Unfamiliar Territory

[Wizzo]

F1 looks to be heading into unfamiliar territory in the New Year, with two issues dominating the agenda.

First to the chassis argument and Spyker's team manager Colin Kolles is stirring up the debate over SuperAguri and Toro Rosso using cars they haven't built themselves. Currently SuperAguri has been developing a clone of last year's Honda chassis while it is expected that Toro Rosso will run with the same Adrian Newey-designed chassis as the Red Bull team, effectively running one with a Renault engine and the other with a Ferrari engine.

Though Max Mosley has argued in the past that chassis technology should be sold, just like engines or brake systems, the current Schedule 2 of the Concorde Agreement forbids sharing of chassis and Intellectual Property until the 2008 season.

"We are fully within the regulations and we checked it several times," Toro Rosso's co-owner Gerhard Berger told Autosport. Though you'd think with many millions of dollars of development money the team would have had lawyers going through it backwards and checking with the FIA's technical delegate rather than simply "going over it several times".

If what Berger says is true, then the new Toro Rosso cannot match the 2007 Red Bull.

It's an issue that was hotly debated at the team principal's meeting with Bernie Ecclestone in Monaco in December. Spyker has the most to lose if their closest competitors were to suddenly start mixing it with the midfield runners. The Dutch-owned team, based at Silverstone, would likely find themselves last on the grid at every race.

But even the mid-grid teams are not happy, as they would face the prospect of losing valuable points to teams that should be behind them. On paper, an Adrian Newey-designed car with an ultra-reliable Renault engine, should not be slow.

BMW's Mario Theissen has said the matter might end up in court if no solution is found. So there will be more interest than usual in the launches of the STR and the SuperAguri in 2007.

The other issue affecting the teams is tyres. How hard they are and whether they should have to pay for them or not. When the team principals got together in Monaco, they reportedly found that Bridgestone had been making deals with some teams and not with others i.e. that they were making some teams pay for extra tyres while giving them to others.

As part of the deal to be F1's sole tyre supplier they are supposed to make tyres available free or charge to all teams for GPs and were probably taken off guard by the fact that team principals had been talking about their own individual deals so openly.

However the cost of the Bridgestones hasn't been exercising the minds of the F1 teams as much as their consistency. Because the dominating factor of winter testing so far has been how hard they are.

Having been embroiled in a tyre war with Michelin over the last few years, the Research and Development of the Bridgestone tyre company has been at full stretch. Now they are guaranteed as the winner of each race they can produce slower, more durable tyres. It has always been part of the FIA's plan to reduce the speed of F1 cars and there is no quicker way of curbing their pace than to cut the grip of tyres.

In fact the move from 3.0 litre engines to 2.4 litre engines did little to inhibit lap times in 2006 in the face of a Michelin vs Bridgestone tyre war.

Given some very hard tyres, all the drivers are having to make adjustments to their driving styles.

"We'll get used to them over time, but at the moment the front wheels have a tendency to lock under hard braking," Giancarlo Fisichella told Italian magazine Autosprint.

Fisichella also thinks it may be necessary to change the braking systems, varying their ventilation and operating pressures. Certainly, the hard braking tracks like Montreal, Monza and Turkey will see bigger changes on brake systems from race to race than we did in the 2006 season.

Felipe Massa also believes that earlier braking points will mean bigger overtaking zones as the cars slow down. However, what might be good for spectators is not necessarily an advantage to Ferrari.

"People said we would have a big advantage at Ferrari having worked closely with Bridgestone in the past," said Felipe, "but these tyres are so different to the ones we use this season, that we will all start from the beginning."