Ferrari
Its a matter of being able to do the same thing over again at Ferrari. The drivers lineup will be the same. The technical guru's will still be there. The engine design has proven to be both reliable and powerful, which is the winning combination in F1. Look at things to be more evolutionary, than revolutionary. The major developments will most likely occur in the systems and the aerodynamics. At Japan, Ferrari introduced a different chassis that was slightly longer in the nose section than the one that they had used for the rest of the season. It was said that this car actually meets the 2002 specifications. If this is true, then the team has not only managed to beat the rest of the field in developing next years car, but this demonstrates that the team was so confident in this years car that it could stop developing it. Ballsy and arrogant, but it did the trick. Expect to see them near the top of the sheets in Australia.

McLaren
These guys are in trouble. The driver pairing that has been the longest running in the sport ended at Suzuka when Mika went into his sabbatical. There is no telling if this will be a permanent retirement, or if he just needed to get away from the sport and get focused as a family F1 driver. Reading between the lines, Mika called it quits because he was scared. The crashes that he's had finally got to him and have made him a little fearful of the car. Rational, but not what's needed to drive at the limit day in and day out. Kimi will be replacing Mika (one Finn for another) with DC continuing on. This should be taken as a wake up call for Couthard. If the youngster is consistently better in both qualifying and race results, the Scot is gone.

As for the car, there will be some changes. First, McLaren has announced that they are doing the Explorer owner move and dropping Bridgestone in favor of Michelin (it would be funny to see the move on Jaguar's part). This means that the suspension geometry will have to be redone. The Michelin tires tend to be more rounded and not as angular as the Bridgestones. The camber must be adjusted to account for this. Michelin does have a long standing relationship with both McLaren and Mercedes Benz, so it will be interesting to see who gets the more favorable treatment. Engine development is where the most work needs to be done. Illmor had a tragic setback with the death of one of its co-founders earlier in the year.

It could have been a combination of this loss of technical skill and a loss of enthusiasm within the engine development group that caused the team not to loose ground, but not gain it as quickly as the other teams were making progress. The car's areodynamics will definitely get some tweeking now that Adrian Newey is more motivated to stay within the team. Look for the silver cars to be a contender, but don't expect a miracle.

BMW-Williams
BMW-Williams has potential for next season. Both drivers have shown that they are capable of winning and driving assertively enough. There has been some rubbing among the team on who the better driver is. Ralf had made rumblings that he wanted the team to appoint a number one driver that would get preferential treatment of new developments. When it was said that if the team did that and he would not get the status, Ralf wisely backed down from his stance. They have found the limits on their engine that was seen in some of the dramatic failures that occurred at the high speed tracks. The lighter the components in the motor are, the less friction is inherent to the design. The balancing trick is to make the engine reliable to last one race, but not a kilometer more (if that is what your safety factor is).

BMW is also said to be helping more on the development of other components of the car, mainly the gearbox. If major advancements are made here, there is a chance that significant weight reduction can be achieved due to better packaging. It was felt that this team would be the ones to challenge Ferrari's dominance of the sport in 2001, but they were constantly hampered by mechanical failures. The design here will also be more evolutionary than revolutionary with more of a focus on reliability. I think that they tried too hard in 2001. Call 2001 a building year, they should present a better challenge next year.

Jordan
Jordan has gotten their ducks in a row in an attempt to make a good showing next season. By signing Sato before the Japanese GP, Eddie feels that he has won the political war with BAR over the Honda engine deal. By signing the home driver, Eddie is trying to convince Honda that he would be most willing to go along with their management to develop the program together. Expect more development of the car than was seen in 2001, but nothing radical as Jordan does not have the technical depth of the top teams.

The also rans will be covered in next month's issue.

The teams are banned from testing on the tracks until next season. That doesn't mean that the engineers will be going home any earlier or the wind tunnels will be turned off. The mode changes in the off season. People are not under the same types of pressure and now is when the creative juices are flowing. In the off season, you can concentrate more on making the car go faster, rather than hunting down some mysterious handling or reliability problem that always seems to crop up mid-season. Now is when some components will be redesigned with a clean sheet of paper and young engineers will be given the chance to show that they know what they are doing and the senior designers will show that they still know more. With more and more at stake during the off season, the top teams will try and find a way to test components in road cars if need be. Remember, BMW set the SUV record around the old North track of the Nurburgring by dropping the engine out of their le Mans winning prototype, so anything is possible.