Many of the teams have been testing at the Barcelona circuit, with Felipe Massa predictably fastest in the Ferrari and the other drivers getting used to the Bridgestone tires. Although the times are meaningless at this early stage, they are listed in an article in Autosport magazine if you’re interested.

Autosport also has a very revealing interview after the first day’s runs with Super Aguri’s new driver, Anthony Davidson. He confirms that the Bridgestones are very different from the Michelins he was used to and that it will take time to adjust the car to get the best from them. Apparently the tires slide more and, although he found this quite entertaining, it is difficult to post good times as a result.

Which would seem to confirm all the talk of last year’s Bridgestone customers having an early season advantage until we remember that these are not the 2006 tires but an older compound that all the teams are going to have to get used to. By the time the season kicks off in Australia next year, I think that everyone will know pretty well what to expect from their tires; it will, in fact, be the proverbial level playing field that was impossible as long as two tire manufacturers were involved in F1.

In spite of Davidson’s troubles with the tires at the test, he was still respectable in the Super Aguri, posting 11th fastest time, ahead of the Toro Rossos and Red Bulls. The news on Aguri is that they will be racing a development of this year’s Honda chassis, the RA106, and will slip through the loophole in the regulations identified by Red Bull with the Toro Rosso car of 2006. As long as components are manufactured by a third party, it seems, it does not matter who assembles them and Aguri has made sure that their car for next year will qualify accordingly.

Clearly the regulations are not stringent enough to ensure that each team builds its own car from scratch and it is probably impossible to achieve this anyway. All teams use parts designed and built by other companies. We now have two teams effectively running second squads under thin disguises, Red Bull with Toro Rosso and Honda with Super Aguri. Why they should want to spread their effort so thinly, I have no idea, but they have made me doubt the wisdom of the regulation in the first place.

Presumably the intent of the rule is to prevent places in F1 being collared by existing competitors when there are other teams waiting for a gap to open up so that they can become involved. This has not happened so why bother with regulating it at all? Running two teams will soon prove too expensive and wasteful for most companies (I doubt that Red Bull and Honda will keep it going for long) and the gaps will appear in the long run.

In the fifties there were no restrictions on how many cars a team could enter and it was quite common for there to be three or four cars run by a single entrant. At the time, there was no pressure on the numbers of cars racing and the arrangement worked well enough, even though it gave larger teams a greater chance of having a car finish the race. But nothing has changed in that respect; the larger teams still enjoy certain benefits over the smaller ones, not the least of which is money.

It all makes me think that there needs to be less regulation in F1, not more. At the moment the rules are so complicated that lawyers are sometimes needed to decide on finer points that arise. That can hardly be good for the sport.

One thing that never varies between seasons is the optimistic outlook of every team in F1. Looking at the possibilities and listening to the reported statements, it is easy to think that everyone is going to do well next year.

Yet we know life isn’t like that; always there are losers as well as winners. Some amongst the teams will find their hopes dashed and have to transfer their optimism to 2008. And part of the game in the off season is in guessing who will fail to achieve their objectives.

The big disappointment this year was the Honda team – everyone expected them to be pushing for race wins but they came good only at the end of the year. Red Bull, too, had a poor season and are now admitting that they gave up on the RB2 from its first race, deciding that it was a lost cause and they would be better employed preparing for 2007. David Coulthard had an even tougher year than we knew about, it seems. But, having put so much work into Adrian Newey’s RB3, Red Bull are expecting great things in the coming season. We shall see.

Anthony Davidson has been talking about his reaction to being taken on as a race driver by Super Aguri and his optimism is a little more guarded than others, understandably so. To aim for points and to be pushing Takuma Sato hard by the end of the year are both realistic ambitions. There are always a few chaotic races in the year when small teams can gather a point or two. But I hope he does better than “push Taku hard”!

Over at Toro Rosso, Gerhard Berger has said that their driver line-up will be unchanged for 2007, although no official announcement has been made as yet. Which is good news for Scott Speed, in view of all the rumors that Robert Doornbos was being considered as a replacement for him. The American has been talking of his hopes for the season, perhaps more confident now that his place seems assured, and he, too, expects to score points for the team.

So who is going to lose out after all this talk? It would be easy to pick the losers from previous seasons but, ever a supporter of underdogs, I hope they all do as well as they expect to. The one I would really like to see fall flat on its face is Ferrari – which is not exactly likely, I know. But when Luca di Montezemolo “promises” the fans the 2007 championships, my natural reaction is to wish fervently for him to have to eat his words.

Optimism is one thing, a promise another thing entirely.

Before I get started on this, let me just offer congratulations to the British driver who has at last achieved what he set out to do six years ago: Anthony Davidson has secured the second seat in the Super Aguri race team for 2007. May success meet his efforts after so long a period of waiting. Autosport magazine has an excellent article on him and other British drivers. Looking further ahead than next season, however, there is news that should concern every F1 fan.

Fittingly enough in a new century, Formula One is currently at a hinge point between the past and the future. We are about to see changes that will force the evolution of the sport into an entirely different animal from the one we know and love so well. This is made very clear by a question and answer session with Max Mosley (FIA) and Burkhard Goeschel (GPMA) reported by Autosport.

This is a comprehensive overview of the coming directions in F1, an extremely long session in which the combined vision of the FIA and GPMA becomes clear. There is much food for thought in what Max and Burkhard say and anyone passionate about F1 should read it. This is where the sport is going, whether we like it or not (and regardless of any fan surveys conducted by the FIA).

I am not going to jump in and comment extensively on the session. So much is made clear in it that time is needed for us to absorb the implications of the changes that will be made; indeed, there is enough here to keep discussion going for the entire off season. No doubt I will return to consider points made as the weeks and months drag on towards the first race of 2007.

Notice, however, how the multitude of conflicting influences and interests involved in F1 have forced the FIA to make such fundamental changes. Their job is not easy, particularly as they are entrusted with the survival and prosperity of a sport that involves the passions of millions. If I criticize the governing body or the manufacturers, it is only because I care about what will happen to F1 in the brave new world of tomorrow.

Of course I don’t like some of the directions taken by the FIA and GPMA – I have already admitted to being a dinosaur. But F1 is nothing without its history and that should always be taken into account when thinking of its future. We watch because F1 unites two of the strongest impulses in mankind: the drive towards being the fastest human on the planet and our fascination with improvements in technology. Lose either of these and F1 will sink without trace.

It seems to me that F1 is about to metamorphose into something entirely different. If that is true, it remains to be seen whether it can keep its appeal to the huge audience it holds at present. At this stage, I would give just one warning to the FIA: consider the States and the rise of NASCAR, with the corresponding decrease in interest in the open wheel formulae of Champ Cars and Indy Racing (inevitable once you divide your fan base into two). NASCAR uses cars that at least look like Joe Soap’s saloon sitting in his driveway – he can fondly imagine that there is some relationship between his chosen model and the cars on the racetrack. And this, surely, is the type of racing where advances in technology can be relevant to the cars we drive every day.

Formula One is something different; it has never pretended to be about developing road technology – it is about going faster than anyone else. There have been side effects upon the design of road cars in the past but these are incidental and irrelevant to the sport. To make F1 relevant to modern car design is to alter radically the whole point of the sport; we make such changes at the peril of its survival.

We tend to forget that, in every race, someone has to come last. And the guys fulfilling this useful role most often in 2006 have been the Super Aguri team. I was fairly dismissive of their efforts in my previous post on them, but it may be that I was wrong. A study of the fastest laps in the Brazilian Grand Prix reveals the surprising information that the Aguri drivers managed to be seventh and ninth fastest.

Okay, we can point out that these times were done fairly late in the race after some cars had retired and others were taking it easy to ensure finishing. But the Aguri times are up there with drivers who were still involved in the battle to keep Michael Schumacher back:

4 Jenson Button, Honda, Lap 70, 1:13.053
5 Giancarlo Fisichella, Renault, Lap 70, 1:13.121
6 Kimi Raikkonen, McLaren, Lap 58, 1:13.281
7 Sakon Yamamoto, Super Aguri, Lap 67, 1:13.379
8 Rubens Barrichello, Honda, Lap 48, 1:13.391
9 Takuma Sato, Super Aguri, Lap 47, 1:13.401
10 Vitantonio Liuzzi, Toro Rossi, Lap 69, 1:13.687

To be amongst that sort of company, the car must have become increasingly competitive as the race progressed. The Renault team had the decency to share their championship champagne with the Super Aguri guys, recognizing that Sato’s tenth place finish was an important milestone for the tail-enders.

This was achieved with a car that is still essentially an ancient Arrows chassis, considerably modified and powered by a Honda engine. Next year the team will have to produce a chassis from scratch and that will be an important step forward for them. Their goal must be to move away from the tail end of the field, although it is difficult to see who would take their place. All of the smaller teams go into 2007 with high expectations and it is impossible to predict who will be successful and who won’t.

But things look brighter than I expected for Super Aguri and, when we hear that Anthony Davidson is in with a good chance of racing for them next season, we can have some hope that he will do well.