Like everyone else, I develop preferences for teams as well as drivers. Even though I am hoping that Button wins the championship this year, my support is irresistibly drawn to the BMW team. This began last year when I was supporting Renault (mainly because it was the only team that could beat Ferrari) but increasingly I noticed BMW and was conquered in the end.

It has very little to do with the team itself; shamefacedly I admit that my support generally goes to the car I find most pleasing aesthetically. And BMW has the cleanest, prettiest car on the grid by a long way (it also appears to be the smallest, another point in its favor, although this may be an optical illusion).

They are helped by not having to please a multitude of advertisers, of course; their major sponsor, Petronas, seems happy to go with the BMW corporate colors and the others, Credit Suisse, Intel and Dell, have adjusted to fit the scheme. And the use of white with dark blue and red highlights helps to show off the pure lines of the car.

Compare this to Renault’s problems - having to keep their own yellow and blue but blend in the orange of ING. That was always going to be a thankless task and the designer has made a reasonable fist of it considering the difficulties involved. But the paint job becomes so complex that it obscures the car’s looks; all those extra colors and swooping lines effectively disguise the body underneath.

It is when we get to Toro Rosso that my artistic sense rebels. I would like to support TR as the successors to my old favorite, Minardi, but their paint scheme puts me off immediately. That silly bull plastered over the rear of the car is about on the level of the “flames” painted on the side of street racers, never mind that it makes it impossible to see what the car underneath is really like (I know, I know, it’s like a Red Bull RB3 - go here to see if you can tell the difference).

And, when you consider that Toro Rosso is not exactly overburdened with advertisers all clamoring for their own colors, you have to admit that the cause of this monstrosity is just plain, honest-to-goodness, bad taste. Since the FIA is so keen on introducing new rules to deal with every detail of the cars, surely it is time they set some minimum aesthetic standards to protect our eyesight.

Williams generally have a sensible and quiet enough color scheme but McLaren has ruined its chances with their obsession with a silver that clashes with just about any other color under the sun. And the others hover in the area of acceptability without being objectionable.

So my support remains with BMW; there is one ray of hope on the horizon, however. Word is that the Honda colors, when finally revealed, will be green. And green is the one color that could beat white - think of the gorgeous early Jordans with their 7-Up sponsorship and the short-lived Jaguars in patriotic BRG. But all hinges on the shade chosen; dark enough and the car will look great, too light and it will be vomit-inducing.

For Button’s sake, I hope that Honda have had the sense to be green in as dark a way as possible.

The first F1 squabble of the year progresses apace. Having failed to reach agreement over customer cars in 2007 at their recent meeting, the team principals are getting ready for war. Since legal mobilization takes time, it is most likely that scrutineering for the Australian GP on March 18th will be the crunch point. Pity those poor scrutineers!

Good old Bernie Ecclestone was there to suggest a few compromises, all of which were rejected, but at least he tried. But where was Mighty Max? Surely he would have been able to devise a way forward, given his new ability to work in harmony with the manufacturers. But I forget - that is only true when the other side has the power to really mess with him; little players like drivers and independent constructors are beneath notice.

In fact, there does seem to be a widening rift between the two most powerful men in F1, in style at least. While Bernie runs around trying to settle arguments, Max remains adamant that everyone must bow to the whim of the FIA. And given Bernie’s recent criticism of the FIA, it is clear that he is not entirely happy with the way things are run.

The fact remains that, if Max had been there to give a clear ruling from the FIA on the legality or otherwise of Super Aguri’s and Toro Rosso’s plans for the coming season, the threatened litigation could have been avoided. Had SA and STR been told that the FIA will definitely not allow any customer cars to slip through loopholes this year, both teams might have backed down; and, if the FIA’s view is that the cars are legal, Spyker and the rest would know that any protest will be futile.

As it is, we are faced with the prospect of yet another F1 court case and a GP with results pending until a verdict is given. Everyone knows how bad this is for the image of the sport but nobody seems to have a way of stopping it.

Apparently, Sebastien Bourdais is to be given another drive in the Toro Rosso while the contracted drivers, Liuzzi and Speed, are still waiting for confirmation of their seats this year. In an interview with Auto Motor und Sport magazine, Berger has been critical of his drivers’ performances in 2006, so it seems that I was wrong about the delay originating with Red Bull owner, Dietrich Mateschitz. My apologies to him, of course.

But what is Gerhard up to? If he is genuinely dissatisfied with his drivers, it seems a bit late to be still dithering. There are no obvious winners left on the market and Bourdais is certainly not available for this season. Montoya has admitted that he did receive an offer from Toro Rosso and that it gave him a good laugh, the rumors of Mika Hakkinen returning to F1 in a TR have been firmly squelched, so who else is a possible? Robert Doornbos? That would be taking more of a chance than keeping Liuzzi and Speed.

This indecision seems so unlike Berger until you remember the tales of his practical jokes on Ayrton Senna. When dealing with Gerhard, things are not necessarily what they appear to be on the surface. And I think the wily Austrian is using a bit of psychology to motivate his drivers (Sigmund Freud was an Austrian, remember).

It is just not true that Liuzzi and Speed did not perform well last year. At almost every GP we were told that the TR’s V10 would not be able to compete with the V8s, only to see the cars perform far better than expected, especially through the speed traps. Liuzzi was rated highly enough for Red Bull to want him as a driver until Mark Webber came up for grabs and, as pointed out in my post, An American in F1 - Scott Speed, Scott was looking the better of the two towards the end of the season.

Gerhard knows better than anyone else how good his drivers are - he would not have fought so hard to keep Liuzzi from the clutches of Red Bull were it not so. This feigned dissatisfaction is a Berger ploy to get his drivers fired up for the coming races, to light a bomb under them, in fact.

And it will probably work. Both Liuzzi and Speed are no doubt well aware of what Berger is up to but they will still want to prove themselves to the world. When the lights go out for the start of the first race, I think Toro Rosso will have two drivers who are absolutely determined to show their boss that he was completely wrong about them - that they are instead the quickest drivers to be seen in F1 in a long time.

He’s a wily old bird, that Gerhard Berger.

Renault’s engineering director, Pat Symonds, has added his voice to those expressing doubts about the idea of customer cars in F1. Like Mario Theissen of BMW, he feels that the legalizing of customer cars in 2008 will create a situation where there are only six manufacturers running two teams each and that the championship could be manipulated as a result.

But just a cotton-picking minute there - that’s two representatives of the manufacturers who fear that their companies will exploit the new rule to favor one driver, thereby winning the championship. Apart from the fact that this is unlikely since, if one manufacturer does it, they all will and that will cancel out any advantage they might have gained, why is it the potential manipulators who are suggesting such a scenario? I hear no complaints from the small teams who apparently face such a dismal future as the pawns of the big guys.

It seems to me that there is more going on here than meets the eye. The potential for devious tactics is not the real reason for the manufacturers’ doubts - that is just an excuse to justify their objection to the rule change. We must look elsewhere to find the motivation of the manufacturers, methinks.

Is it possible that they have looked at the history of F1 and fear the inventiveness, speed of reaction and dedication of small teams? To supply a chassis and engine to a customer team and then find that their customer has devised a tweak that makes their version of the car quicker would be unbearably embarrassing for a manufacturer. It is not beyond possibility.

So let us say that the big boss takes a walk down the pitlane and instructs his customers that, from now on, they must let the supplier’s lead driver win or the supply of chassis and engines will dry up. Well, we all know how leaky F1 teams are - it would not be long before the news made its way to the press and the resulting row would be far more embarrassing to the manufacturer than losing an occasional race to its own products. The Norberto Fontana revelation of last year may have been squashed very quickly by Peter Sauber but doubts linger in many minds, I’m sure.

The argument doesn’t float. In reality, the manufacturers don’t want their task of winning to be made even more difficult by the addition of small teams with competitive cars. It is hard enough already to beat the other manufacturers without having to consider the challenge of customer teams as well.

The suggested collusion by manufacturers raises another possibility that has not been mentioned. If they are prepared to stoop to such underhand dealing, what is to prevent them getting together and deciding to share out the championship between them? It would ensure that no manufacturer enjoys a long period of domination and hogs all the publicity as a result; if they take it in turns to win and get the marketing benefits, everyone is happy and avoids the possibility of never winning, something that they must all dread.

The fact is that the presence of small teams in F1 actually makes the possibilities for collusion much less. They would not be a part of any share-out of the spoils and will ruin any such attempt merely by competing to the best of their ability. And the customer car rule is the one remaining lifeline to such teams - without it they will be consigned to a Minardi-like existence, scrimping and scraping to get enough money together to continue for one more season.

So I’m sorry, Pat, but I just don’t believe you. You have one thing right, however:

“If you say that in 2008 you can do it (run customer cars), then does it really matter about things being pushed forward a year,” he said. “Many other rules have been pushed forward a year, is it really a big deal?

“On that basis, you would say it is a storm in a teacup. But it is easy for me to say that from a Renault perspective. If I was Spyker, I would not be at all happy about it. Rules are rules.”

Spyker may be complaining about the Toro Rosso and Super Aguri cars for the coming season but I haven’t heard that Colin Kolles objects to the 2008 rule change. Maybe that’s because he knows that Spyker haven’t the resources to compete with the really big manufacturers and might have to buy in a customer chassis themselves in future. They are already buying engines, after all.