Okay, so I have a shiny new site with which to write my thoughts on F1 and I’m not sure where to start, so I guess I’ll start with some thoughts on the upcoming season (just over 4 days to go before the first wheel rolls in Albert Park).
Like everyone else I haven’t been this excited about a new season of F1 for as long as I can remember. I think that previous to this year I had been most excited was for the 2006 season, that was also the first season where I really started to pay attention to things during the off-season. That’s when I started read as much as I could — my first introduction to Autosport too, as my copy of F1 Racing would usually be read within days of it arriving.
Something I clearly remember about the build up to the 2006 season was a conversation I had with a friend of a friend in a bar about 2 weeks before the start. This guy was absolutely F1 nuts and we spent ages talking about it (I think I probably ignored most of the other people for most of the evening), we got started talking about Jenson Button as Honda had been showing some promising form in the tests and he told me that he had put some money on Jenson to win the championship. Neither of us really thought that he was going to win the championship, but that wasn’t the point.
That conversation introduced me to F1 betting, which I have been mildly successful with since then. I placed my bets for the 2009 championships the day after Honda announced their decision to withdraw from F1 in December, and while I had always had plans to put a stake on both Jenson and Honda being champions I was relieved I waited as I think I probably got better odds. Of course at this point none of the 2009 cars had rolled a wheel on the track, but I knew that Honda had diverted their attention to their 2009 car well before anyone else had and I assumed that the combination of that plus the first season of a Brawn-lead design would make it a very promising year for Honda. Because of this I also assumed that Honda would easily find a buyer for the team, like everyone else I don’t think I expected it to be as drawn-out as it was, and that it wouldn’t affect the team too badly in the short term. Looking at the testing pace this does appear to be true, but lets not forget their promising start to that 2006 season either, with good testing form and pole Australia. It was a break-through year, with Jenson posting his and the teams first win and finishing the season very strong, but not enough to make my new friends bet pay off. I think it’s probably a very rare occurrence (or maybe has never happened) where a team posts its first win in F1 and clinches the championship in the same year.
So do I seriously think that Jenson and Brawn GP have what it takes to win in 2009? Quite simply, yes. I would have said yes before the testing started and now I would be a bit of a fool not to think that they are real championship contenders. Obviously the testing times have to be taken along with the usual testing caveats, but the opinions I’ve read that say that Brawn could be simply show-boating (never mind the fact that their long-runs were super consistent and equally as fast as their short runs) to try and gain media and sponsor interest seems very wrong to me. I couldn’t imagine that Ross Brawn or the rest of the team would really be thinking that right now (unless as part of the buyout they kept that stupid marketing team that created the “My Earth Dreams” campaign), after spending so long on the car and with such little testing time available to them they must have had to really focus on getting useful data from the tests - so will have had no time to be playing games like sandbagging or show-boating.
So my money is firmly on Button and Brawn GP, and now the silly winner-takes-all points system has been put on hold for another year my enthusiasm for 2009 can hardly be contained. Roll on Friday morning (it’ll be an early one, but well worth it).