Anthony Davidson has been talking about his career and hopes for the future. His contract with Super Aguri is his first season-long chance in F1 competition and he wants to make the best of it. Five years as a test driver is a long apprenticeship.

As might be expected, Davidson thinks that customer cars will be good for the sport, especially as they will mean that new and smaller teams will not be sentenced to an extended period of being back markers, coming in two or three laps down on the rest of the field. Using chassis that have already been through extensive development, such teams could realistically expect to be competitive in a very short time and the spectacle for the fans would be better as a result.

This is all relevant to the looming row over Super Aguri’s intention to use a development of the Honda 2006 car this season, of course. Things are quiet for the fledgling Japanese team at the moment but are bound to heat up if Toro Rosso lose their battle to run a variation of the Red Bull RB3 in 2007. Gerhard Berger seems confident of winning that one so there may be a good chance that SA will get their way too.

Naturally, Davidson wants SA to succeed in their plan as it will give him a good car in which to make his mark in F1. He deserves such a chance in view of his long wait and previous brief debut in a Minardi. Customer cars are coming, like it or not, in 2008 so I think no harm will be done by allowing them this year. It wouldn’t be the first time that rule changes have been instituted ahead of their projected time – we already have a standardized tire formula even though it was not due to happen until next year.

I think the teams protesting about SA’s and TR’s cars are over-reacting anyway. Neither team will suddenly shoot to the front of the field as a result of using good chassis; it will take time for them to get used to the cars and tune them in for optimum running. And even Adrian Newey has been trying to deflate some of the hype surrounding his RB3, pointing out that it is unrealistic to expect it to be a world beater right from the start.

Let the second teams have a decent chance, say I, and then we’ll get some really competitive races. And we might even get to see how good Davidson is.

Another Brit whose stock is increasing is Gary Paffett. If Prodrive are to be a sort of B team for McLaren/Mercedes next year, they will need drivers. Gary’s position as a McLaren test driver puts him in pole position as one of Prodrive’s line-up. Ideally, they would want an experienced driver as number one (David Coulthard maybe?) and Gary could slot in as the young hotshoe. On his past record, he would be ideal for the task.

Colin Kolles of Spyker is orchestrating the protest against Toro Rosso’s and Super Aguri’s plans to run cars based on their owner teams’ cars next year. So far Ferrari, McLaren, Toyota, Williams (who first mentioned the problem) and Red Bull (surprisingly) have confirmed their support for Spyker’s initiative.

We might wonder why Red Bull have agreed, since their RB3 is rumored to be the basis of Toro Rosso’s car for 2007, but it is all in the interpretation of the rules, apparently. Section 3 of the Concorde Agreement states:

A constructor is a person (including any incorporated or unincorporated body) who owns the intellectual property rights to the rolling chassis it currently races, and does not incorporate in such chassis any part designed or manufactured by any other constructor of F1 racing cars except for standard items of safety equipment, providing that nothing in the Schedule 3 shall prevent the use of an engine or gearbox manufactured by a person other than the constructor of the chassis.

Much hinges on how you translate that phrase “owns the intellectual property rights”. It is used to avoid the potential loophole implicit in defining a constructor as one who builds the chassis – nothing would prevent a team “borrowing” the plans of another constructor and building an identical car in their own workshop in that case. That was pretty much what happened with the first Arrows car, that Shadow claimed (correctly, as the courts decided) was a copy of their design produced by the engineers who had left their employ to form Arrows in 1977.

But the term “intellectual property rights” remains the weak spot that might be tested by Super Aguri and Toro Rosso. TR’s Gerhard Berger is maintaining that their car will be designed in-house but the rumors of its RB3 foundation persist. No smoke without fire, they say. Super Aguri and Honda are keeping quiet, perhaps hoping that the protest will come to nothing or that TR will fight the battle and win.

At the moment, it all looks to be heading towards a court case, just as with Arrows all those years ago. None of the protagonists want it to end up there and arbitration has been mentioned as the way forward. No doubt it is, but it will be quite an achievement to get all the parties to participate, let alone agree to abide by any result.

So why all the fuss over something that is due to change in 2008 anyway, when customer cars will be allowed? Essentially, it’s about competitiveness in the coming season. Teams like Williams and Spyker had a hard time this year racing against Honda and there is no way they want to see Super Aguri leapfrog over them with a development of that chassis. And the reputation of Adrian Newey, designer of the RB3, is such that everyone fears the Red Bull of 2007; to have a TR equally as quick would be adding salt to the wound.

It’s a hard one to pick sides on. On the one hand, natural tendencies to support the underdog suggest that SA and TR be left to get on with it. But rules are rules in the end; whether we like it or not, Kolles is right.

The best answer would be for SA to look at what they have already achieved with a development of an old Arrows chassis and build on that by designing their own chassis from that experience. And Gerhard should surprise everyone by revealing an in-house TR design that beats the RB3!

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Just as I waver in my prediction of Button for champion in 2007, the Honda team get it all together in testing at Jerez, with Barrichello fastest and test driver James Rossiter very close behind him. Clearly the team have got the measure of the Bridgestone tires and that bodes well for the coming season.

Autosport magazine has a full list of the times from the final day and they make interesting reading, even though they should be taken with the usual pinch of salt. These are not next years cars, after all, and each team is trying out different things, not necessarily competing for the quickest time.

But they are racing teams and I refuse to believe that they can ignore the times completely. Competition is in their blood.

Mark Webber and David Coulthard must be a little disappointed to be down in 12th and 14th places, even though they are still running the RB2 with Ferrari engines. How they must long for the introduction of Adrian Newey’s RB3. Scott Speed must be looking forward to the new Toro Rosso as well, especially as there are suspicions that it will be an RB3 too, albeit with a Ferrari rather than a Renault engine. And that’s if the other teams do not manage to put a halt on Toro Rosso’s plans – the protests against their using what amounts to a customer car are beginning to gather.

Lewis Hamilton was third fastest although de la Rosa wasn’t far behind him this time. The young Brit looks as convincing in testing as did Robert Kubica and Sebastian Vettel.

Toyota and Renault make quiet and confident progress, going fast enough yet without setting the world alight. Steady is the word that springs to mind and that is just what is needed at this stage. The Ferrari times can be ignored – they had a bad day, that’s all.

Note the speed of Anthony Davidson in the Super Aguri, however; he was only half a second slower than Barrichello. That’s not bad considering that Aguri were the bottom team of 2006. I guess it shows one of two things: either Aguri are really getting it together and could be looking at the mid-field next season, or testing times don’t matter at all!

Away from the track, the World Motor Sport Council have issued their take on the changes to come in F1 according to Max Mosley and Burkhard Goeschel. Essentially they agree completely and have added a few tweaks of their own. For instance, for the first time “standardized aerodynamics” has been mentioned. Couple this with the intent that any new technology introduced will be for sale to everyone, and you have a standardized formula. Lola are good at that – why not just get them to make all the cars for the teams?

All Headline News has an article detailing an agreement that Speed Channel and Fox Sports will share broadcasting of F1 races starting from 2009. Fox gets the United States, Canadian, British and French Grands Prix, while Speed retains the rights to televise the rest, most of them live. Both channels will feature the broadcast team of Bob Varsha, David Hobbs, Steve Matchett and Peter Windsor.

So it seems there is still confidence in the future of F1 in America, amongst TV executives, at least. There are several blithe assumptions included in the agreement, however, the main one being that the races doled out to Fox will still be in existence two years from now.

With Bernie Ecclestone broaching the subject of the British and French GPs alternating year by year, I wouldn’t care to put money on both races being available for broadcast in 2009. A lot can happen in F1 in that time and some races will have to disappear to make way for new ones like the Indian Grand Prix. Then there is Indianapolis. It’s assured for 2007 but beyond that, who knows?

The point is that F1 has become a sport in which nothing can be guaranteed for more than a year, sometimes even less. Circuits come and go, seemingly at Bernie’s whim, and the FIA re-define the rules as they go along. I don’t envy the TV execs who had to sign up for a contract that looks as far ahead as 2009.

Inside F1, the rumbles regarding customer cars continue. Leading the charge against Super Aguri’s and Toro Rosso’s plans for next year is Colin Kolles of the Spyker team. Of course, Aguri and Rosso deny that their cars will be bought in from their respective parent teams but the suspicion remains even so.

Now would be a good time for the FIA to step in and define clearly what consitutes a bought-in chassis and what defines an independently-built one. From the excuses, explanations and accusations floating around, it seems that the line between one and the other is very vague. And it would be best to have the whole business sorted out before the new season starts, rather than have the usual mid-season bans and dramas.

For once, this is a situation where the FIA should settle the argument before it gets steam up.