Into the great unknown

Such is the wide-ranging raft of changes to the regulations that it cannot be taken as read that a top team will retain their form. Remember Ferrari's 2005 season? One paltry race win and even that only when ranged against a field of four Minardis and Jordans at Indy? That disastrous blip in an otherwise brilliant sequence of seasons from 2000-08 came as a result of just one rule tweak – that which banned tyre changes during a race.

Going into 2009, we have vastly more regulation changes than that, as discussed here last week. As such, Ferrari – with probably fewer modelling tools than, say, McLaren or BMW – face the challenge with a certain amount of trepidation. This was evident in the recent comments of the team's chief track engineer, Luca Baldisseri, who went on to articulate some of the operational challenges the new rules present the teams.

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