Ferrari

2009 was  catastrophic for Ferrari, therefore they concentrated early on their 2010 contender to be better prepared this year! And what did the first few tests show??? An extremely good car! The driver pairing is defo one of the bests: the two times world champion Fernando Alonso and the 2008 runner-up Felipe Massa. The Brazilian has to pay close attention that the team won’t become a “Alonso-Team” because the Spaniard doesn’t like inter-team rivalry that much… Ferrari will fight for the championship 2010, for that I’m quite sure!

Mercedes

In 2009 they were world champions, but what about now? I think they should be quite strong; else the 7-times world champion Michael Schumacher wouldn’t have signed there! The tests results were good but not brilliant… Nonetheless, I think they can win some races but not in the first races because as Schumi said there is still much work to do! For Rosberg it will be very hard to win out over “the retiree in a Mercedes”. Now, we’ve to wait until the season is underway to judge if Schumi’s experience or Nico’s juvenility is worth more….

In my opinion they are one of the world championship contenders but not the top-favourite!

Lotus

Sorry, but I don’t like the car design at all… Its a very weird green… But well let’s view at the prospects now! At the test the team was somewhere between the slower teams but the most times not the slowest. In my opinion they’ve the best drivers of the new teams: Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen! The world championship contenders could be quite happy that the “Trulli-Train” won’t annoy them that often anymore , because I don’t think Lotus will be somewhere in front… Well at least at the tests Lotus won the “Airline-Battle” versus Virgin XD But let’s see now if Lotus will be in the midfield or right at the back….

Hispania Racing Team F1 (HRT F1 or formerly Campos Meta XD )

Hmm… what should I think of this team… Well I think it’s very difficult to judge about HRT because we haven’t seen test of them yet so we can’t say where they are compared to the rivals… Among the drivers, they have a big name: Bruno Senna, the nephew of the Formula 1 world champion Ayrton Senna; who died in 1994. Their other driver was only announced some days ago, after some speculations about Lopez, Baguette and some others, finally Karun Chandhok got the cockpit becoming the second Indian Formula One Driver. In my opinion the three new teams will have a close fight but I can’t say who will win it.

Sauber

The team got 2009 a big punch when BMW decided to leave the Formula1. First it seemed that they even could not make the grid 2010 because the FIA gave their place to Lotus but after Toyota had gone too Sauber got finally their place. At the first test, surprise surprise, Sauber was 2^nd behind Ferrari. Kobayashi showed a very good pace last year and I think he is a big talent. Their second driver is the experienced Pedro de la Rosa. In my opinion Sauber will be good enough to score some points but in general I expect them in the high-midfield somewhere with Toro Rosso.

Force India

In 2009 they were kind of surprise by getting on Pole-Position at Spa. After Fisichella transferred to Ferrari, the team chose Tonio Liuzzi as 2^nd driver beside Sutil and they’ll keep the drivers for 2010. The team developed much the lat years and the test results weren’t that bad too, for sure there are not in one league with Ferrari, Red Bull Racing and co but in my opinion they will be somewhere close behind the “Big 4”. It could be that they are good enough to win a race, but it’s to early to judge about that.

Jenny

Red Bull Racing

Runners’ up to both championship last year, there is only one thing they can do to improve… win them this year! With both drivers set again to continue the inter-team battle, people think 22 yr old Vettel has got the head start and speed but Mark Webber will want to make an impression. We love Red Bull Racing that is why we think we should share the oppurtunity to write about them! and also please follow  http://twitter.com/redbullf1spy who updates us from the garage!

Banu

The goal of a team for a new season??? To be better than last year! In the case of Red Bull Racing, this means that the goal has to be: Become Drivers and Constructors champion. The car looks very good at the tests and had  some reliability problems; but not a major one. They did their best to hide their new “Double-D” which is considered as the mother of diffusers! Their 2009 contender is again a genius-coup by the top designer Adrian Newey. They have definitely one of the strongest (if not the strongest   ) driver pairings; the young German hope (and 2009 WDC runner-up) Sebastian Vettel and the ,at the begin of 2009 still challenged by a shoulder and leg fracture but now fully recovered, Aussie Mark Webber. I think they are absolutely a top-candidate for the world championships! Because there is no question about the speed of the car (and many reliable F1 sources told that they think RBR hid a big part of their speed at the tests!!!) but the reliability still let me doubt a bit! However let’s be optimistic now and hope that the reliability is better than it was last year!

That concludes my post =) Next week will be finally the first Grand Prix!! (if you follow Banu and me on Twitter you know that we are already since some weeks very excited and hyper about XD )<—(she is right! we’ve been bonkers!)

We won’t change our posting times next week, so Banu will post a Qualifying review on Saturday and I’ll do the race review on Sunday!

And a last thing I’ve to tell you is, that we will make after every Sebii (an incredible huge one) and Macca (an a bit smaller one) TWITTER-PARTY!!! So if you want to take part at it please follow us on twitter and join our event in the Red Bull Racing community (“Twitter Party after every Sebii win and on his Birthday”).

See you next week for the Grand Prix of Bahrain!!!

Jenny