After months of politics, speculation and a lot of testing, the Formula One circus finally arrives in Australia for the season opening Grand Prix. It's time to stop talking and start racing. As every F1 fan, Karl Ludvigsen is looking forward to a great season

I've just had a note through the post from BMW Williams F1 with their last press-kit materials for 2005. They sign off very nicely: "We're looking forward to an exciting season!"

So am I!

I've spent the winter doing my best to ignore the political hassles that are bedeviling Formula One. Fortunately we have great writers who are keeping track of all the maneuverings among Bernie, the banks, the teams and the carmakers. I can't say I'm not interested, but for me it's what happens on the track that counts. So I couldn't be more relieved that at last we're ready for action. The off-season blathering will come to a temporary halt.

Wasn't it Jack Brabham who said, "When the flag drops, the bullshit stops"? We don't drop the flag any more, but when those lights go out, the truth turns on.

What makes this season so interesting is that we have so many changes. The cars, for one thing. Teams have been working hard to recoup downforce lost after changes to wing heights and aero rules at the rear, but few will have made up the shortfall by the beginning of the season. Here's one area where we'll see a lot of changes during the year as wind tunnels keep grinding out new solutions (Williams and Sauber hope so) and as designers get a look at what their rivals have done. Not until San Marino at the end of April will we have a good feeling for the way the year will shape in this department.

Then there are engines. The ins and outs of the two-weekend durability rule are exercising the best minds in the business. There's a temptation to try a banzai approach, but in the first races everyone is well aware of the importance of points-gathering through reliability, so I doubt that we'll see much of that. Sepang will be the moment of truth. "I don't think anybody's on top of the two-race engine yet," said Ferrari's Ross Brawn a couple of weeks ago. "Certainly we're not." So the engine men have their work cut out.

So, obviously, do the tyre makers, with one set having to last through qualifying and the race. "I think that's going to be a really interesting element," said Brawn. "The end of the race is going to be really exciting" as we find out who has preserved tyre performance and who hasn't. I see that Pierre Dupasquier of Michelin is begging us not to blame the tyre makers if their users perform poorly. He has a point; race commentators will be all too prone to speak of the "tyres going off" as if it were the fault of the rubber producer. Across the spectrum of a given tyre maker the difference will indeed have more to do with car set-up and driver skill.

One reason the end of a race could be more exciting is that speed differentials could be big enough to permit passing. Last year Ferrari took part in tests to find out how much of an advantage one car had to have over another with today's aerodynamics in order to complete a pass. The tests concluded that the difference in laptimes of the two cars had to be at least two to three seconds. With less, there was no chance of passing. Differential tyre deterioration could create just such margins near the end of the race, giving more overtaking opportunities to shrewd drivers.

I'm prepared to give the new qualifying procedure a chance. My main hope is that the Saturday low-fuel qualifying is exciting enough to ensure that there's TV coverage, because we need that as a preliminary to the race proper. The new set-up will be an intriguing blend of the previous qualifying methods, keeping the teams plenty busy on Sunday and giving us bench racers a lot to mull over. I'm looking forward to seeing how it works.

As far as the teams go, there's definitely a sense that some are closing the gap with Ferrari. "McLaren and Renault are looking the closest on their race simulations," said Ross Brawn as the testing weeks drew to a close. "About the same as us." That could promise some close racing. And if a troubled winter promises a good season, as has often been the case, we can expect better efforts from BAR Honda and BMW Williams. And I'm looking for some serious surprises from Toyota.

Speaking of Toyota, we couldn't have more interesting driver matchups than we do for 2005. Rubens Barrichello will be pushing Michael hard in the red cars. "Rubens keeps Michael sharp," said Ross Brawn. "He's looking at Rubens's data." Over at McLaren-Mercedes we have the most-hyped pairing in Grand Prix racing since Senna and Prost at the same stable. Interest couldn't possibly be higher in the way that combination will work. It's the same at Renault, where Alonso and Fisichella are tremendous talents. Overall, of course, the problem is that these pairings will take points off each other while Michael will harvest more than his fair share. That's why it's so hard to bet against his winning yet another World Championship.

And then there's considerable interest in the outlook for veterans Coulthard and Villeneuve in their respective teams, which we have to rate as mid-field contenders. Can either of them have a few starring moments with Red Bull-Cosworth and Sauber-Petronas respectively? Finally we have a handful of rank newcomers to Formula One driving Jordan-Toyotas and Minardi-Cosworths, now that a last-minute deal has secured their Superlicences. We hope that some have the power to impress.

"I have the feeling that it's going to be a tough year for us," summed up Ross Brawn. While wishing Ross well, his closest rivals will be hoping he's right. We'll get our first hint of whether that's true in Melbourne, when the metaphorical flag drops…on the longest season in Grand Prix history.

About the author:
Long time columnist at Atlas F1, Karl Ludvigsen is an award-winning author and historian who managed racing programs for Fiat in America in the late 1970s and Ford of Europe in the early 1980s. He is the author of seven books about racing drivers and numerous books about classic racing cars and engines, all of which draw extensively on the many images in his Ludvigsen Library in Suffolk, England.

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