If Jacques Villeneuve is to repeat as World Champion this season, he may find that he is even more "up against it" in 1998 than he was in 1997. Villeneuve beat the odds last year by overcoming his Japanese Grand Prix suspension, wet weather handling problems, an inconsistent mid-season stretch, and a collision with title rival Michael Schumacher. While Williams are still the best engineering team in F1, there are cracks beginning to develop in their armour as well. Could last season's champion be this season's also ran? Though the possibily may seem remote, there is a chance.

The first problem Jacques may encounter is possibly the closest one to him, his teammate. Heinz Harld Frentzen had a less than spectacular first season at Williams, but many of his problems can be traced to lack of experience within the Williams team. Much of Frentzen's poor performances were a result of not having a handle on setting up his Williams early in the season. But, by the end of the season, Frentzen had greatly improved on his earlier form taking a number of podiums in a row. While Frentzen may not be able to challenge Jacques for the title, there are no team orders at Williams. Will Heinz Harald improve enough to take a significant number of points away from his Canadian teammate?

Another problem that Jacques may encounter is situated just six inches behind his back in his FW20. Renault's pull out from F1 has left Williams with an engine produced by their technical partner and engine tuners Mechachrome. The current engine, RS-9A, is the last engine that Renault has officially done any development on. Even Williams technical director Patrick has admitted that he doesn't know what the pace of development will be like with Mechachrome. With the works engines, Mercedes, Ferrari, and Peugeot already closing in on, or surpassing Renault power, any development that would aid drivability or reliability from any of those three manufacturers may see Williams with the forth best engine by mid-season.

Another factor is Williams' tyre contract with Goodyear. Bridgestone now has two top teams, Benetton and McLaren, on their tyres. While Goodyear may benefit from supplying less teams again this year, the fact remains that there are two teams which have the potential to run at the front and have choosen the other tyre option. Should Goodyear struggle this year, they can't rely on the fact that they have the top 4 teams all on their tyres. Simply put, being on the wrong rubber could seriously hurt Williams' competitiveness.

Patrick Head recently stated in Autosport that Williams' advantage in chassis building has started to slip away. He said "many teams have wind tunnels and now understand things about the car that maybe we understood better two or three years ago. It is less easy for us to make leaps of progress, so they are inevitably starting to come closer."

When you couple that sentiment with the fact that Williams' ace designer Adrian Newey is now with McLaren, it's possible that the FW20 may not be the best chassis on the grid. That would arguably be the first time that has happened since before the FW14 was introduced in 1991. Newey's departure may not make a huge difference to Williams performance, but then again this is the first car that he's had no input on, and maybe it will.

Just the fact that Adrian Newey is now working for a rival team is enough to make competing with McLaren harder. Further, Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne doing the design and technical work for a full season at Ferrari should make them more competitive. When you consider that the last two years that Michael Schumacher was at Benetton they produced a pakage that rivalled the Williams, could they mount a stronger challenge than we saw last season at Ferrari? Prost now has a factory engine deal with Peugeot, and Jordan has a proven race winner with Damon Hill. Suffice to say, the competition will be tougher this year.

This all says nothing of Villeneuve's lacklustre mid-season slump. The main thing that got him out of that slump was inheriting wins, and benefitting from the unrelaibilty of others. Jacques gained 14 points from other drivers dropping out of the lead in the last quarter of three races. At Silverstone, he gained a win a Hakinnen's expense, as well as Nurburgring where he also profitted from Coulthard's similar plight. In Hungary, it was Damon Hill gifting him a win in the last lap. All three of these races had had their strategy played out and positions were set, only good luck and Jacques' own excellent reliability were factors. If even half those points didn't happen Schumacher wouldn't have moved his steering wheel an inch at Jerez. Can Jacques carry on with that kind of luck forever?

Now this might sound like a bit of Canadian sandbagging, trying to play down Jacques' chances for next season. Or, it could sound like Villeneuve/Williams bashing, it all depends on your point of view. I'm trying to be objective here, and if you've guessed my biases you have 50/50 chance of being correct one day and wrong the next. But in my opinion, it doesn't matter who the current champion is, he will face a stiff test repeating. Why do you think that there have only been six men in nearly fifty years of the modern era to successfully defend a championship? It's not an easy task, and should Villeneuve successfully defend he goes into the record books with Ascari, Fangio, Brabham, Prost, Senna, and Schumacher, that's pretty heady company. Is he up to the test, or will the double prove to be too hard?