The 2010 Formula 1 season is just weeks away and the excitement has reached a feverish pitch. Arguably the greatest champion of all time returns after a three year hiatus, perhaps the only driver to defeat this great champion has finally made it to a team that justifies his talent, the last two world champions team up together for the first time in F1 history…these unprecedented, unexpected and totally unbelievable developments has made F1 fans salivate at the prospect of the “Greatest Season Ever”. IndianAutoTalk provides you with a rundown of all the leading contenders and the machines that will be powering them. This is Part 1 of a three part series.

1) Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro- Alonso in red, enough said.

Ferrari had a woeful 2009, the car was just not fast enough to compete. The horrific injury to Filipe Massa just worsened what was already a pathetic year for them, with just one race victory and a few podium finishers. This was undoubtedly the worst season for them in recent memory and hopefully, this has fired people up at Maranello. Brightening their chances even more this year is the arrival of golden boy, Fernando Alonso from Renault. That Alonso was destined for Ferrari was an open secret, but after years of maneuvering the move has finally happened and seeing him in scarlet red has the ‘tifosi’ all worked up. Add to the equation, the return of Massa from his life threatening injury and the good form he has displayed in testing with GP2 cars, there is much room for optimism.

click through

Rule changes are inevitable as well as invigorating for any form of sports, more so for Racing and even more for Formula1. Thought the reason for FIA changing rules every year is change for the sake of change, the main reason is to prevent F1 racing from changing into a parade. Besides that, this season’s regulations require an acknowledgement of economic hampering. All these contribute for one heck, I mean two hecks of changes.

No Refueling for the entire race
As the teams are used to designing their cars and their race strategies considering the option of refueling during race, this rule of no refueling changes everything the teams have learnt from their past experience. This is good for the sport as the 4 new teams Lotus, Campos, Virgin and US F1 even out with the biggies in this perspective at the least.

New Points System
FIA has become generous with the points as it lashes out 25 for the race winner and points for the top 10 finishers. Finishing second is good enough for 18 points, rest of the positions get 15-12-10-8-6-4-2-1. FIA hopes the difference of 7 points between the first and the second places will lead to some serious racing for the top spot rather than drivers doing math and settling down for second place.

There is a third change regarding improving the credibility of the Race Stewards. Race Stewards include 2 international and 1 national Steward who review race incidents. This bench will now be headed by a former F1 driver. This could be good as a driver will comprehend the necessity of certain actions during high speed racing better than well, the current bunch. These being the changes made to the new season, some interesting considerations which didn’t make it were points for fastest lap and pole position.

If that headline can’t have 3 exclamation marks then nothing can. They are back in business the ultimate F1 duo of all time. After a couple of months of hard speculation BBC hints that the German has signed a deal with the newly formed Mercedes GP under Ross Brawn who seems to turn anything into gold with his touch. The deal is worth 7 million for the 2010 season and will be extended if the going gets good. This deal effectively hammers Michael’s current role with Ferrari as its brand ambassador.

Though this might be the delight of the century for motorsport fans, back in Maranello the Ferrari tifosi is heartbroken especially Ferrari boss Montezemolo who quotes “the real Michael is the one who raced for Ferrari” and “this is the new Michael”.

Somewhere down the line when Schumi was sitting out on the Ferrari paddock, he must have realized that he doesn’t belongs on the paddock but further north and that spurred up with Montezemolo’s idea of Schumi standing in for injured Massa added up and here we have the big headline “Schumacher is back”. This is the most bonkers news in motorsport history;the only thing that could top this would be if the late Ayrton Senna comes back to life!

Force India is having quite a handful to deal with these days. Force India has alleged that Lotus has stolen the Aerodynamic design of its 2010 F1 car. According to Force India, Aerolab which is Force India’s former wind tunnel operator has sold vital Aerodynamic data of the Team 2010 F1 car to lotus. Force India claims that Lotus’s front wing assembly of its wind tunnel model is similar to Force India’s on top of that Lotus’s wind tunnel car’s tire has handwriting of Force India’s staff.

These allegations come in the midst of Aerolab’s legal battle against Force India for breaching contract obligations. Mean while Force India won a legal battle against Etihad Airways and Aldar Properties which paid of Force India $ 4.7 million.

As Mallaya’s saying goes “you win or lose, you have to booze”!

The Brazilian GP has always been a hum dinger, this year was no exception. Though it doesn’t mark the grand finale this year, it concluded the championships with Button clinching the Driver’s and maiden team Brawn GP the Constructor’s championship.

Before the race started the gap in championship points between Button and Barrichello was 14 and all Barrichello has to do is finish the race in position above 5 as long as Button doesn’t score a point. This did look conceivable as Barrichello started the race in pole and Button way back from 14th on the grid.

As the race progressed so did Button, but the Brazilian on the other hand let it slip after each pit stop, the final blow came when Hamilton over took him, Hamilton got in contact with Barrichello and punctured the Brawn’s rear tire while doing so. Barrichello after the incident had to visit the pits and finished the race at 8th position. Button finished on 5th with 4 extra points adding up to a tally of 89.

Vittal who was in 3 in the overall driver’s championship, bumps ahead of Barrichello with a 4th place finish in Brazil and tally of 74 points leaving Barrichello high and dry with 72 points. With one race to go this season at Abu Dhabi Rubino can mend some of the damage by getting back his 2nd place back.

Force India’s 3rd place qualification for Sutil ended up on the first lap with a spectacular crash taking out himself, Trulli and Alonso. The battle even continued outside the track with a verbal conflict between Sutil and Trulli who was seen very unhappy with the former.

P.S: Webber won the Race.

Click here for the 2009 Brazilian GP result.
Click here for the Driver’s championship standing
Click here for the Constructor’s championship standing

First lap fire ups :

The extravaganza as we mentioned earlier started with the Red bull 2005 F1 car being assembled. Then David Coulthard emerged in the scene around 2 as mentioned earlier. He took out the car in the sea-link for just one run and clocked a top speed of 260kmph. No official timing was recorded during the single run. He made a couple of donut spins at the end before the car tyres were shredded.

The whole place was electrifying with the sound of the car which made the wait in the sun worth. The event even saw a line of celebrities lining into catch a glimpse of the speed machine Gul Panang, Dino Morea, Amrita Arora and Arbaaz Khan were seen keen.

Check out the videos from the event:

click through for videos and pictures from the event: