One team that looks particularly strong going into 2007 is Red Bull Racing. The RB3 is the first of their cars designed by the legendary Adrian Newey, their additions to the design and engineering departments have made them very strong, and their drivers are tried and tested, well able to deliver the goods. Mark Webber has been talking about his hopes for the coming season and, understandably, he expects the team to be challenging for front row positions.

It all sounds very good but somehow I am not convinced. They will have a better season than in 2006, yes, but I cannot see them winning races just yet. And I find it difficult to say why I feel like that. Maybe it is my natural dislike of teams that throw money at a problem, rather than solving it through hard work and ingenuity. Easy enough to buy all the best guys and then have a strong team, as Chelsea proved in English football.

Yet it is not necessarily a guaranteed route to success. It took Chelsea a couple of seasons to achieve their goal of the Premiership championship and Manchester United always had money and the best players but did not make the breakthrough for thirty years. Does a similar principle apply in F1?

I think it does. Consider how long it took Ferrari to win another championship after Jody Scheckter’s. All their money and personnel changes could not fix their real problem, internal strife and politics, until they hired Jean Todt to get everyone on the same page.

Although Red Bull do not have quite the same problems, they still need someone to pull the team together, someone with the force of character to create a team out of all that talent. Is Christian Horner the man to do it? I’m not sure. He is very young still and has only a couple of years’ experience in F1 to date. Perhaps in another year or two…

In fact, I would really enjoy it if Red Bull were to challenge for race wins. David Coulthard is on what must be his last chance for consistent success and Mark Webber is close to giving it all up as a bad job. This really is the make or break year for them, it seems, and I hope they make it.

The nagging doubts remain, however. I can see them doing a Honda and winning one race during the season, but no more than that. Perhaps it’s just the pessimist in me. Or, even more likely, the fact that I really don’t like their color scheme…

I see that David Coulthard thinks that Lewis Hamilton has been given his F1 chance too early. The Scottish veteran feels that a year testing for an F1 team would have been better experience for Hamilton, rather than having to be compared with his teammate, Fernando Alonso.

There is some sense in what Coulthard is saying; there have been drivers who have been pushed too far, too soon (I think Jos Verstappen was one) and who never reach their potential as a result. But, equally, there have been others who rose to meet the challenge and did well.

Ironically, David himself was one of the latter. His chance came after Ayrton Senna’s death at Imola, when he was promoted from test to race driver in the Williams team. And, although he had to relinquish his seat a few times for the returning Nigel Mansell, he did well enough to beat “our Nige” to the Williams drive the following year.

Coulthard went on from there to become the solid, dependable driver he is today and he never looked to be out of his depth in F1. So it may be a bit unfair for him to doubt Hamilton’s ability to survive such an early entry to the sport.

I presume that it is Coulthard’s position as spokesman for the Grand Prix Drivers Association that is producing his recent cluster of controversial statements. If so, he is doing an excellent job, keeping the association in the eye of the press and not allowing issues to die a death through lack of attention. It may well be that he will prove better at handling the media than his waning reputation as a driver leads us to expect of him on the track.

But I think David could well be a surprise to us in 2007. If the Adrian Newey-designed Red Bull is any good, it is entirely possible that Coulthard will make better use of it than Mark Webber, whose reputation for speed is not as badly dented as the Scot’s. In fact, this coming season is the make or break year for both of them and they know it. Webber is thoroughly fed up with having to compete in inferior machinery and has already made noises about giving up if the Red Bull is less than hoped and Coulthard is having to fend off rumors of retirement, being the new grand old man of F1 that he is. It will be the last stand of the old guard and I wish them well.

It’s that business of being compared to a very quick teammate that is the most telling point in Coulthard’s latest statement, however. If Hamilton can stay within a reasonable distance of Alonso, we will know that he has made it; if he cannot, it could easily turn the current expectations sour and lead to him following the usual route of such drivers – a career of second drives, occasional hopeful flashes intersperesed with long periods of mediocrity, and the soul-destroying task of trying to be noticed while driving machinery that is less and less competitive.

Which Coulthard should know all about. But, give him his due; he has not given up and is as eager for next season as a chance to prove himself as any young blade. I just hope that he’s wrong about Hamilton, however.

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.

I like Gerhard Berger’s style. He was a great racer in his driving days, perhaps one of the few whose ego could survive being teammate to Ayrton Senna, even beating the great man on rare occasions. The stories of practical jokes played on each other are the perfect illustration of the mutual respect between them.

So it is good to see Gerhard running the Toro Rosso team in the same way – cheerfully independent and determined to succeed. The struggle with parent team, Red Bull, over Vitantonio Liuzzi’s services (which Toro Rosso won) shows that Gerhard is quite prepared to fight Toro Rosso’s corner against the guys who supply the money. I can imagine, too, the smile on Gerhard’s face at those races in 2006 where his cars embarrased Red Bull’s by being quicker.

It is no surprise, therefore, to read of Gerhard’s insistence that Toro Rosso will design and build their own car for next season. There may have been suspicions that they would run the same chassis as Red Bull in 2007 (and some teams were getting ready to protest this) but that is not Gerhard’s style. I know what he’d like to do – beat Red Bull. It stands to reason that the man who spent most of his driving career trying to beat the best should continue that habit as a manager.

He might well have the tools to do it, too. If his team can produce an effective chassis, they are in with a chance, even though Red Bull’s engineering team is now very strong with the addition of Adrian Newey and others. Minardi demonstrated on several occasions that it is possible to design a good car on a shoestring budget – their problem was always that they never had as powerful an engine as other teams. Toro Rosso could get it right in the same way.

There is nothing wrong with their power plant as well. The Ferrari engine is at least as powerful and reliable as the Renault – the trick is in mating it effectively to the chassis so as to make best use of its characteristics. Admittedly, no-one has managed to do this as well as the Ferrari team so far but it has to happen sooner or later, even if by accident.

Then there is the matter of drivers – and here it’s youth against experience. Red Bull have two proven warriors in Webber and Coulthard, both of them capable of winning races and with enormous depth of experience. Toro Rosso’s Liuzzi and Speed are young, enthusiastic and have a learning year behind them. All other things being equal, you would expect the veterans to beat the newbies – but things are never equal. If the Toro Rosso is good, the drivers could do the job.

Next season is shaping up to be one of the most interesting for years. And the struggle between Red Bull and Toro Rosso could be one of the talking points. Red Bull insist that Toro Rosso is a part of their empire but independent of their control – if Gerhard’s boys start beating their sister team regularly, Red Bull might just have to grin and bear it.