New Season about to start. First on the top 4 drivers

The best time of the year in F1. The first qualifying is only hours away but being the first race we don't really know who is strong and who not. Everybody has the greatest amount of optimizm about the upcoming season.

So this year we have a new champion (Congrats Lewis) and last season saw four manufacturers regularly contest for wins and also winning - McLaren, Ferrari, Renault and BMW. In the starting season we have three returning champions - Lewis, Kimi and Fernando - who are enticingly each in a car by a different manufacturer, but also all three are in the car (or back in the car) that won them the championship last.

But this season sees the biggest amount of technical regulation changes that the sport hsa seen in more than a decade. I personally don't like the shape of the new car (and am not alone) but tbat will pass. These will soon become familiar to us and the older F1 cars will seem.. old

DRIVERS

First lets look a bit at the top drivers. Three champions and all well into the early parts of their careers. Kimi is 29 years old. Fernando is 27 and Lewis is 24 years of age. These are young drivers. They also have a lot of experience and in particular a lot of success under their belts. Alonso has won two championships, 21 race wins, and earned 551 points out of 123 races entered. Kimi has one championship, 17 wins, 531 points out of 140 races. Hamilton has 1 championship, 9 wins and 207 points out of 35 races. If we toss in Felipe Massa into the mix as the fourth young experienced lion, the 27 year old has no championships but otherwise very comparable stats, 11 wins and 298 points out of 106 races.

Two interesting statistics I would like to mention. The points-per-race average and the winning percentage. Kimi and Fernando are very close on both - with Alonso ahead on both - and very high marks for the two drivers far into a career with over 500 races for both of them. Alonso has been bringing an average of 4.5 points per race over his career and Kimi 3.8 points. Felipe Massa is significantly behind on this measure, averaging 2.7 points per race. As to winning percentage, Massa and Raikkonen are very close, Massa at 10.4% (winning one in ten starts) and Raikkonen winning 12.1% of his races or one in eight starts; but here Alonso is well ahead, winning a very high percentage of 17.1% of his races. That is one win in every six starts.

Compared to the three, Lewis Hamilton has far better stats, but these have been generated in only two years, when the McLaren has been a top car both seasons. That will not be how any F1 race driver will have his whole career, so Lewis's stats may be artificially high because of good luck in being with the right team at the right time. Even so, his stats are most impressive. Lewis has been delivering 5.9 points per race started and his win percentage has been amazing at 25.7%. He has been winning one out of every four starts!

In terms of evenly balanced drivers, these four are now very even in every way, the top 3 have all won a championship and Massa came within a point last year, and headed to the championship up to the last lap of the last race. All have multiple wins in multiple seasons. The two older champions, Kimi and Fernando have won races on two different teams and both wanted away from the other team (funnily enough, McLaren in both cases) and are now with the team where they won their championships. As to Alonso whatever unhappy feelings he had about Renault early last year seemed to vanish once he started to win again for Renault.

Lewis was happy with McLaren all along and is now the youngest champ of all time. And Massa must feel much more confident this season knowing his team mate Kimi can be defeated and that Massa has an even chance within the Ferrari team.

As to Lewis. He became champion last year. This must be a big boost to his young racing mind. He has already achieved it. He is still learning F1 and still learning the circuits, the team, the car. He will still get better simply because he is so young and has so little experience (35 starts).

And a mention of Kimi. He has had a near perfect pairing of seasons, up in one, down in the next. It was all his life at McLaren and now also last season the pattern continued at Ferrari. I would believe that Kimi thinks this is his year again and believes he will be contesting for the championship again this season to the end.

But we have a new season. Ferrari tends to be consistent going from one successful season to the next. Renault tends to have spurts of a couple of short years of success then trouble. They might well be strong this year. But McLaren is notorious for up-and-down years. Very competitive one year, and mid-field the next. A see-saw performance team. They were up last year, this bodes badly for McLaren for 2009.

The big change however are the new regulations. This season will offer the midfield teams - even some backmarkers - the chance to jump up because of new opportunities in the new regulatios. We see it early in the three teams with the new diffuser.

Over time the big teams with big budgets and experience - Ferrari, McLaren (perhaps Renault) and BMW will all be able to force their teams ahead simply by size and effort. But early in these new regulations it is a golden moment for the smaller teams like Williams, Red Bull and even backmarkers like Force India and Brawn.

Very exciting times. Can't wait!