As every F1 site and blog on the net are trumpeting, Honda F1 will now be known as Brawn GP, Button and Barrichello continue as drivers and the team will be in Melbourne for the opening race of the season. With so much info pouring out, I hardly need to comment and, besides, I am a contrary fellow and like to be different from everyone else. So I'm just going to offer the pic underneath for you to make up your own mind on the look of the Brawn BGP 001, as the car is known.
Brawn's challenger for 2009
Instead, I am going to focus on BMW and Nick Heidfeld - appropriately enough since they headed the times at Jerez yesterday. Testing times are even more unreliable than usual as an indicator of true form but BMW have been a bit lackluster in the tests until now - this is perhaps the first sign that their supporters have nothing to worry about.
The BMW Sauber site carries an interview with Nick Heidfeld today and he is quietly enthusiastic about both the tests and the car. The team and Nick are so well matched - restrained optimism and realistic goal-setting are typical of them both. So it is no surprise that Nick's thoughts are measured and careful.
Occasionally, however, he says something unusual for these driver interviews. He actually calls testing fun, for instance; you won't hear that from every driver on the grid!
Nick also gives us some insight into the feeling of KERS and the movable wing, including what it is like to be passed by someone else using the "go-faster" button:
"This is good fun as well. It's great when you press the Boost button on the steering wheel and feel the extra shove of 80 horsepower. In testing I also got my first experience of how it feels when another driver presses the button and you don't – you're just left standing."
It seems that KERS will be a useful thing to have, particularly in the early races when some of the teams will not have it. That will change as everyone gets their system up and running and it will become more a matter of answering the other guy's button with your own. Then will come the fears for safety as two cars approach a corner at, say, 150 mph and suddenly accelerate to 170. That might mess up the braking distance a little! But these are professionals in the end and I am sure they will cope with it. One just has to wonder if it is really achieving anything at all.
My point about the complication of controls added to the steering wheel is echoed by Nick's sideswipe at the standardized ECU:
"...I'd have to say that my steering wheel was clearer when we still had our own BMW electronics, before the introduction of the standard F1 electronics. Back then we had some clever sub-levels for various functions."
F1 steering wheels are complex enough without adding more buttons for KERS and the movable wing. Nick says that the drivers get used to them but there has to be a limit somewhere.
Finally, Nick surprises me on the subject of losing weight. His team mate, Robert Kubica, famously increased his competitiveness last year by losing a lot of weight during the off season, but Nick is one of the smallest and lightest drivers on the grid. The fact that he is not going to allow even such a tiny advantage to be given away and has lost two-and-a-half kilos is an illustration of just how fiercely determined Nick is to succeed. I am reinforced in my belief that the Heidfeld/Kubica battle is far from over.
Turning to the car, I have only one point to make. Keith Collantine of F1 Fanatic posted an article yesterday entitled 2009 F1 testing: 5th March (Update: pictures added) and he included a photo of the BMW F1.09 that struck me so forcibly that I have obtained permission to reproduce it in this post. Here it is:
Nick Heidfeld in the BMW Sauber F1.09
Remembering that this car was almost universally condemned as an ugly duckling when it first appeared, can you honestly look at this picture and deny that it is truly beautiful? The F1.09 looks so good at speed and from this angle that I must conclude that my conversion to the 2009 cars is complete - I think they look better than last year's cars and the Beemer is one of the best. Not pretty and racy like the Ferrari F60 or McLaren MP4-24 but seriously purposeful, chunky and almost brutally powerful; quite brawny, in fact. Nick sits in it like a component designed for it, urging it on to even greater speed.
Or maybe I'm just biased towards BMWs...