Looks like a great Formula One season in the making

One of my 'background' sporting interests, way behind football and cricket, has been motor racing, but my interest has been elevated by circumstances this season. I do some DJ-ing for an American internet radio station and they have asked me to send a regular Formula One report to their weekly NASCAR show and thus keep the Americans in tune with 'European' Motor Racing.

I couldn't have picked a better year with the new rules completely turning the 2008 form book upside down and the new Brawn Mercedes team rising from the ashes of the Honda pull out and winning the first two races of the new season, both with Jensen Button at the wheel. I am delighted for Button, a guy I've long thought was a better driver than his record suggests and who has been in uncompetitive cars for the last few years. So at present we have one British world champion possibly superceded by another, unless McLaren can get their act together pretty quickly.



The racing has been first class and there is little doubt that the rules governing the aerodynamics has produced more of a level playing field which , although Brawn seem to be setting the pace after two races, they are not dominating in the way McLaren and Ferrari have done in years gone by. Any of BMW Sauber, Toyota, Red Bull or Williams could come through to challenge Brawn's current supremacy.

Formula One needed some kind of an injection to make the racing more competitive and to give the spectators something to enthuse over. Of course the one thing rules cannot resolve and that's the weather, sadly proven today when the Malaysian Grand Prix was abandoned after a torrential downpour after 32 laps. Not that Button was to unhappy - he was in the lead and got the points - but unsatisfactory for race fans and the organisers.