This week's Grapevine brings you information fresh from the paddock on: The Price of Youth Williams Re-Launch

The Price of Youth

Investing in youth is often considered a good way to cut costs in Formula One - after all, unproven drivers are not sure to make their mark, so not only can they not command the salaries demanded by the front runners, they are often required to bring substantial money to the team in order to sit in the car. However, there are some big, and fairly obvious, hidden costs associated with fresh blood, particularly as they acclimatise to the higher power and lower grip the cars offer.

Takuma Sato's salary is a fraction of what Fisichella, Frentzen or Alesi command; however, the team's savings on wages have already been coughed up on wear and tear to the car, as the Japanese driver's exuberant style has taken him off the track regularly, both in testing and on race weekends.

When things are going well, there is enough money coming in from sponsors to budget well for spares, and the pressure to look after the car comes second to peak performance. Unfortunately, since this year is proving to be a financial struggle, making cost effective use of the equipment is an important part of the game plan. The destruction of a chassis means the team have to either make do with one less, or find the funds to build a new one at the expense of something else - with "something else" normally being testing, or development effort.

Eddie Jordan was very frank that the tough financial environment the sport is struggling through this year drove the streamlining. Of course, there's no coincidence that the same streamlining has ended just about all thoughts of developing next years' car, or that the projects that are still running for this year really need to produce results. Further cuts to development are a problem, though, as the team absolutely must outperform BAR this year in order to justify to Honda the value of continued works involvement.

Producing fewer spares is an awkward move too. Whilst Sato continues to break his cars, it is vital to have parts ready to put them back together again - so carrying multiple spares is necessary, right up to the part being replaced by its successor, where two experienced drivers might get by with only one spare to share between them.

Cutting down on testing, then, is the most obvious solution to reducing costs; every day at the track costs the team a small fortune. However, that time is important - even just running tyre tests, the team can learn something about how to set up on the new rubber that gives them an edge over BAR. And, of course, the more time Sato spends on track, the better he is at judging the limits of the car, increasing the odds on his bringing it home safely!

Honda's much rumoured move to supporting BAR alone is being aligned with Sato moving to the team - as the flag carrier for Japanese drivers, the continued alignment with Honda makes good gossip. The rumours also argue that the works engines in Jordan's car for the year represent the funding for Sato's introduction to the top tier, which by anyone's standards must be considered a bargain.

Mind you, it is hugely ironic that the most expensive of Sato's accidents this year really wasn't his fault; not that Nick Heidfeld or Sauber will foot the bill.

Williams Re-Launch

Seeing David Coulthard pass Juan Pablo Montoya so easily at Monaco has really hit the Williams team hard, as they had considered their launch control software easily up to the task of maintaining a place en route to the first corner. Analysing what happened at the start of this - and previous - races has shown up an alarming issue that the team need to resolve in short order, if they are to remain competitive off the grid.

At races to date, Williams have only really been comparing their launches to Ferrari. For the most part, when aligned up alongside their rival, the edge has gone to the driver who reacted fastest to the lights, though the Ferrari appears to have a small advantage over the first couple of hundred metres - worth perhaps a car length, which is not all that much. McLaren generally looked comparable. The performance of other cars on launching was given little scrutiny, as the midfield teams rarely get mixed up at the front of the grid, and are soon passed when they do. However, checking further down the field, seeing what the Renaults can do off the line has illustrated that far more is attainable; indeed, the team generally expect to pick up several places off the grid for both cars against midfield opponents.

There was talk ahead of the start at Monaco, that new Michelin rear tyres offered their drivers something like fifteen yards advantage off the line, compared to the scrubbed alternative. As it turns out, whilst not actually worth quite so much, this differential proved to be a key component of the factors leading to Coulthard's decisive move off the line.

Unlike Williams, the McLaren team have been spending time watching the midfield - a direct consequence of their poorer qualifying this year, they have lined up alongside Renault often enough to have a sharp lesson in the shortcomings of their own launch control capabilities. Initially, the issues were blamed on poor understanding of the Michelin tyres, resulting in inadequate mechanical grip and poor traction from the start. However, the consistency of Renault's starts soon put paid to that idea, and instead gave McLaren a target to shoot for themselves.

In recent tests, McLaren have been very coy about what they have been up to, but regularly admitted to working on their electronics. For the most part, it has appeared that this work was geared to improving the transmission of power between the engine and the wheels - smoothing the power curve, improving traction control and so on. In hindsight, of course, it's easy to recall that they also put in a few practice starts with each new clutch, electronic setup and sample tyre. This is normal practice, to ensure there are no glitches and that the drivers remain au fait with the start process. In appearing to operate so normally, some very serious work on launch control has taken place in plain sight, without catching any real attention.

This progress alone improved the start by some five percent (worth nearly three car lengths on the opening straight in Monaco) and should have been enough, alongside the fresh rubber, to give Coulthard a good shot at the lead on its own. However, unfortunately for Montoya, his launch control was set-up using data based on warmer, but more worn tyres, from practice starts during testing. As it transpires, at the race start, his tyres had more grip than anticipated, which resulted in the engine bogging down slightly, a delayed move to second gear, and a sub optimal start.

Nonetheless, the launch control gauntlet has been well and truly thrown down, and Williams are now rising to the challenge of playing catch-up.