Mar 26, 2009, 12:39 GMT
Melbourne - A cloud of uncertainty hangs over the sport of Formula One ahead of this weekend's season-opening Australian Grand Prix, with radical new technical regulation changes leading to protests and perhaps a seismic shift in the competitiveness of teams.
The pecking order from last year seems to count for nothing under the new regime as world champion Lewis Hamilton and his McLaren- Mercedes team now struggle to keep pace with the likes of Honda successor Brawn GP, who have been in existence for less than a month.
If the performances of the F1 teams during pre-season testing is anything to go by, when seven teams produced very similar lap times, any one of 14 drivers is in with a good chance of victory in Sunday's race at Albert Park in Melbourne.
However, Ferrari, BMW Sauber, Renault and Red Bull claim one of the reasons they are struggling is that other teams have illegal parts on their cars that have given them an unfair advantage.
As a result, protests were lodged Thursday against the cars of Brawn GP, Toyota and Williams over the three teams' diffusers, a part of the car which improves its aerodynamic performance.
The protests came after stewards in Melbourne said the cars conformed with Formula One's rules and a spokesman for governing body FIA said it hoped to have a verdict on the appeal by the end of Thursday.
It is claimed the designs of the Brawn GP, Williams and Toyota cars will give them a speed advantage of up to 0.5 seconds a lap as a result of the extra downforce which boosts a cars grip on the track.
Not only do the new rules appear unclear, no one is certain either as to how they will work in practice.
FIA hopes the aerodynamic changes will reduce the amount of turbulent air that prevents cars from overtaking, while slick tyres return in the hope of making mechanical grip more important than aerodynamic grip.
At the moment, Brawn GP seem to be the front-runners with Jenson Button installed by the bookmakers as favourite to take the chequered flag in Melbourne.
'From our short but crucial testing programme over the past two weeks, we have reinforced our view that the BGP 001 is a good car and an excellent platform from which to develop performance over the course of the season,' said team principal Ross Brawn.
While Mercedes motorsport director Norbert Haug has admitted that he expects Hamilton and McLaren team-mate Heikki Kovalainen to start closer to the back than the front of the grid, Ferrari remain quietly confident that they can compete from the opening race.
'We will work even harder to try to finish most of the races in the points because we saw that maybe one point is enough to lose the championship at the end of the year,' said Ferrari's Felipe Massa, who missed out on the drivers' title by a single point in 2008.
'I think we can have maybe McLaren again fighting for the championship, BMW because they did a good job in the last years and maybe Renault and maybe some surprise, so I think it9s quite difficult to say now who our main rivals will be.'
One of the big unknown quantities is the Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) which some teams are expected to deploy. The system stores energy that would have been wasted while braking and allows drivers a boost of an extra 80bhp for almost seven seconds each lap.
Ferrari, McLaren, Renault and BMW Sauber are the teams who have confirmed they are ready to run with KERS while Williams, Brawn and Force India have said they won9t.
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