Formula One’s month-long moratorium just came to an end this week, with most F1 teams testing again in preparation for the 1999 Grand Prix season. While some teams have been working on the new car for many months already - Gustav Brunner began designing the new Minardi back in March - the two championship-contending teams this year will not be bringing out their cars until late January at least. The main reason is that their resources were tied up in the 1998 battle.

"The second half of a Formula One season is always very difficult," says Ferrari’s technical boss Ross Brawn, "because you have to start your new car while deciding how to spread your resources between the new car and the old car which in our case this year we were still developing in order to fight for the championship. I know they were fighting very hard for third position in the championship, but I got the feeling that people like Jordan, Benetton and Williams were putting much more effort going into their new car, because that was the important one.

"Ferrari and McLaren had to find a better compromise because we were trying to win a championship, so we had to make some hard decisions in August: where we put people, which projects did we put them on, where we should place our resources? We knew we had a chance of winning a championship so we had to put as much of resources as we could into maintaining this year’s effort."

Even as the cars were in Japan, however, the factory was concentrated on the new car - but with a message from Ross. "What I’m putting across is that sure we can do it, but let’s see if we can do it from the first race rather than the fourth or fifth race because it will make a huge difference.

"There’s no dramatic change in concept of the new car because the rules haven’t changed but the work on the chassis, which is the first thing that has to be finished, started in the wind tunnel three or four months ago. It was a sort of second level project to what we’re trying to do to keep the 1998 car competitive or make it more competitive. Often, while you’re developing one car, you see some ideas, try some things which you can’t implement on that car because the chassis is a fixed design for the year. Unless you go through a whole new series of crash tests, you can’t really change the chassis but the aerodynamicists start to understand the current car a little bit more and see things that they would like to try a little bit differently, so the new chassis is the first thing to do and that was started three or four months ago.

"The chassis drawings had been issued by the end of October, the chassis had been started, so had the gearbox, some of the suspension was already done, some of it was still to be designed, the aerodynamics of the chassis were finished, there were still some aerodynamics being developed for the bodywork and the wings - but they’re bits that we can leave until quite late. So we were probably slightly less than half way through the new car.

"But we’ve already got people on a six day week, ten or twelve hours a day, so there’s no rest for them. It’s the one difficult thing about Formula One: it does put a tremendous strain on people. There’s only a finite amount of time that people can mentally make that commitment. Fortunately or unfortunately , because we are competitive, our people don’t get any respite during the year if the effort is required of them, so we’ve had a very tough year, there’s no break and it’s straight into a new car.

"I’m lucky, I got two weeks holiday, but most days I’d be on the phone to the factory talking about how the new car is getting on. It’s the fear of failure that drives us all. I think if you’re in the business, there’s no point in being in it unless you’re going to try and be competitive and that’s what pushes us all along."