If one thing has been clearly demonstrated already this season, it's that Ferrari and McLaren no longer have exclusivity on the driving talent in Formula 1. We have seen that this current crop of aspiring World Champions is perhaps one of the best for some years. Give them the right set of wheels and they will seize the opportunity to show just what they can do. It's great for Formula 1. Predictability can drive supporters away in droves, as been shown on many occasions.
Look at Button. ! Two years of trundling around at the back of the grid and his reputation looked to be in tatters. Then along came Ross Brawn!Sebastian Vettel was surely too nice a kid to have that real mean streak that every top driver needs in order to impose himself on his rivals. Wrong! Adrian Newey to the rescue with a superbly designed new Red Bull.
Then there's another Sebastian, young Buemi (I'm still coming to terms with there being three of the Sebastian brand in F1). No-one gave him a chance when he appeared on the grid at the start of this season. An undistinguished spell in GP2 was surely not going to see him go far in the cut and thrust world of F1? Well we 'vet been proved wrong and he's up there with the best of them.
Whilst there are the stars of the show, more of them than we've been used to, there are also the flops. I doubt whether Nelson Piquet junior has been sleeping too well of late. He's go everything going for him to be a Grand Pri! x driver. A former World Champion father, good looks, huge fin! ancial r esources and a Renault F1 drive. It just goes to show, when you get to the very top flight of racing, the attributes that have seen you through the junior formulae may not be enough to hack it. I have never rated him very highly and I watched the facial expressions of his boss, Flavio Briatore, during the last race in China. They didn't show me that the boy is exactly flavour of the month at Renault and I think that we may see a change of driver in the very near future.
I worked with Giancarlo Fisichella at Benetton. Great driver, likeable person. Somehow it seems to me, however, that fatherhood has perhaps taken the edge off his driving. I hope I'm proved wrong, but the writing seems to be on the wall and I think that with so many classy GP2 drivers around, including Bruna Senna (what a pedigree he has!), Giancarlo's days may be numbered.
The furore over the diffusers is now in the past, seemingly, but on the 29th April McLaren have to face the music o! ver the Trulli overtaking affair. I don't think that I will have much trouble finding a topic for next week's blog!
