Renault announced in the middle of last year that it was ditching its 106-degree wide-angled engine in favour of a 72-degree design that harked back to its Supertec days, there were plenty who believed the momentum would be taken out of the Enstone-based outfit's march to world championship glory. How could an engine philosophy born at the end of the 1990s take on the mighty 21st century efforts from BMW and Ferrari?

Well to say that the 2004 Renault engine is merely a reworked Supertec is to sell the team short. Although it is based on the 72-degree philosophy, the power-unit takes all the knowledge Renault gained from its title winning engines and marries it with everything they learned from its compact wide-angle engines. The result is a lighter and more powerful power-unit that its previous version - and one that the team believes will deliver it maximum reliability in a season when that requirement is a must.

There is far more to a modern F1 engine than merely the angle of the cylinder banks and, although the unit is taller than its predecessor, the knock-on affect raises the R24's centre of gravity just 10mm more than on the R23. The team is quite confident in its claims that engine wise it will be better off this year - even if ultimately it may choose to go down the 90-degree route.

The narrow angled engine has also allowed technical director Bob Bell and chief designer Mark Smith to maximum the aerodynamics around the back of the car. The rear-end of the R24 is beautiful when you look at it close up and it appears the car's aerodynamic performance is helping it to look after its tyres - something that may allow it to run softer tyres for longer than its many rivals. This could be the key to understanding why Renault's long-distance runs in testing have been so impressive.

Renault is my dark horse for a big surprise this season. The team has not chased the quick laps times like BAR and both drivers and team management are playing down expectations for the world title. This is keeping the pressure off the team and allowing it to prepare quietly and in its own way for the season. Expect to see a fair few Renault wins this year.