Brawn GP in pole position for Formula 1 season

For too long after Ayrton Senna died, many Grand Prix races resembled nothing much more than a motorcade. The winning car often won because Michael Schumacher was steering it imperiously. Even more often, it won because one team's design wizards were sharper than their competition.
 
But as the new season starts with the Australian Grand Prix this weekend, nobody can confidently predict who is going to be leading at either the first corner in Melbourne, or, 17 races later, when the season ends in Abu Dhabi in November. With ringmaster Bernie Ecclestone, now 78 and recently divorced, and privacy champion Max Mosley hoping to scale down the astonishing £2bn that the sport spent last year, the laws have been changed, and so have the certainties.
 
Now, teams are only allowed to test their cars on race weekends, they must use smaller wind tunnels, and they have to share information on tyres and fuel, which should reduce the need for an espionage budget. Tantalisingly, the teams can now choose to install a Kinetic Energy Recovery System, a device which gives drivers a seven-second spurt of extra power every lap, and sounds like it belongs in Mario Kart.
 
Other more mundane changes to the cars' designs – wider front wings, taller rear wings - and a return to faster, smoother tyres, should make it easier to overtake, but trickier to stay on the track.
 
The biggest technological development, however, concerns the diffuser, a part on the floor at the back of the car which organises the airflow, and is consequently essential to its aerodynamics. What's happened is that Brawn GP, a team that was formed less than three weeks ago from the debris left by recession-hit Honda, have by far the best diffuser.

Indeed, it's so good that Red Bull and other teams launched an unsuccessful legal challenge against it. Frank Williams, boss of the Williams team, said: "They [Brawn GP] are making the rest of us look like amateurs."

Button's resurgence may leave Hamilton as the second-best driver in BritainThis means that the bookmakers' favourite in Melbourne is a driver who many thought had squandered his opportunities in the sport – Britain's Jensen Button. Racing for Brawn, Button finally has the chance to prove that his meagre return of one Grand Prix win in 155 races for BAR and Honda owes more to the lousy cars he's been given than the enviable lifestyle he's succumbed to in Monaco.
 
Button's potential resurgence leads to the intriguing prospect of Lewis Hamilton, two seasons into a stellar career in which he's already both lost and won a world championship, finding himself only the second-best racer in Britain.  

Hamilton's McLaren Mercedes team, now shorn of Ron Dennis and led by his protege Martin Whitmarsh, have struggled to adapt to this season's rules, and it may be summer before Hamilton can showcase his talents in anything better than a midfield car.
 
But from Hamilton's generation of young drivers, none are more exciting than 21-year-old Sebastian Vettel, who became Formula 1's youngest race winner last year when he won the Italian Grand Prix in Monza. Vettel is precociously assured, and known in his native Germany as 'Baby Schumi'. If any driver goes on to dominate the next decade, it is likely to be him. ·