Now this makes pretty good sense except - you will say - for Asiatech. The acknowledged low drag of the Arrows may well have made the ex-Peugeot engine look good over this sector, but not by all that much. I think we can credit it with pretty useful power, at least at the beginning of the season in relation to its rivals. What won't have happened, however, is the subsequent upgrading of this engine at the same rate as the factory-backed engine builders.

I'm not counting Asiatech out just yet. Back in February its financial director John Gano was making the rounds of companies in Taiwan, looking for backing for an all-out Grand Prix program. "For about $70 to $80 million," he was telling them, "you can paint the car." I hope he meant one car, because Asiatech would need about twice that to have a hope of chasing the leaders. Gano was hoping to entice Taiwanese companies into the sport, saying that Taiwan "is a high-tech country with a high-tech image."

Who's behind Asiatech? We hear that a key backer is Hideo Morita, son of the founder of Sony and rumoured to dispose of a share portfolio worth some $3 billion. Also mentioned as a shareholder in Asiatech is Yamazaki Mazak, a huge maker of precision machine tools. Gano uses them as an example of the kind of company that will benefit from an association with Formula One. It does, in fact, but the only such association mentioned on the Mazak website is with McLaren International! Mazak says it's proud to have its machine tools used by McLaren - but makes no mention of Asiatech. Officially, of course, with the new Arrows-Cosworth deal Asiatech will be out of Formula One in 2002. We'll see.

The BMW V10 is at the top of the tree with, I think, 840 bhp in race trim. Last year's E41 engine was at 780 bhp early in the season and ended it at 800 bhp. The new 90-degree P80 reached that level by the end of last October, a month after it first ran. Early problems that needed solving included its pump drives and electronics. Also tricky was developing its piston rings to run against cylinder bores that are integral with the cylinder block, not inserted liners like the Mercedes. Like the Ferrari V10, the BMW has relatively high oil consumption at the rate of 3 to 4 liters for a race. The top left button on the steering wheel is pressed by the Williams drivers to pump in additional oil from a reserve supply as directed from the pits.

Next most powerful is Ferrari with 825 bhp, up more than 20 bhp from last year. Ferrari has played it carefully on the engine front, as a result of which they have had excellent reliability. A high-revving version of this year's 050 engine has been used in qualifying and is being phased in as a race engine. It gives peak power close to that of the BMW but without quite as good a torque curve. Like the other top teams Ferrari uses technology that tailors the shift points specifically to each track. Upshifts are automatic at the specific points that are preset by the car's electronics for each section of each track.

Mercedes-Benz ranks next with 815 bhp. Its builder Ilmor was the first to use beryllium alloys in its reciprocating parts. These have been banned in 2001, so Mario Illien has had some recouping to do with his latest engine, which is an evolution of his 2000 unit. Mario has been wary of the trend to wide vee angles, saying that he sees "disadvantages when it comes to installing such an engine, especially with regard to routing the exhaust and cooling air systems as well as the vertical rigidity of the engine" as part of the chassis. He admits, however, that a wide angle "has a slightly positive [lowering] effect on the center of gravity" and doesn't count out the possibility that he will follow the trend in the all-new engine that he is already building for next year.

I reckon that Honda is close to Mercedes with around 810 bhp and a pretty lively qualifying engine, as Jarno Trulli has demonstrated more than once this year. But it is not Honda's style to be a laggard, even one capable of grabbing the odd podium place. "We have been learning for the past two years," says its engine boss Shoichi Tanaka, "and it has been a bitter lesson. We must work harder than the other top teams if we are to succeed." Tanaka explained to Autosport that it was easy for Honda to make this year's works engine deal with Jordan because they already knew Eddie's team well through the previous relationship with Mugen-Honda.

Jaguar's Cosworth V10 ranks close to the Honda at 800 bhp, a respectable number in view of the engine's small size and light weight. Clearly, however, both Jaguar and Arrows will want more in the way of horsepower for 2002. In fact Arrows must be expecting more, because the current Cosworth isn't giving all that much more than the 790 bhp their Asiatech V10 is producing. This is right in the same 780-790 bhp bracket as the 2000-model Ferrari engines being used by Sauber and Prost. Sauber will be at the higher end, indeed at 800 bhp, because its contract includes updates during the season.

Autosport says Renault has only 740 bhp, but I'm not buying that. Their new 111-degree V10 may be lagging but not by that much. It hauled pretty purposefully up the hill at Interlagos. I'd estimate 775 bhp for the better French engines. And can you believe that story about former East German Stasi agents bugging Renault's computer data in aid of another team? And that Renault actually changed some features of the engine away from optimum to throw the spies off the track, thus hurting their performance? Sounds like something from a Bob Judd novel. If you believe that you'll believe anything.

We don't know what to expect from the new boys on the block, Toyota, but they're not likely to be short on power. They've recruited a multinational team to build their V10, unlike Honda's all-Japanese approach. Norbert Kreyer is general manager of Toyota engine development and Luca Marmorini is project leader of the F1 engine's design. They too will be well along by now on the new engine for 2002, and I forecast that it will not be weak. The rest of the car - that's another matter.

In its thoughts about slowing down the Formula One cars the FIA apparently doesn't like my suggestion of reducing underbody downforce. They say that if this is done the cars will go too fast. They are wrong. Underbody downforce is highly efficient, imposing much less drag than wings. Removing it won't make a huge difference. Also, terminal speed on a straight depends on the speed at which you enter it. With less downforce cars will be cornering slower and so will be going slower when they commence attacking the next straight. And how many long straights do we have these days? Precious few!

I still say lower underbody downforce is the answer. What about engines? What's the best way to curtail their output? Some say they should have smaller displacement, others that they should have inlet-air restrictors or run congested catalyst exhausts. I have the answer and it is, I think, the only answer. Formula One engines should be rev-limited. Engineers are getting their added power from higher revs, finding ways to reduce the friction that high revs generate and improving gas flow under high-rev conditions. They will keep on doing just that ad infinitum, with ever-higher costs and risks to reliability, unless a limiter is imposed.